Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tektronix!percival!bucket!leonard
From: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Newsgroups: comp.misc
Subject: Re: Software Development And Piracy (Spurred By FTL replies)
Message-ID: <1165@bucket.UUCP>
Date: 12 Dec 88 03:35:03 GMT
References: <555@icus.islp.ny.us> <2363@ddsw1.MCS.COM> <1334@leah.Albany.Edu> <5769@thorin.cs.unc.edu> <1343@leah.Albany.Edu>
Reply-To: leonard@bucket.UUCP (Leonard Erickson)
Organization: Rick's Home Grown Unix; Portland, OR
Lines: 36

In article <1343@leah.Albany.Edu> jac423@leah.Albany.Edu (Julius A Cisek) writes:
<In article <5769@thorin.cs.unc.edu>, bell@unc.cs.unc.edu (Andrew Bell) writes:
<> If I could make copies of porsches,  I'd probably have one,  even though I
<> can't afford to buy one.
<
<> Most big-time pirates are fairly young,  and don't have the disposable
<> income to buy that much software. 
<
<> Step one:  think about what piracy actually hurts customers.  That would be
<> piracy by business and professional people,  who have the income to buy the
<> software.
<
<Wait a second! So what you're saying is that its okay to pirate stuff if
<you can't afford to buy it? That's insane! Can I steal your car  because
<I can't afford one myself?

Slight difference here. If I steal your car, I have it and you don't.
If I *copy* your Lotus disks, you may never even know the difference.

I can use the same copy of Turbo Pascal at work and at home and still be
within Borland's quite liberal license agreement. But I'm *still* going
to buy a copy for home as soon as I can spare the cash. Why? Because it is
a pain lugging the manuals back and forth!

On the other hand we have Lotus and Ashton-Tate. Their ideas regarding
quantity discounts, LAN licences, and site licences are a *bad* joke.
Add to that the fact that their manuals are poorly written and that 
the programs are overpriced (compare their prices with the competition's!)
and you'll see we both copying and "cloning" worry them so much.


-- 
Leonard Erickson		...!tektronix!reed!percival!bucket!leonard
CIS: [70465,203]
"I used to be a hacker. Now I'm a 'microcomputer specialist'.
You know... I'd rather be a hacker."