Will you keep on getting free software?

[phazzedout]

This is all great and all but many of the programming jobs are going to India.

You could say that it is because we pirate software, Yes and No. Companies are in business to make profit. If there is a chance to make a larger profit margin they will jump on the chance to go on it. Ok so now tell me, if you have a chance to fire 6k employees who have a wage of probably 60k a year each compared to 4k employees in India who probably work longer hours and probably hard (maybe) for 20k-30k a year. Talk about profit.

Also pirated software is not good, the only time I used pirated software was Adobe Suite CS2 in my high school years. Sorry but I do not have thousands of dollars to spend on software. I'll never buy any software that expensive, which is why I am grateful for open source software.

I have been learning to use GIMP because I know I will never get to afford a luxury such as Photoshop CS4.
I never bought or even thought of buying MS Office in my life, NEVER. I remember in my Communications Studies class I had to present anything. I present Open Source and Freeware alternatives. I was talking about how AVG Free and Avast! Home Edition do just about the same as Norton Antivirus, how OpenOffice is a free alternative to MS Office, and GIMP to Photoshop. I had many more, it was an hour presentation so I had a bunch. In the end I had so many questions, and after all that someone still asked me how to get MS Office for free. Some people just don't get it. Oh well.

[espfutbol98]

I tried to look through all of the posts to make sure I'm not making a point already made but:

First of all, pirating is bad, weather just by law or your beliefs, it's still wrong. However, it does differ depending on what you are downloading. If you are torrenting photoshop for your new business, this is obviously wrong. But in my case, if I WERE TO torrent something like a language program that I would otherwise not buy in the first place, I do not see how this harms the creating company. It is also a lot more worthwhile and ethical then torrenting a $20 game you can get down the street.

Also, referring to leviathon's posts, software companies get most of their money from corporate sales, not really from home sales. Perhaps this is why Adobe products are so easy to pirate, and they don't seem to care (so I hear) ; )

[kennyg10101]

I always buy the initial version of the software.

But then it seems some software companies 'improve' the software... until it sucks.

So I do not buy into upgrades.

[C0ldf1re]

True story:-

Chap buys computer from company that shall be nameless, but for the sake of argument we'll call them Dill.

Accidentally damages disk partitions and needs to re-install Vista Home.

No recovery disks, and recovery partition does not work.

Dill gives him run-around, eventually promising to send re-install disks. They don't.

He doesn't feel it "right" that he need go to a store and pay for a new O/S disk.

Only practical way of self-help is to download a pirate O/S on a pal's PC. Not "dishonest" in most people's eyes, surely?

But seeing he's going illegal, he might as well download pirate Vista Ultimate.

Unfair to Micro$oft? Well, M$ let Dill be an OEM without insisting on proper standards, so M$ seem partly responsible. He had had a lot of wasted time and paid for needless phone calls, so he deserved compensation perhaps?

The point is that if honest users have to go pirate to get a fair deal, they will stay pirate perhaps.

[xav0989]

To follow your post, espfutbol98, we can see that some companies have realized that the people are pirating sometimes because the software is to expensive for their current situation. Adobe could be an example, as we can see, by one of danielx386's post, giving free licenses of some of it's programs to students.

[callumacrae]

I have no money. The software people are not losing any money from me because I wouldn't buy it if I didn't download it.

Of course, I download legally wherever possible (:

~Callum

[satubis arkon]

I get free software because i have no money, and even if my mother and father is working they don`t get enough money to to give me not even 5$ a month for my own expenses. all the money are getting to the energy, meal, water and some candys from time to time. The world is not fer, there are people that don`t lift a finger and get thousands of $ and people that works night and day and even then they don`t have enough money to sustain themselves. That is why a lot of people get this kind of software...

[fractalfeline]

Two cents to the pot:

As a student, I get discounts on software all the time. Adobe, Office, even Windows 7 is discounted for students, at least, in the US. Generally, you have to get it directly from the vendor or go to a student bookstore type of shop, and provide proof of enrollment (typically school email or student ID). You get the student version, instead of the professional version, but so far, I'm happy with the student versions of these things. I currently own Student CorelDraw Graphics Suite x4 and Student Windows 7 (not installed yet, waiting for $$ to upgrade to a Desktop first). I also use many FLOSS applications like OpenOffice (as good as Office for my purposes), GIMP, and Avast.

@ Coldfire
Been there... It took a whole hell of a lot of constant hassling to get HP to send me re-install disks when my hard-drive crashed, and needed a replacement. Oops, someone sold me a used hard-drive... when I paid the New Laptop Price... tsk tsk tsk. I could even name the previous owner... that sure got their attention real fast And Big Biz is wondering why customers are getting angry enough to pirate...?