Software Developers POV: What is better? Piracy or using the free competitor's product...?

Question

Software Developers POV: What is better? Piracy or using the free competitor's product...?

Answer 1

Like another poster said you're just trying to justify the fact that you nothing but a common thief Most bands are struggling to just pay their bills there are just a few high paid celebs, the rest are barely making it, trying to pay their bills. touring is very expensive these days, if you aren't a top 10 act, I know of several great musicians, that have had to QUIT, because they couldn't make enough touring pay the bills. Bands should not HAVE to tour, just pay the thousand$ and hundred$ of thousand$ it cost$ to record, a lot of bands don't tour as much, it's hard work, living on the road, you have no life, why should they HAVE to tour for 10 months, just to support your habit of stealing. Touring doesn't pay all the others involved in the recording process. The producers, The Engineers, the backup sings studio musicians the mixers the masterers They all wrked for months too, and don't get paid from the tour. If you want music to be free, YOU spend hundreds of hours writing, recording, mixing producing, engineering, remastering, doing all the work, then spend all the money recording etc, an YOU give away it away for free? your "rant" is flawed, do YOU work for free for months?

Answer 2

You shouldn't pirate software. Nor do you need to.



As a previous answerer said you can download the Office 2007 Compatibility Pack. If you have an issue with the finding the download page, check here: http://www.gara.com/free-software/software?SoftwareID=153



It's true that software companies accept that some "casual" piracy will act to promote additional sales of their product. However, it is still illegal and you could find yourself in some trouble. In addition, companies that wish to generate license fees for their software have been developing sophisticated web-based activation models that will get progressively harder to beat.



When you use free and open source software you are alleviating yourself of all of those burdens.



OpenOffice is an excellent free alternative to MS-Office and it can read and write Office files.



You can find several free alternatives to expensive commercial products here: http://www.gara.com/free-software/

Answer 3

You forgot the third option:



Get the Office 2007 Reader-plugins, allowing you to open Office 2007 documents with Office 2003 (they do some base conversion) - and I've never had any issues with the compatibility packs; may be a browser issue. There is no reason for MS to "hide" these behind quote broken unquote links...



Or the fourth:



Have the person with the newest version use the option "Save as" and select the Office97/2003 version.



In some cases, the whole conundrum can be avoided by using legally available workarounds - not always a preferable option, but an option nonetheless.

Answer 4

Historically, many companies, from Wordstar (OK, Micropro) to Microsoft have built huge installed base from pirated copies.



A large company likes piracy for a number of reasons. The most obvious is that it builds an installed base and makes the software a de facto "standard." You could probably more properly say that it makes the file format a standard. You saw that yourself with your experience with DocX. Microsoft would rather you use a program that defaults to DocX, paid for or not, than to have you use another program that supports DocX but defaults to something else.



If they catch you with pirated copies, particularly if you are a business, they have leverage to force you to buy more of their software. Just because they *want* you to pirate does not mean they will *forgive* you for it. :) BSA, the enforcement arm of Microsoft, has often used this technique to force companies who have been whistle-blown to sign exclusive purchase agreements with Microsoft, along with hefty fines.



Yeah, I know BSA is an "industry group." It's still the piracy enforcement arm of Microsoft.



In the old days, some companies have used "amnesty programs" to get pirates to come in from the cold and get legal. Wordstar kick started its Wordstar 2000 product by giving a deal to anyone who had a previous copy of Wordstar, legal or not.

Answer 5

Hmm... you bring up a valid point. In fact, this has been argued many times over. Often companies like to perceive piracy lost sales on a direct 1 to 1 ratio. For instance, if MS Office 2007 was pirated 200 times, they would claim that's 200 lost sales. However, that is not the case. Of those 200 pirates, only a small fraction would have actually purchased the software of their own volition.



But there are advantages to software piracy, as you mentioned. Once you get used to the software and deem it worth the price tag, you purchase it, something that might have been totally out of the question prior to your piracy. However, it's not like anyone here is not familiar with Microsoft Office, so I'm not sure this methodology works well for big mainstream software like Office.



Alternatively though, I might deem an Open Source alternative to be too lackluster and poorly developed and would opt to purchase the retail software instead.



So I think it depends on your perspective and a number of other factors. Certainly given the choice we would all choose to pirate all software and purchase only the software we like.