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Poll: Does your startup use pirated software?
Do you have any pirated software on any of your startup related hardware?
- tmilewski 18y agoOne acronym: OSS Use OSS for as much as possible!
- staunch 18y agoObligatory linkage: http://www.linuxalt.com/ http://www.linuxalt.com/
- dragonquest 18y agoAnother one: http://www.osalt.com/ http://www.osalt.com/
- cmars232 18y agoYeah, I'm finding gedit with a textmate-like dark theme is a better Textmate than Textmate!
- nanexcool 18y agoMy TechNet subscription gets me Windows and Office for practically nothing. That alone is huge. Ubuntu, Apache, MySQL, etc., is free. VirtualBox or VMWare Server, also free. My OS X came from the Bay. I will buy a copy of Snow Leopard eventually.
- holdenpage 18y agoWhat pirated software do you all use?
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- old-gregg 18y agoEverything Microsoft. I am so damn tired of paying for Windows every time I buy a computer [I probably own about 10-15 copies of Windows by now], that I believe I'm entitled for everything Microsoft makes. Why do I even care about Microsoft software? Because our customers do. I also believe Adobe owes me Photoshop, a letter with apologies plus one of their programmers should become my personal bitch for a week - for all the damage they've done to me with flash and acrobat reader. Sadly, we bought a copy of CS3, because my partners didn't feel this way.
- rksprst 18y agoYou can get all the free and legal Microsoft software (you even get two MSDN support calls) you want from Microsoft BizSpark. It's really easy to sign up.
- nailer 18y agoI don't look at using software you've paid licenses for is piracy. My laptop came with Vista, I've installed Ubuntu on it and the Vista restore disc doesn't work in a VM. If I download and use another copy of Vista, it isn't piracy.
- brl 18y agoHmm, let's see. Things that I actually use frequently: * Textmate * VMWare Fusion * OmniGraffle * Microsoft Office * SciTools Understand * IDA Pro * Visual Hub * Little Snitch * Windows XP * ScreenFlow
- mcotton 18y agoAs much as I hate to answer this, its true.
- jbrun 18y agoI buy the software that I use a lot, but as a startup, I end up doing a million different things and sometimes I need a piece of software that is too damn expensive (over a hundred dollars). I just cannot justify buying one of these if I am only going to use it to modify a few files and then leave it on the shelf for 10 months. If I there was a pay-per-use or pay-per-day, then that might be a different story.
- sanj 18y agoJust to be clear: you can't justify buying the software, but you can justify stealing it.
- jamesbritt 18y agoMaybe jbrun doesn't consider copyright violation to be stealing. #include "copying-vs-stealing-permathread.h"
- pingswept 18y agoWith all due respect, I think "I need" is a weak excuse. We'd probably all agree that copyright law is a terrible mess. Still, I don't think that justifies deciding that you get to take what you want and then pay if you like the license terms.
- patio11 18y ago(over a hundred dollars) You are literally the first consultant I have ever heard in my life who would mention a hundred dollars as if it were a lot of money. Egads, man, you're a 1st world businessman, not a starving peasant in Africa. If it saves you an hour once a year it should be on the CC without you batting an eye. That's an extra hour of billable time and/or the prospect of more work because you're more efficient than the next guy, right?
- gcheong 18y agoI agree with you, but the idea that someone might pay per use or per day for software is intriguing. I know some service apps (e.g. Fog Creek Co-Pilot) are built on this model, I wonder if there are any others that have pay as you go pricing models though. I can't think of any reason why it couldn't be done more.
- pg 18y agoNot only do I not use any, but in thinking about this question I realized that the only client apps I care about are Firefox and the shell. Everything else I use is online. If there was a way to get a shell in Firefox (which there probably is, somehow) I would be fine with a computer that only ran one app. Which means Andreessen's vision has now happened; at least for n = 1. Desktop sw companies are about to discover a variant of Wilde's remark: the only thing worse than being pirated is not being pirated.
- staunch 18y agoThe shell is kind of just a launcher for additional programs though. So seems only fair that you count the other local programs you run (maybe just ssh?).
- pg 18y agoYes, true. I use the standard Unix utils. Sounds weird to call them desktop apps though. They feel more like part of the OS. I think of the desktop as something that got put on top of Unix in OSX, and terminal windows as holes in it.
- noonespecial 18y agoI think of the desktop as something that got put on top of Unix in OSX, and terminal windows as holes in it. Yes! I've been saying "put a hole in your GUI and get back to basics" for a decade now to quizzical looks. Sweet validation.
- magice 18y agoCome on, you can use only one application for you computer. Its name is Emacs :D (yes, Emacs can use to show images and play music. I would guess porting something like Gecko into would be possible. In that case, why bother a separate browser?)
- patio11 18y agoDesktop sw companies are about to discover a variant of Wilde's remark: the only thing worse than being pirated is not being pirated. I'm guessing you've probably never sent a greeting card with a Strawberry Shortcake on it. The company that makes those, American Greetings, sold $1.5 billion dollars worth of product last year. Much of it was paper, although they also have an online division which charges a lot of people a lot of money to send birthday cards. (I only know this because my mom says she pays $50 a year for the animated flash cards she mails me all the time.) What relevance does this have for desktop software? Simple: it should remind you that there is an entire universe of users out there who do not have Paul Graham's problems. Many of these users have problems which can be solved best by desktop software. Those users will keep desktop software companies in business for a while. (Did I mention one point five billion dollars of paper greeting cards? And this is HOW many years after email?) As long as I'm on the subject, ubiquitous net connectivity gives us desktop developers some interesting options against piracy. One is moving value from the client to the server. I do it a little these days (for non-piracy reasons), and if I can figure it out I'm sure the rest of the industry can. You can't pirate a desktop app that requires connecting to a server to function (+) any more than you can pirate Basecamp by downloading Firefox. + Edit for clarity: I don't mean in the sense of "phone home", I mean in the sense of "value is provided by code or data which only exists on the server". Think WoW: without connectivity its the world's most expensively engineered paperweight.
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- secorp 18y agoPython, Linux (Ubuntu), darcs (source code control), apache, mysql, php, subscriptions to MSDN and Apple Dev. (allmydata.org)
- melito 18y agoMost of the software we use is produced by small shops, is open source, or is SaaS. A lot of big name software simply does more than we need it to (price isn't usually an issue).
- patio11 18y agoNot just no, but hell no. I sell software for money, and I will shut down before I steal from somebody else in the same business. When I need commercial software, I either pay the money for it or I do without. There are great options for doing without these days: much of what you really need is OSS, and if you absolutely have to have something, well, you're a programmer and gcc is free last time I checked. Get writing, chum. If you're thinking "But it would take me, like, a thousand man-years to make something as good as Photoshop", well, there is always the "Sell your labor to someone, use it to buy the ridiculously-less-expensive-than-one-thousand-man-years product" option.
- deleted 18y ago[deleted]
- ra 18y agoThere is absolutely no need anymore: 1. OSX comes free with every mac. 2. Textmate is the best, and it's very cheap. 3. Omnigraffle is worth every penny. For just about everything else you could possibly need, open source has a category killer.
- ryanwaggoner 18y agoStrange as it may seem... 1. Not everyone uses a mac (and OSX is hardly free). 2. Not everyone uses Textmate (and very cheap is relative). 3. What the hell is Omnigraffle? Point being, not everyone uses the same set of software as you...or maybe it's just late and I'm grumpy :)
- SwellJoe 18y ago1. Linux comes free with every Internet. 2. vim or emacs is the best, and it's very free. 3. There is no 3. FTFY
- jamongkad 18y agoMight I add that Ubuntu for all its quirks is a very reliable and easy-to-use OS. Oh VIM is always a win in my book.
- ggruschow 18y agoI can't afford the liability.
- Flemlord 18y agoDoes anybody have valid Microsoft licenses but resorts to downloading from torrents/newsgroups because you can't get their proprietary MSDN downloader to work on Vista?
- sketerpot 18y agoI pirated Windows XP and put it on a machine for which I own an XP license, because the legitimate copy I have just wouldn't work. I tried to do it honestly, I really did. I use Linux now.
- m_eiman 18y agoThere's the whole "kids who can't afford the games and want to play them anyway" thing that I sympathise with, but for a business it's easy: if you use something to make money, you really need to pay for it/donate/contribute your patches.
- charlesju 18y agoGoogle Docs. Google Apps. Gimp.
- bemmu 18y agoOnly software I really really had to buy was Flash, since I was using it heavily in my UI. At around 700 euro it was a really painful purchase to make. Luckily for everything else I've been able to use open source, or stuff that comes with Leopard.
- krschultz 18y agoThe startup I work for does not. 60% of our desktops are Linux, the rest Mac OSX or XP which are legal. Our work is primarily in Eclipse or Emacs, our servers all run Debian our phones are Asterix. We use OpenOffice/NeoOffice as much as possible. We probably have a few copies of MS Office legally, but the only major software license we have is Solidworks.
- Brajeshwar 18y agoWe are mostly on FOSS and we don't have Windows. Thus the question of Pirated Software don't really arise. Mac software that we've to buy are few and so we can afford them easily.
- vegai 18y agoFor what I need, all commercial alternatives are worse. Some considerably worse. Why would I waste time even downloading them from the net?
- SwellJoe 18y agoI haven't used pirated software in pretty much my entire adult life, though I was pretty involved in the warez scene when I was a kid and ran a Commodore 64 BBS. It would never cross my mind to use pirated software today. I use approximately 90% Open Source software, and the remainder is bought and paid for (though often quite old...the last Microsoft Office version I bought was Office '97, though I haven't had a call to use Office in 5 years, at least). I also buy the cheapest version of stuff. Like I have Vista Home Basic on my dual booting PC, since I spend maybe one afternoon per week in Windows, and never doing anything complicated. So, no. I don't use pirated software. Even when I worked in an office that had full MSDN subscriptions for everyone, I used almost no proprietary software anyway, so I'm certainly not going out of my way to dig up pirated copies of the stuff. My workflow is simply built around Open Source tools.
- Ahsanul 18y agoYes, I do steal. :)
- jcapote 18y agoLiars, all of you. :P
- blasdel 18y agoMy parents founded a PC software startup in ~1983, that lasted for ~15 years or so before dying from second-system-effect. They were always quite anal about paying for software, especially my mother -- with her residual objectivism, she even believed in moral rights for software. When I was cleaning out the old apartment, I found several treasure troves of software and licenses. It was depressing to stumble upon at least a quarter-million dollars (unadjusted for inflation) -- embodied in small stacks of shrinkwrapped paper and enormous piles of obsolete media.
- iuguy 18y agoNo. We're mainly open standards oriented - which means a mix of FOSS and licenced proprietary software.
- Raphael 18y agoNice try. ;)