There are plenty of unrelated factoids thrown here in attempt to answer, but the real reason is that DIY, software, engineering, scientific communities in most

There are plenty of unrelated factoids thrown here in attempt to answer, but the real reason is that DIY, software, engineering, scientific communities in most of former USSR countries have been depending on freely downloaded (or $3 CD compilations) stuff because few people could afford as an example even a legal installation of Windows for a long time. Even if economic difference is not as wide as it used to be, cost of many books, subscriptions, and software tools looks prohibitively high there still. It just became so commonly accepted, and up until very recent times weren't really prosecuted, so a kind of culture emerged where any attempt to uproot this practice feels like an attack against natural rights.