1. Too many really good posts here to respond to.
2. Limited time - must keep short.
3. I want to address fairness and compassion.
This discussion about photoshop has got me thinking more about some of my feelings on these high end programs. I sometimes work with academic software, which has similar insane pricing schemes (go price matlabl).
Part of what makes people turn to piracy is when a company prices its products for one rich market, and prices it out of range of normal people, for the sole purpose of keeping the people who can afford it from paying less.
In other words, imagine the case of photoshop. Ideally, as long as they don't have to provide you with support, they aren't negatively effected if 30,000 high schoolers have pirated copies of photoshop and learn how to use it. In fact it helps them by establishing a more dominant user base and trained users who may eventually buy the program. But they can't "officially" give out those copies of photoshop or charge $5 for them, because they need to be able to charge the pros $500 for it. So we are left in this strange situation where companies are officially fighting to keep the program out of the hands of people who can't afford it, just so they can extract high dollars out of the people who can. This is the kind of thing that makes me long for the day when we can all pay what we think a program is worth to us (i know it's not going to happen im just saying).
in general i guess i evaluate companies and get a feeling for if i think they are trying to jack up their prices and update charges in order to maximize profits with no real "love" of their customers. i want to support companies which balance making a profit with having happy users. show me a company trying to bleed their users dry to squeeze the last drop of potential profits, and i'll show you a company whose users are looking for an excuse to jump ship.
-mouser
If anyone is interested, go have a read on the licenses that I write. I believe that they are pretty much what mouser is writing about there (in a round about way).
Fairness. Upgrades are free as well (as long as it's possible to do so).
http://renegademinds.com - my personal site, and
http://www.altools.net - the dayjob. Software should be available and easy. As developers (and software marketers)
it's our duty to serve our customers and users.
To sell software to an American and then sell it to someone living in China... Well... I
need to charge Americans more.
I also need to charge the Chinese less. If you don't agree with me...
you. When you make $100 per month, it's not easy to spend $50 on software. When you make $4000 per month, it's a lot easier to spend $50.
Not everyone has a car. Not everyone has all the perks that so many of us in the developed world have. To ask that someone that makes what I spit on for a piece of software is just cruel. It's called having some
sense of generosity and compassion.
At the moment our ability to respond to these issues (as software manufacturers) is limited, and only the larger manufacturers really have the means to do so (this is a major problem facing software authors and not easily addressed - that's another discussion entirely). But to begrudge someone that lives in poverty and is fortunate enough to actually HAVE A COMPUTER is just cruel.
Stealing is wrong. Piracy is stealing. Piracy is wrong. If you can't afford it, don't buy it and don't steal it. If you can't afford Photoshop, use the Gimp. If you can't afford Windows, use Linux. Period.-tinjaw
I'm not really buying this line of reasoning across the board.
Pricing is situational. Just around the corner from my house I see Mercedez cars, BMWs, and Bentleys. These people can afford to pay for software. I can also travel a few hours from where I live and see people in complete and total squallor with literally nothing. If they "steal" from me, my cost is virtually nothing.
I have
SO MUCH compared to so many people and for me to begrudge them
an amount of money that I literally wipe my ass with is just purely greedy and inhuman. For me to be so selfish that I actually care about what I routinely waste?
Give me a break. We're talking about software here.
The cost for me to get my products to these people is virtually nothing. How can I possibly begin to accuse people of theft there?
It's got to do with a matter of scale and resources. On my resource scale I can spend $50 and not bat an eye. For some people, that's a weeks wages! (Ahem... Like mouser said...
WHAT IS IT WORTH TO YOU!)
Now... If you live in a developed country, then there's no excuse. You can afford my prices and what I'm asking for my software. If you're stealing, then you're stealing. Period. Agreed there.
This is a complex issue and there are real problems in solving it.
But it's just not right for us as software authors in the developed world to complain about fractions of a cent. That's being miserly and greedy in a very obscene and (almost) evil way. I am not condoning Adobe's behaviour. I am not endorsing any particular licensing scheme. I am endorsing being compassionate and fair to
PEOPLE.
Ok - Rant over.
Recent Posts
You're forgiven for mentioning fortran, as I have a background in physics, even though why anyone would suggest someone learn fortran today for a commercial carreer now is a puzzle to me