Can't help but jump in on this one.
First off, any of you admitting to software piracy on a public forum are morons. It's illegal, and you've all just confessed to a crime.
How do you know when a UBB is pirated anyway? Sometimes it may or may not be obvious, especially when you're dealing with someone like me with an expired subscription hacking older versions of the board.
Every programmer I know got started using pirated versions of their compilers, such as Microsoft Visual Studio. Having had full access to the tool they gained the ability to use it properly, and subsequently went on to get great jobs and buy full versions of the software and other software related to their jobs.
It's very cause and effect in that sense - the companies price the products higher because they're so pirated, and that makes it impossible for a student or anyone without a great job to learn the software. Those in this predicament either pirate the software and learn how to use it or don't learn it and become gas station attendants until they put themselves through school.
As a software developer, I'm very torn on this issue. I want to get paid for my work. That means people have to use my software. What we do here is write free client software and charge for the servers, which makes sense under our models.
I think companies should just release free versions of all these powerful tools with watermarking. Everyone can learn the products and make non-commercial work with them, then when they're employed as a result of their skills they can buy the full product.
That's just my opinion.
[ May 16, 2001 05:59 AM: Message edited by: Shockwave ]
