Amazing Realization!!!! ........

[solrac]

Wait...
If I was a software company owner....

And my software made piracy completely impossible....

But I only had 10,000 users, that would suck.

Then what if I made all my software easily pirated....

and then in 2 years I have 1,000,000 users!!!

I still have my original 10,000 paid users.

But... out of the 1,000,000 non-paid pirated users....

say 10% of them decide to pay since piracy is bad and illegal......

Now I have 100,000 paid users!!! Piracy actually increased my business TENFOLD!!

So to have a successful software business you need two things:
1) Software that is EASY to pirate, like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and Mac OS X.
2) Massive amounts of anti-piracy literature to convince people to pay for the software!

We need both! We need anti-piracy taught to EVERYONE, and software that is SOO easy to pirate!

This makes MONEY PEOPLE!!!

Remember, the most powerful companies are the ones with the largest user base, period. Not the most amount of paid users.

And to prove my point... when I buy Photoshop later this year, I will be a new paid Adobe user. However if I never pirated Photoshop originally 2 years ago, they would NEVER have gotten any money from me this year!!!

Think about it!!!

now back to your regularly scheduled program.

 

[themacko]

Wow, maybe Adobe should hire and promote you their board of directors....

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by themacko
Wow, maybe Adobe should hire and promote you their board of directors....

I'm sure they already got someone who realized this a few years ago

 

[themacko]

 

[Koelling]

I often think I should be sending money to someone for the opensource software I use. In a perfect world software would be good enough that you would want to pay for it, even if you don't get anything more. I know that will never happen but it would be nice to think about.

 

[edX]

wow koelling, you put a whole new spin on this topic - wanting to pay for software!! What are you thinking?

I totally agree with you. I have begun to feel that way about more and more apps. Recently i paid for an app that i have used for years. The author is rather lenient about the issue and allows free use with a constant reminder to pay. But i was so excited that one of my favorite games got ported to osx, that i went and paid as soon as i had the measly $10. It turns out that the developer is a member of this site, recognized my name from here, worked on my suggestion in the comments box on purchase order, and now i am privy to a beta that works just like i wanted it to. Wasn't that a great surprize?!!

hey, if i could get more of what i want from every app by paying for it, i would glady go ahead and pay for all those apps that aren't quite there yet - the ones i test and then discard. well, at least as many as i could afford.

 

[toast]

Hi Ed, can I ask you what game you're talking about ?

Just -too- curious .

As for solrac, I've got a book for him:
<u>Wealth of Nations</u>, Adam Smith.
You need economic lessons, solrac. Much of them .

 

[fryke]

Let's go back in time. Way back in time.

In the eighties, I had an Atari 1040 STf. I know, I know, but it was *much* cheaper than a Macintosh over here in Switzerland, and it had a larger and better screen than a Mac Plus, which was the cheapest Mac around when I bought the Atari.

There was no internet access for home users, and while there might have been some BBS, I didn't know about them back then.

Software piracy was about copying floppy disks between friends, and it meant that one would buy the software so that all of our friends had access to it. Basically, we arranged that on every birthday of one of my Atari friends, we would get - as a group - another part of the application-suite we would need.

Guess what happened when one of us bought the really great word processing application Signum! 2.0. We would all copy the app, we would all use it, for school work, too and: By the end of the year, each of us had a full version. Not because there was something wrong with the copied versions (other than that they were pirated, of course), but because a) the application was very good, b) the manual was actually useful and c) because we felt the developers actually earned our money!

The whole piracy issue could have been resolved very early on in the process by two measures:

1) Developers should have written bug-free, good (really good) applications.

2) Development companies should have charged reasonable amounts of money for their software.

They did not do so. At least a large part of them didn't. The rest, as they say, is history, but it's also our present situation. And this situation is that developers push out new versions of their software too early (unfinished, buggy), charge too much and make lousy manuals.

It's the same, really, with the music and movie industries. There are great exceptions there, however. Even with all the possibilities to download content (music, movies, other stuff), I still buy the CDs I'd have bought before those possibilities. And I still buy the DVDs I would have bought before. Why? Because they put something in it that can't really be downloaded: Good covers (yeah I know there are scans, but it's not the same thing) & booklets, bonus material on the DVDs and the like.

What I'm really waiting for is what internet content providers strive for: They want us to pay for information. They want to create news services that have 'added value' for which you pay monthly fees. What they don't see is the one thing that everybody *in* cyberspace knows ever since the term came about: Information wants to be free. I know this sounds like the hacker's credo, but it's really the truth. As soon as I *tell* a secret to somebody, even if he pays for it, the information is free. It *wants* to be free.

Versiontracker charges money for the services they gave to us for free a month ago. Yes, you also get *more* if you pay, but now you get *less* if you don't. Maybe it works out for them, but *I* won't pay. If I find somebody giving out account information for versiontracker, I guess I'll use that for free (piracy), because I think they can make their money with ads. Or, if I don't find that information, I'll use another service or I'll stick with what they still give me.

Similar thing: Avantgo. Was a great service for Palm users. Did let me read the news of c't's newsticker while I was on the way back home by train. Then they started to charge fees from the content provider (!) and c't wasn't willing to pay, thus I couldn't get the news anymore. What did happen was that I used iSilo and MobiPocket Reader instead of AvantGo. They just don't seem to understand the very, very simple fact, that information wants to be free.

 

[xaqintosh]

Wait...
If I was a software company owner....

And my software made piracy completely impossible....

But I only had 10,000 users, that would suck.

Then what if I made all my software easily pirated....

and then in 2 years I have 1,000,000 users!!!

I still have my original 10,000 paid users.

But... out of the 1,000,000 non-paid pirated users....

say 10% of them decide to pay since piracy is bad and illegal......

Now I have 100,000 paid users!!! Piracy actually increased my business TENFOLD!!

So to have a successful software business you need two things:
1) Software that is EASY to pirate, like Microsoft Office, Adobe Photoshop, and Mac OS X.
2) Massive amounts of anti-piracy literature to convince people to pay for the software!

We need both! We need anti-piracy taught to EVERYONE, and software that is SOO easy to pirate!

This makes MONEY PEOPLE!!!

Remember, the most powerful companies are the ones with the largest user base, period. Not the most amount of paid users.

And to prove my point... when I buy Photoshop later this year, I will be a new paid Adobe user. However if I never pirated Photoshop originally 2 years ago, they would NEVER have gotten any money from me this year!!!

Think about it!!!

now back to your regularly scheduled program.

This is almost entirely wrong, because if the software is easy to piurate, the immoral people will pirate it rather than buying it, which they might have originally done. Therefore the company will actually lose money, cuz why pay for something when you can get it free just as easily?

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by xaqintosh
This is almost entirely wrong, because if the software is easy to piurate, the immoral people will pirate it rather than buying it, which they might have originally done. Therefore the company will actually lose money, cuz why pay for something when you can get it free just as easily?

This is exactly what I am saying is WRONG. All the people that use the software for free only help the company. What would you rather have, 10 million people with your cool icon in your dock with only 1% of them paying for it, or only 10 thousand people with your cool icon in the dock and 100% of them paying for it? I'll take the 10 million any day. That's A HUNDRED THOUSAND paid users, and like EVERY computer user with my icon, and access to my information.

toast, I'll look for your book "Wealth of Nations" but sometimes common business sense, just plain horse sense, goes beyond anything you could learn in college. Maybe you could summarize a tiny bit of what the book says before I get my hands on it?

fryke, whether or not you pay for version tracker does not matter. As long as you are on that site and a user, that's all that matters to them. What if 6 months from now they offer some service that you actually pay for? Again, proving that having a user base in general is much more important than having a paid user base.

Why do you think Microsoft bought Hotmail several years ago for FOUR HUNDRED MILLIONS dollars????? If such a purchase was made today it would probably hit the billion dollar mark. And guess what, hotmail is free. But they sell ads and charge for optional services.

If Adam Smith's book says this is not the case then I honestly think he's a dumbarse but I'll look into it.

edit: I looked up the book on Amazon. Ummm, that was published in 1766 and he is the "father of economics" and discussed basic principles of economics which back then were completely new.... okay, umm, the digital landscape is, like, completely different? Everything that applies to manual labor, land, and economics of a nation, especially 200 years ago, is completely irrelevant, even OPPOSITE, to software distribution and user base. If Adam Smith saw what happened to the stock market a couple years ago with Internet / tech stocks he would've sh*t bricks.

 

[edX]

xaq - who are you talking to? are you still paying attention to solrac or have you joined in this new discussion about why we like and want to pay for our software - the truly amazing revelation.

I mean isn't it about time we approached this tired subject from the other side. instead of "what's right or wrong about pirating?", how about "what's good or bad about paying for the software" and why do those of us who try to support our developers want to do so in the first place.

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by Ed Spruiell
xaq - who are you talking to? are you still paying attention to solrac or have you joined in this new discussion about why we like and want to pay for our software - the truly amazing revelation.

I mean isn't it about time we approached this tired subject from the other side. instead of "what's right or wrong about pirating?", how about "what's good or bad about paying for the software" and why do those of us who try to support our developers want to do so in the first place.

Hey I've paid for lots of software that was like $10 or so. Not all the time but when a shareware app is really cool and the guy wants a few bucks, he'll get it from me.

I also sent a few bucks as donation to someone who runs "the real backup server" on carracho because it lets like 100 users download stuff at 70k per second!!

Hope I find that one again.....

 

[nkuvu]

Originally posted by fryke
And this situation is that developers push out new versions of their software too early (unfinished, buggy), charge too much and make lousy manuals.

Just have to add in my two copper plated zinc bits.

Software developers today are under huge pressures to release software quickly -- management makes outrageous timelines, and is surprised when the software takes longer. As most of us know, the first product available on the software market has a better chance of becoming the standard. So releasing a commercial application six months later than the other company is considered suicide.

The other thing is that a lot of software is very complicated to test and debug properly. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it takes time. And all too frequently in the software world testers are looked on as a lower life form than developers. Even in large companies, the software is only tested to a bare minimum. Documentation is the last thing on a developer's mind, and many write no documentation at all.

I write a lot of Perl scripts for use within my company -- and I spend about a week to develop a simple 100 line script. It takes time to make quality software, and most management people don't understand that at all.

That's all I wanted to say.

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by nkuvu

Just have to add in my two copper plated zinc bits.

Software developers today are under huge pressures to release software quickly -- management makes outrageous timelines, and is surprised when the software takes longer. As most of us know, the first product available on the software market has a better chance of becoming the standard. So releasing a commercial application six months later than the other company is considered suicide.

The other thing is that a lot of software is very complicated to test and debug properly. I'm not saying it can't be done, but it takes time. And all too frequently in the software world testers are looked on as a lower life form than developers. Even in large companies, the software is only tested to a bare minimum. Documentation is the last thing on a developer's mind, and many write no documentation at all.

I write a lot of Perl scripts for use within my company -- and I spend about a week to develop a simple 100 line script. It takes time to make quality software, and most management people don't understand that at all.

That's all I wanted to say.

This is most true in the video game world. Crappy video games are almost ALWAYS because the product was rushed to market. I don't think Adobe suffers from this though. Macromedia probably does though

 

[xaqintosh]

xaq - who are you talking to? are you still paying attention to solrac or have you joined in this new discussion about why we like and want to pay for our software - the truly amazing revelation.

I mean isn't it about time we approached this tired subject from the other side. instead of "what's right or wrong about pirating?", how about "what's good or bad about paying for the software" and why do those of us who try to support our developers want to do so in the first place.

yeah, I was talking to solrac, I was arguing with his logic which I believe to be majorly flawed.

 

[.dev.lqd]

Solrac... my only question to you is who are you attempting to convince?

Are you trying to be a software piracy evangelist? To encourage others to pirate software? Why do you care?

Are you trying to convince yourself of your own innocence?

Or, are you trying to repair your reputation in our eyes?


The only point I want to make is this... your deeds are your own. I make no character judgement on you for pirating software. Your posts, however, seem to be trying to convince me that you have just cause to commit piracy. Why you are trying to do this is the issue that causes me to question your character.

Piracy is stealing. If you can cope with this and still sleep at night that's fine. If your guilt causes you to seek legal open source solutions, that's great too. It's also fine if you are working up to paying for the software. I make no judgement on any of this.

The only point I want to reiterate, ad nauseum, is that piracy is stealing. I argue that fact. Not its merit to the economy or moral Circ De Sole. You are still circumventing contractual obligations you agree to when you install and use the software.

 

[alexachucarro]

That's what a lot of companies already do. I'm not sure about Adobe, but once I was in an Adobe seminar in Sydney and the Adobe bloke asked "who here has Photoshop on their HD?" just about everyone did. her then asked "who has a legal copy?" most laughed and people started to, sheepishly, put their hands down.

But one thing i DO know, is i know someone who knows a developer at Alias|Wavefront and THEY are the people who let out the Maya crack for OSX! Supprising? no not really. They know that NO student could afford £6'500 (now a lot less and now the PLE Version is out), but they wanted students to learn the product, so what do they do?...

I know people who have started up a company or got rich from working in the industries and started buying the software they already have on their HD. It's not something I 100$ agree with, but it sort of works.

It['s the same with Mexicans smuggling themselves into the US. If it was stopped, the South's economy would bugger a bit as a lot of the jobs noone wants to do, would get done, so they try to stop them here and there, just to create a presence but blind eyes are turned.

 

[vanguard]

I heard Steve Ballmer quoted as saying something along those lines. He said, "We don't want anybody to steal software. However, if they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours."

The context was his approach for getting into oversees markets. He wants them to steal windows then he'll make them pay for it after they grow to like it.

Vanguard

 

[solrac]

Originally posted by .dev.lqd
Solrac... my only question to you is who are you attempting to convince?

Are you trying to be a software piracy evangelist? To encourage others to pirate software? Why do you care?

Are you trying to convince yourself of your own innocence?

Or, are you trying to repair your reputation in our eyes?


The only point I want to make is this... your deeds are your own. I make no character judgement on you for pirating software. Your posts, however, seem to be trying to convince me that you have just cause to commit piracy. Why you are trying to do this is the issue that causes me to question your character.

Piracy is stealing. If you can cope with this and still sleep at night that's fine. If your guilt causes you to seek legal open source solutions, that's great too. It's also fine if you are working up to paying for the software. I make no judgement on any of this.

The only point I want to reiterate, ad nauseum, is that piracy is stealing. I argue that fact. Not its merit to the economy or moral Circ De Sole. You are still circumventing contractual obligations you agree to when you install and use the software.

Thank you. No. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything or repair my reputation as it needs no repairing. I'm just letting my opinion be known. Isn't that what a forum is for? And I agree with everything you say. That's my point. Adobe NEEDS you just as much as it NEEDS me. The combination of YOU and ME is what makes money.

I pirate the software. I don't care too much. I know it's stealing but to me it's like jaywalking. However I learn it and hope to buy it one day.

YOU remind constantly how it's horrible and stealing. You will make sure I buy it one day.

Put two and two together. Without people like you that remind people like us that it's illegal, we might not buy it. But I will surely buy it as soon as I can, partly because of your insight.

Read Alex Chucarro's post, that is sooo true, about the immigrants. It's a perfect analogy. And I'm not surprised if Alias | Wavefront released a crack for it's own software (Maya). I got that crack. I haven't BEGUN to learn 3D yet. I want to, and I will ONLY because I got that crack. I'm definetely not going to school to learn 3D. And it has to be Maya because that would get me the jobs if I move to that field. Because Maya is the standard for high end.

But thanks to you (.dev.lqd) and all the anti-piracy legislation, Alias can be sure I'll pay for Maya as soon as I can afford it.

 

[solrac]

Thank you. No. I'm not trying to convince anyone of anything or repair my reputation as it needs no repairing. I'm just letting my opinion be known. Isn't that what a forum is for? And I agree with everything you say. That's my point. Adobe NEEDS you just as much as it NEEDS me. The combination of YOU and ME is what makes money.

I pirate the software. I don't care too much. I know it's stealing but to me it's like jaywalking. However I learn it and hope to buy it one day.

YOU remind constantly how it's horrible and stealing. You will make sure I buy it one day.

Put two and two together. Without people like you that remind people like us that it's illegal, we might not buy it. But I will surely buy it as soon as I can, partly because of your insight.

Read Alex Chucarro's post, that is sooo true, about the immigrants. It's a perfect analogy. And I'm not surprised if Alias | Wavefront released a crack for it's own software (Maya). I got that crack. I haven't BEGUN to learn 3D yet. I want to, and I will ONLY because I got that crack. I'm definetely not going to school to learn 3D. And it has to be Maya because that would get me the jobs if I move to that field. Because Maya is the standard for high end.

But thanks to you (.dev.lqd) and all the anti-piracy legislation, Alias can be sure I'll pay for Maya as soon as I can afford it.