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The WinRAR approach

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Re: The WinRAR approach

#51

Post by 3036e4 »

jwitthuhn wrote: post #41

The DAW Reaper also uses a similar approach and for that alone I would highly recommend anyone interested in audio production give it a try. Everyone else in the industry uses online activation. Whenever they take those servers down you lose your ability to install and use the software you bought. With programs like WinRar and Reaper, even if the company producing it disappears tomorrow and takes all their servers wi…

The Renoise DAW does that as well, except for two or three features that are disabled in the trial version (nothing too vital or that could not be worked around by anyone interested in not paying iirc). Just an offline serial number to unlock, good for an entire major version of upgrades (some 10+ years in practice, it seems).

Otherwise, at least 5+ years ago when I kept up with this, music software without annoying drm was extremely rare, seemingly worse than any other type of software I encountered, yet almost everyone (unsurprisingly) seems to use pirated versions. A sad side-effect is that cheaper alternatives like Reaper or Reason (or any free software) are not as widespread as you would expect, since most prefer to just use a pirated $2000+ application.

Re: The WinRAR approach

#52

Post by anthk »

zerr wrote: post #21

Don't forget that WinRAR comes from 90s eastern European/xUSSR cultural background, where nobody paid for IP, for something that could be copied. Nobody would use it otherwise. I'm pretty sure even the authors used "pirated" copies of OS/compilers to produce WinRAR.

And Western European too. Just ask about Italy, Spain, France in the 90's...

Companies did for working environments, with big software from AutoCAD and such, but no one paid it for learning purposes.

Re: The WinRAR approach

#53

Post by anthk »

pjmlp wrote: post #38
zerr wrote: post #21

Don't forget that WinRAR comes from 90s eastern European/xUSSR cultural background, where nobody paid for IP, for something that could be copied. Nobody would use it otherwise. I'm pretty sure even the authors used "pirated" copies of OS/compilers to produce WinRAR.

You mean like on HN, a site initially for startups, where every single time there is a post about some tool with payment, there are enough comments about free beer clones? Because why pay for the work of others, when only we matter. As someone from southern Europe, where there was hardly any original software being sold during 1980's and 1990's, one thing I gladly do today is to pay for the tools I use in production.…

I prefer to buy books than software, especially from T3X (Zenlisp, T3XForth, Klong...) and the Eforth+Subleq guy. The software it's libre licensed but the knowledge isn't, even if I have the documents right here, a good book to introduce me on K/Klang it's invaluable.

Re: The WinRAR approach

#54

Post by theandrewbailey »

LeoPanthera wrote: post #8

(I know this article isn't actually about rar, but...) It's surprising that anyone still cares about the rar file format. lzma, as used in .7z, has superior compression, and neither are particularly fast so it's not about performance. 7-Zip is BSD licensed and has a native Windows UI.

7z has recently started supporting zstd compression, so you can compress much faster (though not as much).

Re: The WinRAR approach

#56

Post by dtech »

buran77 wrote: post #39
stingraycharles wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same for MS-DOS, at least in the early years. Microsoft was completely aware just how often it was pirated, even by businesses, but just cared more about market share.

> Same for MS-DOS, at least in the early years Same for Windows throughout its history, at least for home use. But unlike WinRAR, Windows didn't run on goodwill. MS understood the power of market share and network effects. The staying power of Windows in the enterprise comes from every new hire being familiar with Windows, its concepts, maybe even the tooling. The home user gets its dose for free because the enterpri…

Arguably the same is true for WinRAR. Nowadays is .zip or .7z, but .rar was very common for a long time, and wouldn't have been if WinRAR wasn't available for effectively free.

Re: The WinRAR approach

#57

Post by squigz »

jwitthuhn wrote: post #41

The DAW Reaper also uses a similar approach and for that alone I would highly recommend anyone interested in audio production give it a try. Everyone else in the industry uses online activation. Whenever they take those servers down you lose your ability to install and use the software you bought. With programs like WinRar and Reaper, even if the company producing it disappears tomorrow and takes all their servers wi…

> Everyone else in the industry uses online activation. Whenever they take those servers down you lose your ability to install and use the software you bought.

Pirates manage to work around this just fine, for a lot of programs.

Re: The WinRAR approach

#58

Post by squigz »

pjmlp wrote: post #38
zerr wrote: post #21

Don't forget that WinRAR comes from 90s eastern European/xUSSR cultural background, where nobody paid for IP, for something that could be copied. Nobody would use it otherwise. I'm pretty sure even the authors used "pirated" copies of OS/compilers to produce WinRAR.

You mean like on HN, a site initially for startups, where every single time there is a post about some tool with payment, there are enough comments about free beer clones? Because why pay for the work of others, when only we matter. As someone from southern Europe, where there was hardly any original software being sold during 1980's and 1990's, one thing I gladly do today is to pay for the tools I use in production.…

I'm confused - are you upset that people offer free alternatives to software, or that people opt to choose those, or that people share links to those?

Re: The WinRAR approach

#59

Post by t_mahmood »

wvbdmp wrote: post #33
quietbritishjim wrote: post #15

> If you're familiar with WinRAR, the Windows file compression tool, you'll know where this is going. WinRAR became infamous for offering a "30-day trial" that never actually expired. I remember Paint Shop Pro being even more famous for this. I certainly got to day five hundred and something of the 30 day trial. I seem to remember an interview with the creator where he was grateful even to users that didn't pay becau…

I used to love PSP back in the day. Is it still any good? I don’t much like Affinity Photo and unfortunately Adobe is completely insufferable. Another, more current, example is the audio workstation Reaper. After the generous 60-day trial it keeps showing a message about it on every startup that cannot be dismissed for 5 seconds or so, but otherwise remains fully functional. It’s great and one should totally buy it,…

5 sec delay would be fine for today's standard, where all app takes much longer to load
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