"stealing"
You keep using that word...
An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
11–20 of 46 posts
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#12"stealing" You keep using that word...
Oh good. Yes. Let's please bring this up for the infinity-ith time. It is particularly relevent and useful to be mention when discussing an almost 40 year old letter. Thank you so much for making a useful contribution.
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#13My software title "FileSearchEX" is so pirated that I can no longer continue to work on it full time. Indeed, search engines show more "free crack here" links than legitimate ones. Imagine going to the supermarket and having "free" eggs next to the $5 carton ... which would you choose? I know what 90% of them go with.
You should sell it to Microsoft instead of the users.
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#14My software title "FileSearchEX" is so pirated that I can no longer continue to work on it full time. Indeed, search engines show more "free crack here" links than legitimate ones. Imagine going to the supermarket and having "free" eggs next to the $5 carton ... which would you choose? I know what 90% of them go with.
As someone that writes a lot of code, both commercial product, contracts and FOSS, the two responses that make sense are: better copy protection or copy encouragement. One side boosts revenue while the other makes customer acquisition easier. Usually the later is used first and later on gradually shift to the former.
Rife theft is a huge opportunity to convert unpaid to paid users.
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#15From the letter: *> Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software. Hardware must be paid for, but software is something to share." I'll have to dig around but I recall reading a few articles about 60%+ windows OS being pirated, this number is much lower in US and other developed markets, but is as high as 93% in some[0]. [0] http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/cri_sof_pir_rat-…
Software piracy, no matter where I or anyone stands on it, is part of the economy. It's a forced sale price of zero just as FOSS. The interesting bit is there may be support costs, server costs and other indirect costs associated with pirated software. This hampers a shop's ability to release more versions and keep quality up. (Although it seems like there's always another version of VMware Fusion every time I turn around despite there being barely any investment into its development.)
And also there are interesting situations like DoD and BestBuy. Obviously the profit motive prevails after they've paid their fines and cut POs for maintenance agreements on X thousand seats.
Hypothetically, it would make financial sense for some high value products with a small market to intentionally "leak" to warez groups. It's easier to discover and monetize such obligated customers than fight year long sales cycles and/or pilot deployments.
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#16"stealing" You keep using that word...
Is there a better word for using non-free software without a license?
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#17My software title "FileSearchEX" is so pirated that I can no longer continue to work on it full time. Indeed, search engines show more "free crack here" links than legitimate ones. Imagine going to the supermarket and having "free" eggs next to the $5 carton ... which would you choose? I know what 90% of them go with.
While it sucks to not be able to work on it full time any more, it boggles my mind that it'd be possible to earn enough from a tool like that to work on it full time for any amount of time in the first place. Not meant as a criticism of you - in fact if you've managed to do that, hats off, clearly you must have done something right with it.
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#18My software title "FileSearchEX" is so pirated that I can no longer continue to work on it full time. Indeed, search engines show more "free crack here" links than legitimate ones. Imagine going to the supermarket and having "free" eggs next to the $5 carton ... which would you choose? I know what 90% of them go with.
Either that, or nobody wants to buy your crap.
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#19I think that in the long run, Microsoft profited from piracy. My rationale is that piracy gave a market advantage to the OS with the widest selection of "free" software. So long as folks could copy MS-DOS and Windows software from their workplace, there was little incentive to consider any other OS.
Re: An open letter to hobbyists by Bill Gates (1976)
#20"stealing" You keep using that word...
Is there a better word for using non-free software without a license?
You're only losing opportunity cost. Not COGS. Meanwhile, the user who is pirating your software might be someone for whom the price is prohibitive or who would otherwise not be a user at all if there weren't a cracked alternative. So the the loss to this "theft" is actually much lower because (1) there was no price associated with materials for the software -- it costs you the same to produce one copy as it does a million and (2) the majority of cracked copies of the software wouldn't have resulted in a sale anyway.