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How you address this depends greatly on your software and who it's marketed towards. Piracy can be a hint that you haven't come up with the best business strate

How you address this depends greatly on your software and who it's marketed towards. Piracy can be a hint that you haven't come up with the best business strategy for that market. Often what's best is to meet the market where it is--would you rather have more people using and aware of your software or only small amount of people people that know about your software and pay for it? The answer in many scenarios is to have more people using it regardless of whether they pay you because they can convert others into future sales and grow your market. Software and its markets vary greatly, so it's hard to give a strategy that works for all software, but I've seen one model be fairly successful over time: basically using a subset of users to subsidize the rest of users. Find out who's deriving the most value from your product and get them to pay you, rather than trying to scrape an equal amount from everyone. This can be done many different ways, but are most commonly done with feature gating or providing external services. The idea is that if your software is more available, more people have the opportunity of deriving value from it and ultimately end up paying you.

ttoinou 9y ago
Thanks for the answer. I have a lot to think about !
- Eridrus 9y ago
  Some people just have no money. I pirated tonnes of software as a kid because I couldn't afford any of it. One thing I've seen that generated a lot of good will in me was a company that said "if you can't afford a license, email us". Depending on the margins you have and the software you make, that could work for you as a way to communicate with your users.
  - jlgaddis 9y ago
    > ... as a kid because I couldn't afford any of it. Same here. I started learning how to crack software as a teenager (early 90s) because I was running a BBS and wanted to offer door games but I didn't have the money to pay for them. I did, however, have plenty of free time, which I used to teach myself some assembly, how to use SoftICE (for DOS), and how to write "patchers" in Turbo Pascal and, later, C. Now, I use Linux on my (primary) workstation and laptops so it's all free software (with a few exceptions; i.e. VMware Workstation). I also have a MacBook Pro (that I rarely use) with lots of commercial software on it and it has all been bought and paid for myself. (Today, I have more spare money and less free time!)

ttoinou 9y ago

Thanks for the answer. I have a lot to think about !

Eridrus 9y ago
Some people just have no money. I pirated tonnes of software as a kid because I couldn't afford any of it. One thing I've seen that generated a lot of good will in me was a company that said "if you can't afford a license, email us". Depending on the margins you have and the software you make, that could work for you as a way to communicate with your users.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  > ... as a kid because I couldn't afford any of it. Same here. I started learning how to crack software as a teenager (early 90s) because I was running a BBS and wanted to offer door games but I didn't have the money to pay for them. I did, however, have plenty of free time, which I used to teach myself some assembly, how to use SoftICE (for DOS), and how to write "patchers" in Turbo Pascal and, later, C. Now, I use Linux on my (primary) workstation and laptops so it's all free software (with a few exceptions; i.e. VMware Workstation). I also have a MacBook Pro (that I rarely use) with lots of commercial software on it and it has all been bought and paid for myself. (Today, I have more spare money and less free time!)