61–70 of 98 posts
Yes. I pirated WinXP in order to run IE for testing purposes.
You know they give you a version of xp and vista for testing ie right? It's a virtual machine image preloaded but time limited. http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=21E...
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True. I guess what I really meant is that if you're using a platform where most everything is free you don't really need to pirate software. Macs, in my opinion, could almost be lumped in with Windows.
My impression is that mac users tend to buy software more often than windows users as a percentage of the whole, at least for small to medium applications. Examples: Textmate, Transmit, Sizeup, Divvy, etc. I highly doubt that would apply to behemoths like photoshop though. Not that I have any data to back that up, just my general impression.
It's interesting that "No" is winning. If we had run this poll in 1990 I'm sure it would have been about 99% in the Yes camp. Guessing about reasons... what do you all think? - Software moved to the web and is funded by subscriptions, advertising, corporate behemoths, donations, or mere hope. - Free software answers a lot of people's needs, especially on HN. - Operating systems are good enough that we don't need a lo…
At the same time, so many good things are either free or bundled with the hardware so you don't feel the marginal cost of them. You don't "need" to pirate MS Office to have a usable computer, OO and Google Docs are pretty damn good these days.
A lot of gaming has moved to consoles (much harder to pirate) or online subscriptions like WOW or Steam, which also make piracy more difficult.
And yes, when I say I don't pirate software, I include fonts in that list. There are plenty of good free fonts, and many great fonts are pretty affordable.
I am a student and a hobbyist. Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, Maya and Sony Forge are examples of great software that I really want to use and love to use, but simply could never afford as a student. I'd add Windows 7 and the Office pack to the list, if my school didn't offer free licenses for them. And to be honest, even if I was making decent money and using those tools as a pro, I'd still only pay for the software…
If you were to move back to Windows/Mac OR if you faced the same questions within a Linux environment, would you then pirate software?
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I know I'm in the minority here, but Photoshop is worth every penny to me. I don't upgrade to every version (I usually skip every other one) but I don't steal it, and I certainly don't find GIMP to be an honest substitute. If you dabble in graphics, or are making things for the web, it's fine. If you do some of the things I do, GIMP just doesn't have the workflow or the features yet. I really don't want to turn this…
Non-linear video editing is even more so, I feel. I do not do a whole lot of it, but I've discovered that there really is no halfway decent free option (besides iMovie, but that's only 'free' if you bought a mac, and it's incredibly weak)
It's interesting that "No" is winning. If we had run this poll in 1990 I'm sure it would have been about 99% in the Yes camp. Guessing about reasons... what do you all think? - Software moved to the web and is funded by subscriptions, advertising, corporate behemoths, donations, or mere hope. - Free software answers a lot of people's needs, especially on HN. - Operating systems are good enough that we don't need a lo…
Yes to all of your reasons, but I think you missed the biggest one: - Many of us produce and sell software and we understand that pirating makes it harder for people like us to make a living at it.
One of these will probably be the biggest selling PC game of the next 3 years.
It's interesting that "No" is winning. If we had run this poll in 1990 I'm sure it would have been about 99% in the Yes camp. Guessing about reasons... what do you all think? - Software moved to the web and is funded by subscriptions, advertising, corporate behemoths, donations, or mere hope. - Free software answers a lot of people's needs, especially on HN. - Operating systems are good enough that we don't need a lo…
The demoscene came from there as well: demos were originally graphical eyecandy inserted into cracked software, and for years, cracking groups and demo groups were either the same, or had huge overlap in membership. So if you were to hang out at a HackerNews BBS in 1980 or 1990, I think there'd be a lot more rubbing shoulders with people who spent their free time cracking software and operating pirate BBSs, because they were the same people building cool things and writing the BBS equivalent of tech blog posts.