Will you keep on getting free software?

[Kayos]

Yea that is right, they got laid off, because the games EA was selling for example were not making enough to support the staff, (or would have if it did not get pirated so much).

I underlined something in that last thing you wrote....well not meeting sales is because many of the potential customers were pirating the games instead...I think SPORE a game of theirs was the most pirated game in the world, on it's first day of being out....millions of people pirated it, that means millions times 50$ for the game (I think)....well you do the math, and yes it would have helped keep many sections of EA still up and running, it would have kept many people from losing their jobs.

No, even if Spore sold more EA still would not have reached there financial goal which still would of lead to lay offs.

And Spore being pirated had zero effect on it's developer. No one from Maxis has been laid off, only the under preforming developers like Black Box have been effected within EA.


You should learn how to separate posts with quotes ;)

[John Klyne]

Okay, this is what I know.

I know that people get laid off for many reasons, one of which is that their company cannot afford to pay them anymore or something similar.

Well, if you all bought the software instead of pirating it, do you not think it would have helped make the company some more money to maybe have less people laid off? .....?

[Kayos]

Okay, this is what I know.

I know that people get laid off for many reasons, one of which is that their company cannot afford to pay them anymore or something similar.

Well, if you all bought the software instead of pirating it, do you not think it would have helped make the company some more money to maybe have less people laid off? .....?

For a company as big as EA no. For smaller companies it depends on the severity of the piracy it endures. Most companies break even with there software if they have any business sense regardless of piracy.

[John Klyne]

For a company like EA that is true, I bet I can say right now, I have a lot less knowledge related to the gaming industry to even argue more about this, you were a pretty good opponent against my accusations.

Nice work.

[xPlozion]

i support foss software. not because it's free, but because bugs are found faster, fixed faster, and anyone can customize it and fork it into a new project.

OOo vs MS Office, OOo wins in my opinion. Firefox vs MSIE, Firefox again wins, because bugs are fixed much faster and there's thousands of eyes looking for bugs. Also, think of the community support in the projects, such as implementing new features...

again, i highly support foss. think of this though, in the end, the companies that sell their products have work to keep their current customers going to the better (foss) products.

[farscapeone]

Well, what about thousands of software companies selling $50+ products that don't worth s**t? We are overwhelmed with low-quality high-cost software. Software has to deserve to get paid

Another thing, did you noticed how often a new versions are released? Why? They put some minor changes make a shiny new interface and there you have it, a new version. After some time they stop giving technical support for older versions. So guess what, you have to by a new one although you don't need it. The perfect example is Windows itself but it's not the only one.

There's software that don't deserve to be paid for. I mean how can you pay $20 for a unit conversion tool. That's just wrong! :nuts:

I'm a programmer and I have the right to choose what software deserves my money.

About big companies, they don't depend on home users. That's impossible and they know it. You can't rely on users that don't actually have to buy you products to use them.

Here's something I know from my own experience. Software industry is all about corporate software, systems design for airports, banks, stores or any other company. That's software industry. Application software is just a kind of bonus, an extra income. It can't be the only source of company's profit. So those who think that piracy is killing the software industry don't actually know what software industry really is. I know this because I own a software company. I sell software system for computer, mobile phone or any other shops that need a database and auto-generated website. That's the main income. At the same time I'm making a bunch of application software for my friend or for myself and I'm giving if for free (you can see some of them here http://apps.leviathonsoftware.co.cc/). I believe that application software is there to help people, to make computers more useful to home users so by giving it for free I suppose I'm helping people . No seriously, I can't imagine myself selling that software. I mean how match to charge for something that I made for myself or my friend? How can I sell a peace of software that I made just to learn some new programming technique? Why should I? It's not all about money you know. Imagine the feeling that 100 000 or even a whole MILION people use your software everyday. That's priceless! At the other hand it's a kind of advertising. If you made really good peace of software and you are giving it for free there will be a lot of happy customers that will know where to go if they need something more.

Piracy is our reality, you can't change it and you can't stop it. If there is no piracy people wouldn't by software that they don't really need. One way or another software companies won't have more (or less) income. But one thing is certain, whit piracy many software companies become incredibly popular simply because people know them.

[rmaslic]

I Personally think pirating is bad but then again prices for things in the store a very expensive and sometimes of even bad quality. I think the government should regulate the economy seeing as corporate CEOs cant.

[farscapeone]

I think the government should regulate...

We are talking global here. Government :nuts:

[ichwar]

You all seem to be missing a big point. Piracy hurts NoOne. It costs no one but you anything to pirate a piece of software. If you don't buy and you don't get it, or you don't buy it and you pirate it, either way, the company is not getting any money. So, not buying software doesn't hurt a company. A company can write a program, and charge $200 dollars for it. Some one can get their hands on it and make it available for piracy, Now, whether no one pirates that available to software, or 200 million people pirate that software, the company won't lose a single penny.

Now, your argument is that companies are losing prospective pennies through piracy, but if that company doesn't own the penny, then to not get it isn't losing it. You see, a company can't lose what they don't have.
(as and aside, someone else pointed out, anth this is true, that companies don't go broke or fire people or anything like that because of pirate software. I've seen many many companies fire their employees, and never once in my experience has it ever been because of piracy.) In spite of this all I am still against piracy, I have never pirated and I hope that I never will. I am not saying that it is good to pirate, I am simply stating that it hurts no one to pirate!

Opposing view points anyone?
Edit:
Also, you must be careful not to confuse free open source software with free pirated software. Open source software is perfectly legal. Anyone who thinks that we ought to pay open source developers even though they are explicitly giving away their software for free and saying that we should not pay them is a nut. Piracy is different.

This thread is about whether or not you should use pirated software, NOT about whether or not you should use free open source software.

[farscapeone]

Piracy is actually a god thing. Where else can you find people spending their time and effort to offer free software for everyone without any rewards or payment? It's like a humanitarian work or like Robin Hood, robbing the rich to give to the poor. LOL