If you cannot afford Little Snitch or don't want to pay for it or just prefer open source, install LuLu. It's a free and open source alternative to LS application firewall. [1] You can install it through Homebrew or download binaries manually [2].
I had the same experience with Visual Studio back in the day (aka Visual C++ 6.0; fond memories...), and of course photoshop.
It’s a stupid game, but quite a personal growth vector.
Since software dev isn't the domain of lifelong nerds anymore I don't think most folk are as understanding or knowledgeable about the positives of piracy (or related issues around software freedom or the economic properties of digital data), hence your unfortunate downvotes.
It's a shame... there are many of us who would not be where we are today, as productive, value-creating citizens, without having learned our trade with pirated software.
Piracy is a wonderful equalizer in that regard. Companies have every right to come down on piracy, but it often works against you if your software is a tool.
But, for example, Visual Studio 2003 Architect Edition was so expensive that I think it was a few thousand dollars at the time. Piracy enabled me to learn that, too. And surprise surprise, when I got into the gamedev industry, that was what they used.
From Microsoft's standpoint, it was nothing but benefit: in addition to adding +1 productive programmer to the world, the piracy also caused me to become something of a Microsoft evangelist, similar to Carmack. It helped me appreciate a good IDE back before Webstorm made it a reality for Javascript.
Of course, that eventually led to discovering Emacs (or rather being forced to learn it due to a twist of fortune) and then evolving into my bearded open-source devil form... Now if only there were an Emacs equivalent for 3D modeling and music, I'd be happy as a clam. Blender is great, but it just can't compete with ZBrush.
EDIT: By the way, I was delighted to discover that Photopea (https://www.photopea.com/) is a completely free, browser-based alternative to Photoshop. It has almost an identical UI, and it does 100% of what I need out of photoshop. We've been paying the $35/mo creative suite license, but I imagine lots of people still pirate it.
The amount of subconscious automation that goes into making you really proficient at using some tool becomes very obvious when you try to use a different one.
Note: I use Affinity instead of photoshop, and I've had an ableton license since v6, but I keep an occasional eye on the pirate scene. I owe many of my skills to pirated software, and could therefore afford to buy software when I became a professional.
A lot of my learning (game dev) was of course the demo scene, and x2ftp from Oulu in Finland.
Another huge step was me going to the bookstore, secretively reading game programming books, and copying code on a piece of paper. Those books were unaffordable for me at the time, and the store guy told me to stop a few times.
Could you elaborate on that? I assume you're more on the 'dabbles in it for fun' side, but I can't think of any missing features for that kind of usage besides polypainting which is available as a WIP patch.
Agreed. I learned to program with GW-BASIC which if I remember correctly was included in a (pirated) copy of MS-DOS. Then I graduated to pirated Turbo C and Borland C++, and (I think) only then to the genuinely free DJGPP (a port of GCC for DOS).
If it weren't for pirated software, I wouldn't be a programmer today.
I imagine Adobe has managed to keep a lot of mindshare for Photoshop simply by how widely it is pirated. If pirating Photoshop was absolutely impossible, there'd probably be a lot more Gimp users in this world.
I'm gradually realizing that this probably plays a larger effect in society than we think. Like the ancient parable of the prodigal son, whose faithful brother was jealous that the rebel was celebrated in the end. Maybe it also plays out in lifelong CS devotees vs. CS-for- the-money people -- the nerds might feel that they have "earned" CS more, and the dayjob folks might not appreciate the depth of understanding that comes from the dedication of the lifelong devotees?
For almost any other positions: it's murkier. If you take a berry off a bush on public property... what's the morality? Or growing from private property overhanging public that's just dropping fruit and the owners are either not present or clearly allowing fruit to drop? It's theirs, they absolutely could harvest it, but they're not and it's clearly implied that is not going to change. Now what?
Yes that's still further towards harmless than you can likely argue software piracy is (... ignoring the network effects of everyone knowing how to use X because everyone pirated it, or I could probably come up with others), but my point is that strict black and white separations have dividing lines and breaking points. Whether there is black or white somewhere isn't really useful to anyone, it's where you draw the line.
It is similar to making a xerox copy of a book obtained from the library, recording a rented video on a new videocassette tape, making an unauthorized recording at a music concert, or typing code you found in Numerical Recipes into your own open source project.
It is not at all similar to boarding a ship and robbing the passengers.
(I'm surprised you're getting beat up for this sentiment. $40 is definitely below the threshold of "purchase on a whim and try to learn it for a month." FL Studio was another great one at $99. Still, I'm sympathetic to people who simply can't afford it – children especially.)
It matters a lot what site binaries are downloaded from, and a lot of average users don’t really understand the difference.
I suppose as long as a human decision is involved there is room for error.
Wonder if this can be solved without going 100% down the app store path.
Let's say I already own and use Little Snitch for monitoring traffic, but I want to install RansomWhere to detect malware. Do I get rid of Little Snitch even though I prefer it, or do I deal with having duplicate software on my machine?