Software Piracy
On a recent Java Posse episode, while talking about a price increase for IntelleJ IDEA, Joe Nuxoll of the Java Posse went on a bit of a rant about software piracy. Joe said, “Being a software engineer that has made my living selling software I don’t steal it, don’t copy it, I don’t even do that for music or movies or anything. I totally pay for everything, happily.” On the Posse forums, a fellow programmer said that for programmers to steal software is essentially like stealing from themselves.
Even though we could all agree with the sentiment, the absolutism and preachy righteousness tone of Joe’s comments made me think about his premise, that as software developers, we should never download software we are not ‘entitled’ too.
Let me first be clear, I don’t pirate. I pay for software but not because I write code. I pay for the convenience, quality, and utility that the software provides me, but perhaps most importantly because I can afford it and use it professionally. I don’t pay because I feel forced to pay because I also write software applications. I don’t feel that if my software is pirated I won’t get paid. As a developer, it is not like we get royalties on our work, so what do I care that 5% of my software is pirated, those that do pay for it make up the perceived loss.
Like all of you, I know a lot of fellow programmers that do torrent software, but the funny thing is that they really don’t use the software professional. In a way, the programmers that I know to be torrent, download, and crack software do so to try it out for longer than the trail versions allow. These software pirates fall into one of the following categories, they are just software pack rats that download and install every new shiny piece of software and use only once in a blue moon, or they are students of sorts and are trying to learn or experiment with new technology.
To good thing is that for whatever software you are interested their is a free open source equivalent. The open source part of the equation usually doesn’t much matter for end users, but the free part does. Software companies are beginning to understand that this perceived loss in revenue to piracy is negligible, that is why you are seeing a lot of free ‘express’ versions of software packages like Visual Studio, Oracle. Software companies, instead of taking RIAA-like stance of suing college students and the occasional user, are providing the people a legit option to using a free, express, limited version of the same software package and offer professional editions for those that need and use it on a daily basis. Companies like Oracle know that the greatest loss does not come from pirated versions of their software but from the loss market share to Open Source solutions.
Software companies should listen to their customers, even those that use their software a few times, instead of their lawyers, that most likely never have used their software.
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