Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!rutgers!ucla-cs!zen!ucbvax!unisoft!gethen!farren
From: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga
Subject: Re: About Software Piracy!
Message-ID: <554@gethen.UUCP>
Date: 9 Jan 88 19:36:39 GMT
References: <1962@houxa.UUCP> <2615@fluke.COM>
Reply-To: farren@gethen.UUCP (Michael J. Farren)
Organization: There's Unix there in Oakland
Lines: 58


I want to put in my two cents worth on piracy, and then fade away - 
it's an issue that will probably never be resolved, certainly not
in this forum.

It seems to me (and always has, through almost 10 years in the
microcomputer software business) that the evil piracy does to the
software industry is wildly overblown.  Nobody has yet been able
to show me any sort of real figures which indicate the real harm
piracy does to the industry; generally, companies are much too
busy being paranoid about piracy to do anything as simple as an
in-depth study of the situation.  It's just taken as a given that
piracy is everywhere, and is a severe threat to the economic 
health of the software industry.

I would put only one question to everyone:  if piracy is such a
threat, why is it that the company which produces (arguably) the
single most pirated product in the industry, Lotus, is also one
of the top money-makers in the industry, second only (in some
years) to Microsoft?  How could it have been that the first micro-
computer game I ever wrote (the Apple ][ version of Epyx's Temple
of Apshai) brought in enough money over the course of four years
to provide me with thousands of dollars in royalties (at a low, low
royalty rate, mind you - this was only a port) and to allow Epyx to
expand from its former two-room offices to a large building, hiring
between five and seven people in the process?  Especially since this,
too, was widely pirated?

Piracy is everywhere.  This is granted, along with the assumption
that piracy represents theft and lost sales.  My point is that
the amount of time, energy, and talent spent on various methods
for defeating piracy have only cost the company that time, energy
and talent - they haven't stopped piracy, and they probably never
will.  I have yet to see a situation where piracy has resulted in
a company going under, and have yet to see a software developer
come up with a truly outstanding concept they didn't sell because
of piracy.  And make a lot of money doing it, sometimes.

If the only goal of a software company is to get the maximum number
of dollars from the public, then piracy is a big issue.  If the goal
is to produce the best possible software, then it becomes only another
entry in the long list of things which affect sales efficiency, and
not one to worry about.  I say this:  write the best possible software
you can.  Make it original, make it useful, and make it work.  If you
do that, and have a decent marketing staff, it'll sell, and you'll
make money.  Don't worry about the pirates; devote that energy to
making your software even better.  You'll win in the long run, and
what the hell difference does it really make if some unscrupulous
and/or immature folk out there get a freebie?  Maybe, in the worst
case, there are more dishonest folk than honest out there.  It doesn't
matter a whit - you will survive, and, given some talent and luck,
even thrive.

-- 
Michael J. Farren             | "INVESTIGATE your point of view, don't just 
{ucbvax, uunet, hoptoad}!     | dogmatize it!  Reflect on it and re-evaluate
        unisoft!gethen!farren | it.  You may want to change your mind someday."
gethen!farren@lll-winken.llnl.gov ----- Tom Reingold, from alt.flame