Half of world's PCs use pirated software: survey

So the world should go Open Source and just "fugedaboudit."

After buying SPSS 12 full module, a newer software came and now we are on SPSS 19.

After buying Adobe CS 3 premium now we are on Adobe CS5.5.

If you wish to upgrade the cost is 1/3 of the retail price but still that is quite steep.

After buying expensive softwares, why don't we have the right to get the new updated sotwares for free or minimal fee?

Just stating the obvious. If these companies aren't so greedy, we don't have much piracy.

I haven't use Windows since XP SP2 was all the rage... Fedora 15 has all the software to support any business, office PC. LibreOffice runs laps around Microsoft Office in terms of stability and speed... I can't understand people who, after they pirated the OS they start pirating Microsoft Office(easily replaced by LibreOffice), Adobe Photoshop (mostly replaced now by GIMP, some professionals prefer GIMP), Visual C++ (Eclipse is so much better in so many details it would take a small book to describe it completely) and so on.

And what about software maker's dirty business attitude of compromising PC makers and make them sell PCs on higher price to cover the huge pack of pre installed software. My NEC PC came with 63 absolutely unnecessary unasked pre installed software, (and this is yet not the worst) and even if I estimate the possible discount and I take a ridiculously low 1000 yen per each, that is already 63000 yen extra that I payed for my laptop.

And how about the obligatory Microsoft tax on each PC coming with pre installed Windows even for those thousands of consumers who wish to install and use other operating system and uninstall Windows as a first step.

The pot calling the kettle black.

I have ZERO sympathy with the software industry, they are ALLOWED to screw us with single use licenses, screw us on upgrades, they figure out ways to fleece us & then they WONDER why some pirate the stuff, WELL DUH!

These companies have a lot of nerve limiting our use of s/ware, maxing their profits in every changing ways. Well I dont condone stealing, when I see companies are LEGALLY allowed to steal the people, then screw them, reap what they sow the SOBs.

Some of their small print needs to revised, ie cut the crap allowing them to STEAL from us & then maybe we can talk, untill then I have no sympathy for s/ware peddlers

As the owner of a company that produces software, I am very interested in reading these opinions.

We are considering a pricing model that essentially prices out our product at about 12 cents per seat per workday (figuring 230 workdays a year). We've conservatively estimated that when the software is used, it saves a minimum of $150 -- which pays for itself and 4-5 other licenses for the year. (The software is subscription-based.) One client told us that $150 is far too low since, depending on the situation, it could potentially save thousands of dollars.

@GW -- Do you think we are stealing from our clients?

as an Linux user all the software is free. When you get off Windows you no longer have to cheat to get working software. It just exists. Lots and lots of it. I have since returned to Windows 7 for work and paid for the software. I guess I'm rare?

what gets me on Windows 7 are the constant security updates of 5 to 20 MB in size almost every week. It would have to be a pretty active changelog for anything comparable to that in Linux. There are security fixes being made there too, but on no where close the scale and expense of Microsoft. The cost of constant security patches might outdo its product portfolio at some point? Probably a long way yet

And China's neighbor Japan has almost no piracy. I have never seen a pirated softwares (Japanese version) in Japan.

copying software doesn't have the same feeling as pocketing something in a store and leaving without paying. almost from the day you are born, you are taught to not take what it not yours. this applies to objects. you can't be taught as a young child to not copy software, music, video. a copy is a copy, you did not take an object that is now in your pocket and missing from its original place. but it's to be expected, that china is the biggest copy-cat on the planet. and shameless, i would add.

Only half?

You should understand that most part of Earth population have salary less than $100 per month, only western countries located in northern hemisphere and some Asian countries (including Japan) have salaries enough to live without problems. Some countries live in poverty. For your info: US have 300 000 000 people, Canada 2 times smaller, Russia and Japan are roughly same ~130 000 000 people, whole Europe is about 50 million people... And Australia. All in all we have about 1 billion people. These countries have salaries enough to live without poverty. But WHOLE WORLD population is around 7 billion people! And those 6 billions live in dependence from 1 billion. 6:1, imagine! You dare to talk about piracy when most part of our population live in handmade huts while 1 million live in skyscrapers and have rich cars?

1) Make computers really cheap, make everything cheap. And poverty will be vanished. 2) Use free software, make better PR for it, lower prices for professional software for talented people from these 6 billions. 3) Stop sucking oil and gas, evolve high technologies.

I build all my desktops from scratch instead of buying install ready PCs from Dell/Acer/HP etc. The only exception is laptops. But I only purchase the I've never used pirated software ever, but I do know of some freeware that does some things I need it to do better than some of the software being sold, so I go with that if I know it works and isn't filled up with virus or spyware. I do buy the official copies of windows as well as my norton internet security.

A lot of software cannot be bought. This includes Windows and Office. It can only be licensed. When you buy an new computer, you are virtually forced to buy a new version of Windows. I wonder how many people who were forced to buy the unloved Vista, and then downgraded to XP, which they had on their previous computer, have since pirated software. Maybe they got a free upgrade to Windows 7.

It seems that Windows 7 was designed not to run older versions of Ms Office unless you had the Pro version and ran a virtual XP machine. Practices like this encourage piracy.

Selling software so that purchaser actually owns it and doesn't find when he opens a packet that he has just purchased a licence to use it would go a long way to reducing piracy.

For example, if someone wants to upgrade his computer, which is running XP, to newer hardware, what kind of discount will he get for buying a computer without Windows installed? How does this discount compare with the price of a copy of Windows? Imagine the person may be satisfied with XP and an older version of Office and not want to spend (waste?) time learning new interfaces.

On the subject of Ms Office, how many people have actually found Office 2010 any better than say Office 97 or even 95?

Then think about where most of the piracy takes place. If Office an Photoshop seems expensive in Japan, try to imagine how expensive they seem to be in less developed countries.

I suspect that some software manufacturers have an ambivalent attitude to piracy in developing countries. They want market share. I imagine they would prefer users in developing countries to use pirate software now, become used to their product and buy it in the future, than use a free operating system and free software, become used to that and realise that they will never need to pay for software.

OpenOffice. It does everything you could ever possible need for office productivity, and despite small glitches here and there, it gets better with every update.

I don't begrudge software companies from making money for their labor. Who could? But I think the majority of anger is directed towards companies like Microsoft and Adobe that charge a small fortune for software suites that the free market in no way justfies.

It doesn't help that they price their "updates" and newer versions ridiculously high, to the point of putting them out of reach of the average consumer. And it especially doesn't help when those users who do own legitimate copies of the software are essentially held hostage by absurd interpretations of fair usage.

Only 47%? I thought it would be more

Yadbits,

I think my thinking is much along the lines of what LFRagain said a couple posts up.

My opinions are based more on Business/Consumer than Business/Business. Microsoft is the real poster child for what ticks off most. The products are often over priced & buyers too overly restricted in use.

As for your model, you dont mention any or how much notice you would require to end the relationship..........but if you can clearly show it should work & does, it doesnt seem out of line to me. Now if MS could show it users how much $$ they will save instead of how many $$$ they are going to rip me off for, then they wouldnt be so reviled by the average user

Having said that I think its getting better these days & not worse, if thats anything positive.

farhaan: "And China's neighbor Japan has almost no piracy. I have never seen a pirated softwares (Japanese version) in Japan."

Because you're not looking, and my guess is you also have no idea about how much China pirates and are just taking the word of the article. Furthermore, IT is rather weak in Japan in terms of everyday usage (or was until Koizumi tried to boost it) so what would they need to pirate it for?

I'm with some posters above. Everything should be free with donations accepted. Good software would be rewarded, with the actual creators receiving far more than the company bigwigs. Bad software would, needless to say, get little or nothing. In any case, being forced to pay upwards of 1000 dollars for software that will be useless in a year or so (and no free updates) is ridiculous.

They said half the world uses pirated software, this includes 1st world countries like the USA, Uk, EU, etc where piracy is also ripe.

And of the guys that think software writes and develops itself for nothing, try working in the industry and accept payments as thanks vs a monthly paycheque. Or work for FREE.

Free and shareware is not truly free, you might get the software for free but try to get assistance/support and you will get hit big times.

Same is true for many linux, etc offerings. Free but don't expect any support, etc without payments.

As for your model, you dont mention any or how much notice you would require to end the relationship...

We've adopted a model whereby our licenses expire at midnight on the last day of the year, and prices are prorated to that time. If a client is not sure about entering into a relationship, they can wait towards the end of the year and use the software for 10% of what the license costs them in January.

To this point, all of our clients have received the ROI they have expected and none has allowed their subscription to expire. Were that to happen, we'd gladly return the unused portion of the license fee at any time.

I'm with some posters above. Everything should be free with donations accepted.

Wow. When I worked in the industrial automation software field, I worked with a salesman whose approach was enlightening. (This was a guy who knew his industry -- pulp and paper -- inside and out.) The software we sold would save the company tons of money, but potential customers would always balk at the price. The sales guy knew his business so well, he could look those clients straight in the eye and say: "I'll make a deal with you: You can have it at the price we quoted -- or you can have it for 10% of what it's going to save you on the production line in the first year." (Both knew that the 10% figure far exceeded the cost of the sw.) I don't think the guy ever missed a sale.

That said, I don't believe people should expect to receive value for nothing. If they get something for nothing, they tend not to value it to the point of ever wanting to donate. It's why PBS (the public network in the US) is in such bad shape despite their high value programming.

My PC is among the half that doesn't use pirated software.

Yadbits,

It sounds to me like I wouldnt think your ripping people off, the key word you mentioned above was imo VALUE, for me to be more specific, Value For Money Paid.

Its when you feel your being fleeced rather than buying something useful, valuable that the bad feelings come creeping in.

Somewhat off topic but worldwide the way the top end is more & more fleecing the lower 80% end of the market is past the frustration, ticked off point, I think people are MERE workers are starting to get angry, mad. I really hope the rich see this & instead of MAXING THEIR income all the time, they need to share the spoils more with those lower down or we are going to start seeing you know what hit the fan, kind of like it did in the UK recently.

Sorry, I am 100% against piracy of any kind.

Ever downloaded anything via torrent that is piracy as is sharing MP3's, etc. Ditto for pirated goods like Garage-kits, trading cards, etc.

The reason why those practices killed legitimate industries and put Many, Many people out of their jobs.

Piracy is ripe and killing the industries that supply what is copied/shared.

Example: Scanlations recently killed 2 major companies that supplied english manga versions to the west and other publications.

In short the pirates are making the bucks and legit businesses are dying.

Nuff said.

Well with most economies in the toilet is it really any wonder why people pirate. Most who do, only do so because A) they can't afford it anyway B) Copyright protection requirements make it annoying to play without pirating C) Because it isn't available in their country yet.

itsme

while I hear you, it AINT that simple, you conveniently FORGET how many companies blatantly rip off others BIGTIME, and we are supposed to just bend over..............

I still buy my CDs, buy my software if I need it, but sometimes I feel like I am being violated in the process, it DONT FEEL GOOD!

I dont want to see anyone lose jobs etc, but if the higher ups try to fleece us, they may just be getting their due.

i think even more are pirated software users. no wonder in japan even copy cd or dvd is legal. japanese also copy softwares as well.

most of the stuff I use most frequently/daily is free anyway...picasa, google earth, opera, chrome, evernote, dropbox, skype, thunderbird, vlc player, adobe reader, winamp, open office, utorrent. ,comodo firewall, antivir ...all legit and all free! good stuff.

Half of the world's computers use pirated software and the other half are lying.