> Whose fault is it anyway? Simple: it's the consumer who copies and pirates software that forces the price down and therefore the quality to remain low. Softw

> Whose fault is it anyway? Simple: it's the consumer who copies and pirates software that forces the price down and therefore the quality to remain low. Software piracy, by the consumer, at scale, is historically negligible. It's even more negligible now. How can one pirate software like netflix or google docs, where there's a centrally hosted server that runs the actual software? Apple's App Store is full of software that is incredibly difficult to pirate. How does a consumer duplicate a copy of paid iPhone app? Yet, the cost of an iphone app isn't significantly more. I don't think consumers pirating software has as significant an impact on the price of software as more normal market forces. If I want to manufacture a paperclip and sell it, I can't charge a thousand dollars, even though the factory is pretty expensive to build, because others are able to charge less and profit. If I want to make an iphone app to share short videos, I can't charge $1000, even if it's perfect code, because my competition can do the same thing for free. And if I'm sending video to other users, well, even perfect software will hit network errors. The reality is, many software companies are profitable right now while selling software for 10s of dollars, so if I charge more, I won't be competitive. Consumers don't pay for software that's better than a certain amount. Once it's "good enough" to solve their problems "well enough", that's it.