piracy and oss

[Marcel Kunath]

Not trying to start a flame war but I been thinking about piracy lately and I
am coming to the conclusion that proprietory software piracy is hurting open
source software more than the proprietors. I wondered what other people thought
on this.

I just feel like using others people's keys and cracks it makes it easy for
users to break the licenses on software they have not paid for. People
therefore get a false sense of the software economy. People may have bought
win95 and think they should be allowed for an upgrade to Win98 via a friend's
CD Rom. It eventually cheapens the cost of prorietory software to a level far
below the actual retail price. After doing this for a while and to tens of
software programs one basically has no cost in gaining access to proprietory
software. This gives the false picture of software being cheap. It also makes
open source software look comparably expensive or at least less cheap.

Shouldn't the open source community therefore actually work on eliminating
pirates of our competitors' products and everytime we see a pirate report them
to the corporations so that they get fined or forced to pay the license and the
economic picture put into balance again? On the one hand we may earn the
reputation of being mean to users but on the other actually support the laws on
the books and therefore put open source economically into the light it is
suppose to be in.

Reading about how organizations that donate old pcs get busted for invalid
win95 licenses I don't feel sorry for them and I wonder if I be so heartless
and rat out a friend who got tens of unlicensed programs on his/her PC.

It just makes me angry that basically every unlicensed software usage is
hurting open source software. I wonder if there is a way for the community to
report pirates but not look like the devil in disguise and if we should do
anything at all.

I am worried because I always run into people asking about Linux and I say you
could pick up a prepackaged box for 40-150 dollars at store and their eyes get
big and they'd rather go for the iso download. On the other hand one knows
their harddrives are loaded with tons of programs for which most don't have a
valid license, allegedly. It just shows that people' perception of software
cost in the proprietory arena are so skewed.

*wondering*

 -- Marcel Kunath

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 Montie House Network            Greater Lansing Linux Users Group
  http://www.montiehouse.com      http://www.gllug.org

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