Doom9's post on unlicensed software

[Shinigami-Sama]

from http://www.doom9.org/ news 12/11

I can't agree more, as I student I can't pay for all the software that makes life easier for me, same with music, it's a blessing that most of the stuff I need for school comes with the book or it's a free compiler and such, and my family footing the bill for most of my schooling. I find it amazing that these stats compies can get away with bull like this for so long, they're making up the stats for chirst's sake, thats misleading the public, and at that magitiude of funds transfering hands isn't that also fruad? So they'l bust a guy for selling a vacum that doesn't work for fruad, but a company that is causing possibly millions or more dollars to be lost gained or disaper? and the law is woried about some 14 year old kids with a 1/2 oz of weed? I'm with Doom9 these guys need to get a clue about how the real word works, because by this my live cd of say debian with open office and a home build pc looks like a loss to them, even though everything is legit in them

[pelmen]

they're not iditios, they DO know how the real world works. unfortunately for at least 15yrs they've used the same tired excuse that every copy made is a sale lost. in the real world of course not every copy is actually used, and with things like MSOffice how many people actually use the thousands of features MS want all the money for? a 10yr old word processor or freeware one does everything most people need.

Fear induced by greed is the driving force by the companies to pursue piracy. throughout history anything being sold/traded was primarily done so on what the item was worth to the buyer. Today only auctions and secondhand markets do that, instead we are told what to pay for everything. The problem of course is that the same product isn't necessarily worth the price to two difference people, for someone who will in turn make money off it and use it day to day in their work it is worth more, but to a student or a hobbyist a piece of software might only get used one a week and isn't worth as much. Over the spread of a population there are people who can easily afford things, and people who can't afford anything...and everyone else filling in the entire range between. So by them applying scared tactics to put fear into the public they will get a small percentage of people who are borderline in deciding to buy or not being tipped over towards buying...instant revenue, more greed. That worked so they start to try to expand on that, eventually we'll get to a stage where it'll end up like a game show "dob in your mates, fabulous prizes to be won!". Hell i've even seen statements put out about how terrorists are using pirated software...the wording was also implying anyone using pirated software was a terrorist. Again exploitation of an existing situation (mostly this pirate software issue has reared up due to the limited success of the music industry attacking 14yr old girls).

a lot of software has overinflated prices which they claim is to recover some of the loss due to piracy. the record and movie industry has occassionally tried the same tactic. nobody ever seems to question why the cost of CDs is so high (go into a store and find a popular artist still recording...all their back catalogue of titles are still full price or close to it even though they may be 20yrs old). or why the popular titles are so expensive compared to less popular ones...after all the more popular ones are mass produced in lots 100s and 1000s of times larger than the less popular at a massive saving (8yrs ago CD cost around $1 to produce in lots of just 1,000...i worked for a duplication company...that included duplication, printing on the disc, full colour artwork/booklets and assembled into a jewelcase). so less popular titles are far more expensive to make but still turn a profit when release directly into the $5 bargain bin, yet the cheaper mass produced popular titles appear to be struggling for money at three or four times the price. Again its a flip from the real world, lower production numbers of any product are more expensive because they are rarer, not the other way around. If the record industry owned the Mona Lisa then it wouldn't be worth the canvas it was painted on by their standards.

Wasn't Dell whining last week about these $100 laptops for poor countries and underpriveleged kids that they won't do any good? Do they really think starving children in a village can afford $3k each for a top of the range Dell instead? No friggin clue.

It's all about money. Not meeting market needs. Not offering viable alternatives. And of course misrepresenting the truth by using statistics (again this is something I know very well, it is so very easy to "misinterpret" stats or bias a survey to get the results you want).

[Doobie]

If most pirates couldn't pirate software, they'd go to freeware. The added momentum to freeware could cause a loss of sales of non-free software. In other words, if Microsoft could prevent piracy, their profits on MS Office and Windows might actually decline.

Joe's Widgets Inc. would notice that the new kids he's hiring out of college are all experienced with Open Office; so, he might decide to go with Open Office instead of MS Office. But, with all the kids sharing copies of MS Office, all his new workers are experienced with MS Office so he keeps forking over money to Microsoft for MS Office.

You know, there's a reason that Microsoft at one time practically gave away MS Office for free, preloaded on PCs back in the day when MS Office wasn't the top dog. You also know why Microsoft makes sure there are plenty of Office and Windows keys that don't require registration and why Microsoft hasn't sued anyone yet for distributing their software on the Internet.

The reason Microsoft provides any protection is because they don't want too much piracy. They need that happy medium. But, the point is, they're most certainly not losing billions of dollars to piracy. By their internal math, they're losing practically nothing to piracy.

[captain_video]

Last time I checked, Redmond, WA, still had more millionaires per square mile than anyplace else in the country. FWIW, my son's college had an agreement with Microsoft and several other software outfits that was about to expire just after he enrolled for the fall semester in 2004. They were offering full licensed copies of MS XP Pro, Office 2003, and McAfee for only $5 apiece to all incoming students. I snatched of a copy of each and am using them on all my machines at home, with the exception of XP Pro (I still prefer Win 2K).

If the software companies, as well as the music and movie studios, ever decided to sell their products at a reasonable price then there would be little or no piracy. Pirates couldn't make any money if the cost was low enough to buy the real thing, which I'm sure most people would prefer.

[Hard Core Rikki]

People should really try Open Source and Free Software. With all these companies going nuts with drm schemes and lock-ins, the very best to do would be to avoid using their software at all whenever equivalent or better alternatives are available.

The industry definitely needs to check their "numbers" again. Making ridiculous claims that they are "on the verge of death" is not credible, not even after a few drinks.

Software monopoly (like Windows, Office) ONLY brings prices up. Then these same monopolistic companies complain about piracy when their growth rate falls under 30 percent. To consider 1 mp3 downloaded "costs" up to 150.000 and count it as a "loss"sure can make you wonder about the accuracy of their "claims".

France was the first country where there was an absolute monopoly of Office. Microsoft rewarded its french customers by raising prices up 30percent. Example that using proprietary software is not always the best choice.

In the US, companies complaining about heavy losses make the congress more enclined to pass laws and bills favouring them. DMCA anyone?
US forumers, be my guests for a surprising interpretation of the "Super-DMCA". I'm providing a link (security oriented):

http://netsecurity.about.com/cs/generalsecurity/a/aa040103a.htm

High software pricing has driven me to Open Office, and I definitely don't regret it.

http://www.openoffice.org
-------------------------------------

I plan to switch to Ubuntu (a fully free GNU/Linux distribution, price and freedom AND EVEN SHIPPING COSTS, can you imagine?). Ubuntu is IMHO the very best GNU/Linux system to use for new computer users and former Windows users, rivalling with (sometimes surpassing) Windows' features and ease of use.

http://www.ubuntulinux.org


For people looking for viable, free alternatives to overpriced software, try these links:

http://www.techsupportalert.com/best_46_free_utilities.htm

http://www.thefreesite.com

[shevegen]

I may be speculating, but I believe MS is much more wary about OpenOffice than about Linux. I think it had to do with Open Documents support which would be very annoying for MS, and several towns in europe switch or consider switching to less costly alternatives (even if they dont really do the switch, it may be used as a lever to get MS to demand less, dont think it will work everywhere but in some areas for sure.)
Ok, i try to find the connection to the topic... ;) Obviously MS isnt the only one that supports the DRM scheme (I really loved the Trusted Computing video ... google for TrustedComputing_LAFKON_MID_XviD.avi or so, you surely find it, its short and nice),
and this brings me to the topic I feel very annoyed right now, which is closed specs for certain hardware. I get a software which only works under Windows, and there isnt an alternative on Linux because the specs arent there, and because its very hard to develop drivers. Its sad that law does not encourage this specific behaviour more, and just shows again how idiotic "democracy" works with all the lobby groups paying for the laws they want to get.
The FUD pseudo studies are confusing me, I mean, which half-way intelligent politican is really BELIEVING it?


Anyway, I dont want to write more. I sound too grumpy... I am not really that grumpy. ;)

But its cool, lets collect alternatives studies, focus on other ideas, and get rid of the monopolistic borg-thinking of lazy and very big companies.

[kis2005]

I use a lot of Open Source and Freeware programs, not just for the price but because they run and function better. I own Juke Box for MP3 rips and found it took to long to load among other things, so I switched to Audiograbber and use the LAME dll for encoding MP3s...great program, free and light on resources. Linux and Open Office are great, but because microsoft offered a slew of programs at $10-15 US (Office XP, Win XP, Visual Studios, Visio) I couldnt go wrong. Most companies including mine use MS products, so I have to use them as well. Companies won't be able to eliminate piaracy, but they can minimize it, but if they make it to difficult, we have free options that could become the norm. There has been a lot of Servers using some variety of Linux and many governmental agencies (state, fed, local) that are looking into Open Source programs for cost cutting. If that happens, then the big companies are going to have some dancing to do.

[adam]

FWIW, my son's college had an agreement with Microsoft and several other software outfits that was about to expire just after he enrolled for the fall semester in 2004. They were offering full licensed copies of MS XP Pro, Office 2003, and McAfee for only $5 apiece to all incoming students. I snatched of a copy of each and am using them on all my machines at home, with the exception of XP Pro (I still prefer Win 2K).



I wouldn't read too much into it. The university basically just bought licenses for all its students. The $5 is just to cover the school's expenses in producing hard copies. The university still paid full price for it, or whatever kind of bulk/educational package deal they could get. Its not like MS is actually selling it for $5.

When I was in college I definitely took advantage of those programs.

[Shinigami-Sama]

actualy my school BCIT got copies for $10 CAD so yeah