Poll: Are you a software pirate?
Simple as that. Yes or No. It's mostly anonymous. Right, PG?
In fact, when I have bought software in the past, I have ended up pretty disappointed with it. Most recently, I was having hard drive issues (fat fingered a partition delete on the wrong drive). At a friends suggestion I bought eazeus to recover it. This $50 purchase was a giant waste of money, and did nothing to fix it. Later another friend pointed me at a free tool (testdisk) that did fix it. This seems to be the common experience for me -- pay software is way over hyped and under performing.
Does this ring true for anyone else? Is there some magic software out there that is worth the money in personal life any more?
Aside: exception to all of the above is video games. I have no problem buying the occasional game.
If I see a software I like, I pay for it if I have to.
I find that perfectly acceptable (eg to pay for software I use). Software is expensive to make.
I really don't want to turn this into a holy war, but I have found Photoshop to be an exception to the "the more you pay the worse it is" argument. As a general rule, though, I agree - most everything I use is open-source.
The real pillars of software though- Photoshop, Matlab, Orcad, and so on- accept no substitutes (well, except for possibly their direct competitors). Maybe it's a result of the sky-high pricing, but they generally really are good (and even if they aren't perfect, they are still the best)
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 lot of random utilities.
- Shareware and $10 utility programs just aren't being written these days, because they'd be instantly pirated.
(By the way, when you guys say you don't pirate software, does that include fonts?)
- 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.
Also I did pirate a game from the early 90's because I couldn't figure out where to send a check.
http://downloadgameonline.blogspot.com/2008/08/enchantasy-qu...
Actually can't even find the game itself anymore, I'm sure I have it on my hard disk somewhere. Think it was by Eric G. Abel or somesuch. I would very much like to send the guy a check and get a legit key.
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.
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.
I use Linux and use mostly FOSS software.
No. I know many designer/Mac folk that have never paid for any Adobe software in their lives and they pride themselves on each CS update so they can play with new brushes in Photoshop. (Okay I'm being a bit sensationalist.. CS5 Photoshop does bring in some pretty nifty content aware features)
Not that I have any data to back that up, just my general impression.
Win 7 is from about £75 (home/student); Mac OS X 10.6 is from about £25.
With Windows you get all the upgrades free until the next major release. With Mac OS X you pay for point releases and that is the price we see here? I note that Amazon (UK) has OS X 10.5 priced at c.£110.
From Apple Computer's website, http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1338:
Reference releases; update vs. upgrade
Mac OS X v10.1, 10.2, 10.3, 10.4, 10.5 themselves are not downloadable updates, they are reference releases, also called upgrades. This means, for example, you can't upgrade from Mac OS X v10.3 to Mac OS X v10.5 via a downloadable installer. Reference releases are available from the Apple Store online, Apple Retail Stores, and Apple Authorized Distributors (AAD).
I'm a member of BizSpark and am developing for SharePoint inside VMWare images. BizSpark provided me with a set of licenses for Windows Server 2008 R2, but it's only really enough to build 1 whole environment (1 server license). As a result I've simply copied/branched my VMWare image so that I can have 2 instances, a dev and a test environment. The test being a snapshot of dev prior to installation of Visual Studio.
I suspect this is pirating because now I have 2 machines available from 1 licence, but then again... it's just an image of the same machine, still running on the same physical machine and really just represents an earlier snapshot of the dev machine.
Something's wrong when it's not simple enough to know whether you are or not, and when a developer program (BizSpark) doesn't really give you enough to do the job you need.
However, other than that I almost only use free software at work.
I've actually done more advanced stuff in Paint.Net which I was using for a couple of weeks in an intern position to touch up some website images.
For any DTP stuff, I use GIMP/Inkscape/Scribus.
Looking at my desktop, the only commercial software that I have up is dameware mini remote control; I don't know of a good free alternative for this and yes, I paid for it.
I guess that, to me, there isn't really much worth pirating out there. Dameware, I guess, but they actually will give me a free trial for pretty much ever and bug me to buy it until I do.
I am willing to pay for every proprietary software that:
- Has no good free alternative
- Pricing is not abusive
If there's no good free or even paid alternative and pricing is abusive, I don't hesitate to pirate it.
I also proudly share other copyrighted media (music, videos...).
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 I had a reason to believe that someone was angry at me and might rat on me. Actually, even then I'd rather install a self-destruct mechanism on my workstation and encrypt my hard drives.
I'm not trying to boycot anything either. I think it's a good thing that developers get paid for making good software.
Piracy is just so easy and care free, that the only pressure not to do it comes from within yourself, if it comes at all. The question is no longer "Is this right? Am I being a good person?", where you reflect on yourself trough popular morality, but rather a personal two part question of "Do I want this product?" and "Do I want to give away my money?". The answers are "Yes" and "No", and in my mind the questions are totally unrelated to each other. Paying for software would feel like flushing the money down the toilet when it's actually easier to just download it.
PS: In the end, if I had to pretend that I cared, I could honestly say that I believe I would be generating more wealth for the world when I am allowed to concentrate on creating and learning instead of concentrating on worrying about money and working at McDonald's to pay for my Photoshop license.
http://www.microsoft.com/Downloads/details.aspx?familyid=21E...
Now: No on software. No on games. Besides the risk of virii, you dont get things like updates or patches. Its not worth it.
However, I still do actively download TV Shows + Movies occasionally. Its not because I wouldnt pay though, but moreso because there is no other ways to watch them from home.
These days I see the problem games producers face: When I wanted to play games, my parents would have to buy me one, and they wouldn't be keen to do that. Now that I'd happily buy a game which I really like, I'm not interested anymore.
The other problem is about apps - it's in company's best interest to give me (for example) a copy of Visual Studio as soon as I say I'm interested in it. Since I couldn't get it, I learned on djgpp and migrated to Linux as soon as I could. Now you can get new VS from MSDNA program at universities - I think it's still way too late.
I can afford to buy expensive software now but the truth is I don't really need much fancy software to get things done.
I used to buy my games, after buying one copy I'd download it if I wanted it again, I just didn't like having physical media around. I'm off video games probably for the rest of my life so I haven't tried Steam, but it looks like a good solution for gamers. I know I bought Baldur's Gate once or twice, and then re-downloaded it from Napster or Kazaa or whatever a couple more times. I must've bought three or four copies of Final Fantasy VIII for the Playstation and later Playstation 2 after moving, lending them out and not getting them back, or whatever. Great game if you delve into it, the mechanics system on it is very enjoyable if you decide to play it a deeper level, probably the most enjoyable Final Fantasy for me, though Final Fantasy X was the last one I played, that was kind of the swan song for video games for me.
Who knows, if I have a massive exit or reach some vast milestones, maybe I'll take a one month vacation where I catch up with a decade or two of video games and play the new Grand Theft Autos, Oblivion, Mass Effect, things like that. I wind up hearing about all that stuff secondhand and it does look pretty enjoyable. I'll probably play team-based shooters and strategy games with my future kids later, I'm actually quite excited about the idea of doing that.
And no, there are no legal ways to buy several programs - meanwhile piracy is unofficially tolerated by the government (there are shops that sell pirated versions of games and other software - not MS stuff or other companies with local presence). I do have every Microsoft program I use legally for instance (as they are available locally).
There are also several other grievances (think DVD region selection and all that) which strongly discourage purchasing software.
I tend to believe that I wouldn't have any illegal program if I lived in the US.
Edit: fittingly, I've had a (legal) copy of a game I purchased for a friend just detained at customs (used to be you could make small purchases without it winding up at customs, but it isn't so anymore). So some very nice paperwork and fees coming up - just for trying to be legal.
I'm not sure if Steam is legal here, but I wouldn't bet for it (it's probably a gray area and it should be OK)
- I prefer storing on my HDD than in DVDs
- Living in the UK, it's the only way to get the TV shows I want to watch without waiting ages and ages after their air
- It lets me watch the beginning on shows/films I wouldn't otherwise bother trying, then decide if I want to keep watching them.
If I find a film that I actually enjoy and watch to the end, I do then buy it on DVD - but rarely watch the DVD, having already got the pirated copy. (I find now days I rarely watch films, more TV shows). I do have a TV license (in the UK) even though I only really watch TV shows that are ripped/downloaded.
Games - despite working in the games industry, I very rarely buy games (maybe a couple of titles a year), but I don't ever pirate them.
Software - I'm always happy to grab an illegal copy if a.) I want to see if I like it and there's no free trial available or b.) I want to learn what the software does, but won't use it after a couple of days.
For example I pirated Adobe Photoshop when I first got it and just messaged around with it. Once I started needing to use it for my job (not that I use it that often, or am any good with it) I bought a license.
With small software that doesn't have any real backing, even if I end up not using it much, I tend to pay for it if I like it, just to support the developer. (Examples: XChat, an IRC client, or UberTweet, a twitter application for the Blackberry).
I've just actually looked through all the installed programs on this computer, all legal.
Music, pretty much same as above - will download illegally first to see if I like it, if I want it in my regular collection then I buy it on iTunes (exception: if iTunes doesn't have it, or if it's only available in the US store which I can't use, I'll just keep the illegal version - except if I particularly want to support the artist in which case I buy/rip the CD)
So yeah, I answered "yes" to the poll, but (with the exception of TV shows) I keep it in moderation.
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?
Console games were super expensive and buying a game was rare. On the PC it was equally expensive ,plus the lack of HD space was very limiting. Not being able to fit a full install of 2 or 3 games made downloading a 'rip' a must.
Today: The feeling of opening Visual Studio or a new game box is as awesome as 10 years ago, but now I do it way more often :)
One of these will probably be the biggest selling PC game of the next 3 years.
I mean I pay for games and what not, but I do all my coding in stuff like Xcode that is free anyway. Stuff like Adobe Photoshop I have never paid for because it's way too expensive for what I use it for and all the alternatives frankly suck
That being said, there are a few pieces of commercial software I've used in the past for which there are no serious viable open source competitor, nor do I expect the level of interest in those areas to rise to the occasion. One example is IDA Pro; it's possibly the worst user UI I've ever had the displeasure of using, and yet there's nothing that comes even close to competing in it's niche. It's expensive, especially if you need support for an obscure processor, because the market for it is so small; but, if your day-to-day involves reverse engineering, it's worth every penny.
At one time, I'll admit that I had access to a pirated version of it; the price presents a significant barrier for an enthusiast, and a casual search of any torrent site will turn it up. It was easy to obtain. There's two things I took away from that.
First, I felt guilty about it, as I know Hex Rays (the company behind IDA Pro) is really only a couple of exceptionally dedicated folks who haven't priced their product the way they have to screw me, but because it was the only way to make it viable at all. There's two major users of IDA: reverse engineering professionals who won't have a problem with the price, and black hats who won't pay for it at any price. The price is, therefore, what it has to be to assure continued development, and I think most reasonable people can see that.
Second, I realized that the functionality I was using was only a small fraction of the whole product, so I implemented what was necessary for myself (in this case, an SH2 disassembler), and eliminated the guilt: the rest of the features were nice to have (multi-arch support, decent navigation, awesome graphing, x86 de-compilation support, etc), they weren't nice enough to warrant $1000 for what amounts to a hobby for me. I haven't used IDA since, and learned a lot about building an intelligent disassembler.
I see a few other products in this niche: Solidworks, Pro/E, MasterCam, and to a much lesser extent, certain pieces of Photoshop and the VMware ecosystems. All vertical-market applications that average folks don't need, but hobbyists would love to have access to (but are stopped by the price). In both the Photoshop and VMware cases, hobbyist-level versions have emerged (Photoshop Elements, VMware Server/Player, etc.) as a direct reaction to open source software eating away at that hobbyist market that builds their brand (GIMP, Xen, KVM, etc). In the cases of software like Pro/E, no such reasonable competition exists, so the pricing is what it is, and the hobbyist be damned.
I'm not sure if I'm actually going anywhere with this little story (other than incriminating myself, and probably assuring that I'll never be able to legally procure a copy of IDA at some point in the future), but perhaps someone can glean something useful from it.
The consequences of piracy for the pirate are arguably more severe than for the company getting ripped off. For example, take the case of a aspiring person trying to improve their vector illustration skills with the eventual goal of becoming a paid designer. Stealing a copy of Illustrator won't give them the same result as someone who pays for it. Someone who saved hundreds of dollars working at a low-paying job will be more motivated to put their investment to productive use than a pirate that just rips it off a torrent site, all else being equal. The trader who traded value for value (money for software) will do better work, and more of it. A pirate will be more likely to employ the same "creative method" that they used to get their ill-gotten software: "I'll just download the ideas, too. Why not?" Instead of just second-handedly copying designs from others, our honest artist will be more likely to actually learn their tool more fully and look to novel sources for inspiration: "I worked an entire summer to get Illustrator. I'm going to skip going to that party, fun as it may be in the short-term, because it means more to me to make that summer of hard work amount to something more than a shiny package on my shelf." Furthermore, by behaving ethically, they'll be able to more easily advocate for the kind of society that rewards people for using their minds, which is precisely what they need to survive as designers. (Our fledgling designer could not exist as a designer in a world where all people pirated their work; they would have to devote more of their time to supporting themselves some other way.)
To express this as a general principle: anything that you take by force of theft or fraud is against your long-term self-interest. It's like cheating on an exam - you might get a better grade short-term, but in the long-term, you are more likely to end up with a job you are unqualified for, with all of the ramifications that entails (performing badly [the cheater has not acquired the same depth of knowledge that an honest student has], getting fired, decreased self-esteem [as the cheater is left in doubt about whether they could have passed without cheating], decreased income, etc.)
^Motivation doesn't have to be financial. People who violate the terms of an open source license can drain the motivation out of a programmer that might otherwise be perfectly happy, stalling or even halting future work. Open source license violators violate exactly the same principle that software pirates do: that the creator of a work has a right to dictate the terms of its use.
Mastery comes from practice, not sheer will - someone who has to work all summer to acquire Illustrator is going to be far less skilled than someone who spent the entire summer learning Illustrator on a pirated copy.
Almost every talented designer I know acquired their skills this way. I went to an art school and you could literally see the difference in skill level between students who had pirated & mastered software vs students that waited until college to get the educational license.
I ran circles around those people and ended up making money tutoring them. I got a head start on my career by freelancing during college because I learned the software before I attended school. I took jobs away from those people and left them in the dirt because of instead of waiting & saving for the upgrades I could master new features as they were released.
I honestly attribute most of my success in life to pirating software as a student.
Oh and the best artists routinely steal each other's work and have their work stolen. They just call it "inspiration".
I think that it is as possible to escape the negative consequences of bad behavior as it is to escape the laws of thermodynamics.
Who determines "bad behavior" exactly? You know, in my world view, publicly casting your own subjective moral judgment on someone else is considered "bad behavior".
Yes, I honestly believe what I said, and I don't think that what I've written below invalidates it (but if it does, please tell me - I'd love to know!)
I didn't mean that someone that pirates software as a student is necessarily fated to outright doom, which is implied by "a negative path in life". We all have free will, and can choose to do better (or worse) every time we make a decision.
I contend that the consequences of piracy are indeed negative, overall, for that person's selfish interests, long-term. However, the magnitude of that consequence depends on the context. While nothing can make a bad action good (remember that good and bad imply a context), many people are good enough that a few small bad decisions won't destroy them completely. Consider the case of a person that's excellent in all aspects of their life except for one: on Sundays, they travel to a nearby store and write obscene messages on the mirror in the bathroom with a bar of soap. They're still very awesome, happy and successful, but they could be just a little bit better (richer, happier, more well rested, whatever) if they chose to do something else.
Maybe you should rewrite the poll "Do you believe in a free culture unencumbered by copyright laws that are specifically written to protect corporate interests?"
All this goes to show how much our language about copyright has been affected by the media and corporate interests.
It's not comparable to the abortion idea, because being called a "baby murderer" is pretty offensive, whereas being called a "software pirate" really isn't ever going to offend anyone who does download illegaly (many of which would most likely already refer to themselves as pirates).