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Not me, but my uncle bought winzip. I was 14 or so and I made fun of him for buying it. Without skipping a beat, he replied in French, ‘ils doivent manger ces g

Not me, but my uncle bought winzip. I was 14 or so and I made fun of him for buying it. Without skipping a beat, he replied in French, ‘ils doivent manger ces gents la’ - or ‘those people have to eat’. That shut me up and i still think about that moment a lot.

ethbr1 3y ago
IMHO, lack of empathy is a principal reason for moral piracy in ones teens. You rail against "the system" to justify not paying for something... ... but really you just don't have money, want something, and don't want to feel bad about getting it. Cue post-hoc rationalization. And money is a precious thing in teenage years! And time is not! So 3 hours scouring IRC to save $10 is a valid trade-off. But I did like that shareware and smaller software companies, put a human face on things. You were giving money to a person (e.g. now example, Raymond Hill), not a corporate entity.
- badsectoracula 3y ago
  I don't think the age is as important, a friend of mine was buying games since his early teens - but he also pirated stuff. And i do know a lot of people who are in their 40s and still pirate stuff (in fact just the other day i was talking with a friend of mine who was baffled that i bought my Windows 10 license instead of using a crack) while at the same time they also buy things (same guy also buys most of the game he plays for example and has a "big box" collection from games he bought since the 90s). I think the "human face" you mention is closer to the truth. Me and (another) friend bought WinRAR some years ago (my friend actually bought WinRAR in the 90s and he also bought FAR Manager before it became open source) and said friend was completely into piracy (especially when he bought WinRAR) - when i asked him about it he said it was to support Eugene Roshal. This puts a new light to Total Commander being sold via ghisler.com (the author's surname) and the site having a very "non corporate" look (and thinking about it, rarlabs.com has a very similar look :-P).
  - yukkuri 3y ago
    Tcmd is excellent, and his dedication to it is too.

ethbr1 3y ago

IMHO, lack of empathy is a principal reason for moral piracy in ones teens. You rail against "the system" to justify not paying for something... ... but really you just don't have money, want something, and don't want to feel bad about getting it. Cue post-hoc rationalization. And money is a precious thing in teenage years! And time is not! So 3 hours scouring IRC to save $10 is a valid trade-off. But I did like that shareware and smaller software companies, put a human face on things. You were giving money to a person (e.g. now example, Raymond Hill), not a corporate entity.

badsectoracula 3y ago
I don't think the age is as important, a friend of mine was buying games since his early teens - but he also pirated stuff. And i do know a lot of people who are in their 40s and still pirate stuff (in fact just the other day i was talking with a friend of mine who was baffled that i bought my Windows 10 license instead of using a crack) while at the same time they also buy things (same guy also buys most of the game he plays for example and has a "big box" collection from games he bought since the 90s). I think the "human face" you mention is closer to the truth. Me and (another) friend bought WinRAR some years ago (my friend actually bought WinRAR in the 90s and he also bought FAR Manager before it became open source) and said friend was completely into piracy (especially when he bought WinRAR) - when i asked him about it he said it was to support Eugene Roshal. This puts a new light to Total Commander being sold via ghisler.com (the author's surname) and the site having a very "non corporate" look (and thinking about it, rarlabs.com has a very similar look :-P).
- yukkuri 3y ago
  Tcmd is excellent, and his dedication to it is too.