4 ms·

> You might think cracking dongles is fun and copy protection is evil, but without protection, our livelihood is affected. I understand you might feel this way

by b1temy 8mo ago

> You might think cracking dongles is fun and copy protection is evil, but without protection, our livelihood is affected. I understand you might feel this way, but it seems to me customers are mostly business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.). In fact, having no copy protection would probably have saved you the problem you mentioned where a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available; this is one of the talking points that anti-drm/copy protection people advocate for, software lost to time and unable to be archived when the entities who made such protections go out of business or no longer want to support older software. > even on legitimate platforms like Shopee or Lazada. On a slight tangent, but I personally don't find either platform legitimate (Better than say, wish[.]com or temu, but not as "legitimate" as other platforms, though I can't think of a single fully legitimate e-commerce platform). Shopee collects a ton of tracking information (Just turn on your adblocked, or inspect your network calls. It's even more than Amazon!), is full of intrusive ads, sketchy deals, and scammers. You yourself said you can easily find cracked versions of the dongle there, which doesn't speak well for the platform. And Lazada is owned by Alibaba Group, which speaks for itself. I'm not sure why consumers in South East Asian regions aren't more outspoken about this, since they seem to be the some of the more popular e-commerce platforms there.

samplatt 8mo ago
>business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.) This is a nice idea but the reality is that there's MANY corporate customers who are happy to get away with casual piracy. Sometimes it's a holdover from when the company was small enough that every business expense is realistically coming out of their own pocket, sometimes they're trying to obfuscate how much their department actually costs to the company at large. You think individual consumers lie to themselves to justify software piracy? Corporate self-deception is a WHOLE new kettle of fish.
- Plasmoid 8mo ago
  Even at a simple level, if it's between spending weeks going through purchasing or not asking too many questions and getting on with it. I can see a lot of people choosing option B.
  - IshKebab 8mo ago
    Yeah case in point - how many people actually pay for Visual Studio? You're supposed to if you're using it for commercial purposes but I don't think I've ever seen a commercial license used (though I don't do a lot of Windows work tbf).
    - samplatt 8mo ago
      VS is actually one of the cheaper tools in our stack; Unity (the game engine) is probably the most expensive one at the moment, and it's going to get much more so with their recent changes to licensing structure for embedded hardware.
      - Joel_Mckay 8mo ago
        Unity has always had janky shaders, the fact people still use it over Unreal Engine or even Godot is completely baffling. Unity is getting way too cheeky considering how they started out. =3
        wongarsu 8mo ago
        For anything smaller than AAA, C# is just generally much more pleasant to work in than C++. That's Unity's edge. And Godot is the "new" kid on the block I'd agree that between Unreal and Godot, Unity doesn't look very attractive right now. But inertia will carry them for a long time
        samplatt 8mo ago
        Programming semantics is a large part of the equation, but it's a secondary part. Unity is just too damn EASY for spinning up a prototype and gluing other modules onto it. C# is a part of that but simple implementation is so much easier and powerful than other engines. This goes out the window for polished end products but that's a different argument... but by then the ship has often already sailed and you're already using Unity.
eduction 8mo ago
You’re using “spare” incorrectly. It means to avoid. “Spare the expense” means to avoid having to pay for the license. Which seems to be the opposite of what you are saying. “Spare the money” is probably what you mean. That is to part with the money, to avoid having it, for example by spending it. Or by giving it away - As in “can you spare a dime.” The is the inverse of sparing the expense, just as an expense is the inverse of money.
- b1temy 8mo ago
  Yes, I meant to say "spare no expense" (though it isn't a drop in replacement, the sentence would need to be restructured slightly).
tonyedgecombe 8mo ago
> I understand you might feel this way, but it seems to me... I always thought that selling B2B. Then I started checking and it was much worse than I expected. Big corporates were mostly fine but small to medium sized business were pretty bad. Also Asia was much worse than Europe and the US.
quietbritishjim 8mo ago
> who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves They often need to "purchase" the license themselves in the sense of convincing someone higher up to buy it - so they're spending their time, which is still a sort of expense. Also, piracy in companies is often just honest people who are in a bit of a hurry and need this software running on some other PC right now, or just want their colleague to give it a quick go (but then they end up using it all the time). Copy protection helps keep those honest people honest.
acdha 8mo ago
> it seems to me customers are mostly business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability Trust the people whose paychecks depend on it, it was extremely common. I knew multiple people at different companies who had endless stories about customers buying a couple of copies for a large department to “share”, and they expected the vendor to support everything because it was “business critical”. This was also a problem for things like student licenses where people would expect enterprise-level support despite the massively-discounted copy they had clearly stating it was only for educational usage. This has a lot of negative aspects for preservation, downtime due to issues with licensing, challenges around virtualization or hardware replacement, etc. so I don’t love the situation we ended up in but it’s entirely understandable given how pervasive theft was – there were a ton of small businesses which ran entirely on bootlegged software. Software developers have high leverage but if you aren’t in a mainstream market you’re not going to get over the threshold where you’re no longer worried about making payroll.
bradley13 8mo ago
The honestly of clients, even businesses, is...questionable. I have an acquaintance who sells a very expensive software suite that is absolutely needed in a particular industry. Price for a perpetual license is 6 digits. The big boys in the industry won't risk problems, and anyway, that's a small price for them. However, the many smaller companies? They may absolutely need the software, but that's a substantial price for them. If they can get a cracked version online, they do. And the cracked versions? They are made by companies out of legal reach: Russia, Belarus, Pakistan, India. They crack the software, and either put it online for free, or even have the cheek to sell it for a reduced price. I've told my friend/acquaintance that he really needs to put the software in the cloud, accessible only via browser. However, this would be a massive undertaking, so he hasn't done it (yet).

by b1temy 8mo ago

samplatt 8mo ago

>business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.) This is a nice idea but the reality is that there's MANY corporate customers who are happy to get away with casual piracy. Sometimes it's a holdover from when the company was small enough that every business expense is realistically coming out of their own pocket, sometimes they're trying to obfuscate how much their department actually costs to the company at large. You think individual consumers lie to themselves to justify software piracy? Corporate self-deception is a WHOLE new kettle of fish.

Plasmoid 8mo ago
Even at a simple level, if it's between spending weeks going through purchasing or not asking too many questions and getting on with it. I can see a lot of people choosing option B.
- IshKebab 8mo ago
  Yeah case in point - how many people actually pay for Visual Studio? You're supposed to if you're using it for commercial purposes but I don't think I've ever seen a commercial license used (though I don't do a lot of Windows work tbf).
  - samplatt 8mo ago
    VS is actually one of the cheaper tools in our stack; Unity (the game engine) is probably the most expensive one at the moment, and it's going to get much more so with their recent changes to licensing structure for embedded hardware.
    - Joel_Mckay 8mo ago
      Unity has always had janky shaders, the fact people still use it over Unreal Engine or even Godot is completely baffling. Unity is getting way too cheeky considering how they started out. =3
      - wongarsu 8mo ago
        For anything smaller than AAA, C# is just generally much more pleasant to work in than C++. That's Unity's edge. And Godot is the "new" kid on the block I'd agree that between Unreal and Godot, Unity doesn't look very attractive right now. But inertia will carry them for a long time
        samplatt 8mo ago
        Programming semantics is a large part of the equation, but it's a secondary part. Unity is just too damn EASY for spinning up a prototype and gluing other modules onto it. C# is a part of that but simple implementation is so much easier and powerful than other engines. This goes out the window for polished end products but that's a different argument... but by then the ship has often already sailed and you're already using Unity.

eduction 8mo ago

You’re using “spare” incorrectly. It means to avoid. “Spare the expense” means to avoid having to pay for the license. Which seems to be the opposite of what you are saying. “Spare the money” is probably what you mean. That is to part with the money, to avoid having it, for example by spending it. Or by giving it away - As in “can you spare a dime.” The is the inverse of sparing the expense, just as an expense is the inverse of money.

b1temy 8mo ago
Yes, I meant to say "spare no expense" (though it isn't a drop in replacement, the sentence would need to be restructured slightly).

tonyedgecombe 8mo ago

> I understand you might feel this way, but it seems to me... I always thought that selling B2B. Then I started checking and it was much worse than I expected. Big corporates were mostly fine but small to medium sized business were pretty bad. Also Asia was much worse than Europe and the US.

quietbritishjim 8mo ago

> who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves They often need to "purchase" the license themselves in the sense of convincing someone higher up to buy it - so they're spending their time, which is still a sort of expense. Also, piracy in companies is often just honest people who are in a bit of a hurry and need this software running on some other PC right now, or just want their colleague to give it a quick go (but then they end up using it all the time). Copy protection helps keep those honest people honest.

acdha 8mo ago

> it seems to me customers are mostly business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability Trust the people whose paychecks depend on it, it was extremely common. I knew multiple people at different companies who had endless stories about customers buying a couple of copies for a large department to “share”, and they expected the vendor to support everything because it was “business critical”. This was also a problem for things like student licenses where people would expect enterprise-level support despite the massively-discounted copy they had clearly stating it was only for educational usage. This has a lot of negative aspects for preservation, downtime due to issues with licensing, challenges around virtualization or hardware replacement, etc. so I don’t love the situation we ended up in but it’s entirely understandable given how pervasive theft was – there were a ton of small businesses which ran entirely on bootlegged software. Software developers have high leverage but if you aren’t in a mainstream market you’re not going to get over the threshold where you’re no longer worried about making payroll.

bradley13 8mo ago

The honestly of clients, even businesses, is...questionable. I have an acquaintance who sells a very expensive software suite that is absolutely needed in a particular industry. Price for a perpetual license is 6 digits. The big boys in the industry won't risk problems, and anyway, that's a small price for them. However, the many smaller companies? They may absolutely need the software, but that's a substantial price for them. If they can get a cracked version online, they do. And the cracked versions? They are made by companies out of legal reach: Russia, Belarus, Pakistan, India. They crack the software, and either put it online for free, or even have the cheek to sell it for a reduced price. I've told my friend/acquaintance that he really needs to put the software in the cloud, accessible only via browser. However, this would be a massive undertaking, so he hasn't done it (yet).