Quote:
Originally Posted by Malatesta
Just b/c I think it's important and it's been posted everywhere. Support your developers! 
Feel free to discuss. --Mal
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Open Letter from Alex Kac, CEO/Founder WebIS
We thought we should post this plea in the entire original version to our readers:
Myself and a band of software devs here have found a *very* large pirate warez site which I will not link to. They have cracks for almost everything imaginable. They have our software on there with download ratios in the TENS of THOUSANDS. In many cases I find more downloads of our software on the warez site than I see on our own download servers. I’ve calculated that even if we only lost 10% of those downloads that could have been sales its a pretty major hit.
The fact is that companies like ours and most other WinMobile devs operate on a shoestring budget. Most of our software sells at a break-even point, some at a loss until it breaks even 2-4 years after introduction. For the amount of money I’ve “lost†I could have *easily* created a Pocket Informant for Desktop or BlackBerry or heck other major applications or improvements. I could have hired an extremely high paid developer for a year or two averagely paid ones. For a company that has only 3 full time developers that’s a fairly major loss.
The fact is that piracy hurts those who pirate. They want our software obviously. Some just use it for a “testâ€, but we offer a two week trial and with a bit of work you can probably get 2-3 months free usage of our products a year. And we don’t sell for a large amount of money. Just wait and you can usually get our software for a steal - without actually stealing. I don’t think paying $9.95 is such a huge issue if you need an app like VoiceMinder. Its barely a lunch and drink. But the reason piracy hurts those who pirate is because they are like vampires slowly killing the company that they are sucking the applications off of.
Who here would care if there was never a VoiceMinder, FlexWallet, FlexMail, or Pocket Informant upgrade again? I have personally had fleeting thoughts of selling WebIS or just closing it down because even as this market has grown the software market has not and while I’m not naive enough to think its *all* about piracy, I know that it just makes me depressed. And no, we’re not closing down and yes there will be major upgrades of everything. And yes, piracy has been part of the software business from the very beginning but that doesn’t mean I can’t ask you to stop.
And therein lies my plea to you. If you actually use our software please pay for it. When you don’t you personally are contributing to the financial downfall of a bunch of people who are working hard to make good quality software for you. If you don’t want to think of piracy as theft, think of it as stiffing us. Would you stiff the waiter of a tip? How about the guy who built your house? How about the plumber or the electrician? Or the Taxi cab driver? And yes, software does cost money to make. I pay electric bills, Microsoft dues, travel expenses to meet with MS devs, trade shows, advertising, not to mention salaries. So if you wouldn’t stiff the waiter at your favorite restaurant his 15% (or 10% if you’re money concious) tip, why stiff us the few bucks we ask?
WebIS has always been extremely liberal in our licensing as well. We don’t use activation (we’ve thought about it), we don’t lock our license to your username, we don’t do anything to make licensing hard. We let you run our software on as many devices that you personally use and we use the honor system. Heck, we even make 2-3 versions of our software in most cases and let you pay for one and get them all.
So that’s all. Hope you guys have a great day!
Alex Kac, CEO/Founder Web IS
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Dear Alex Kac and all loyal employees of WEBIS,
I feel your plee man. I am a small business owner and I can only imagine whats it like to look at what could of been sales but is actually a huge amount of users getting your soft for free. That must really hurt, when you imagine all of the things that could be done with that lost money like expanding your team and vision.
This letter touches me, as I am hardcore supporter of piracy - I admit this with complete honesty and humility. I have been loving my pirates since the BBS days. In fact I still remember spending an entire day asking all the mods how do I "download" .... how does "pkzip" and "pkunzip" work, downloading DOOM in pieces and putting it back together. Digital Piracy became as much of the culture as cracking software was, even though the two relationships often clash they are symbiotic, and there is crazy love which is impossible to deter.
And then you have the developers and their companies who gets us all excited. =D>
Study how the biggest corporations battle and try to control culture to make a market out of it ... they destroy so much, but in the end culture is always triumphant, but not without a horrible price
decades of privatization - look at Hip Hop on tv since the late 90's, its Capitalism and Sexism and very controlled, and now the big record companies can peddle their dumded down products with little competition. But you're not one of these devils. So that puts you against a wall,
or at least makes you feel like it. As from the way you word your products, I can tell you have chosen to be different from large capitalistic corporate conglomerates that chew up lives and spit them back out. You're trying to play fair and are asking others to do so as well.
Well, there is a bright side to this. Or at least a light at the end of the tunnel.
First off, I never heard of your products or your company and I have been using the Pocket PC Platform since 2002 (IPAQ 3700, Apache 6700, TP2). Since I read your article I went to the website your probably complaining about, but can't front ... you gotta love them! They are the ones who show off to the world how cool windows mobile can be, its free advertising of your product, and the devices that can run them. Its free support, free training and exposure. Free customer support, and they pick up where the biggest corporations in the world fall off, like updates to the OS on diverse devices, keeping people in the community who can later go and buy your product or tell others about it, assuming its a worthwhile product.
For example, Microsoft has been pirating us pirates for many years. We train more friends and family on how to use microsoft products than any other institution in the world! We do this free of charge. I just moved to a new building a few weeks ago and already I helped 3 families with their microsoft problems. I never bought a microsoft product in my life, even though I have been using it since Windows 3.1 ... but they do. Every family I had ever helped since the early 90's buys microsoft products. Just to add, Microsoft stole my idea for the AOEIII expansion pack War Chiefs, and never paid me a single dime. But its ok.
Does that help you recuperate some money? Maybe not, maybe yes. But perhaps it is time to not even look at it in that way. Its not lost money! It's a leak, yes, but its ok brother. We love you and all of your work, we do. We love all developers.
A big part of our pirate culture is to support. If we love your software, many of us have asked the community to go support it. Granted, yes you have trials and shareware, etc ... but we have a culture as well. Its like trying to talk socialism to an anarchist.
In short, dont alienate us, or even bother asking us to stop, ask us to please support, we will listen, we promise. Befriend us, read our threads on your software, use us and our feedback, we wont ask you for a dime. We do this for free.
Your true enemy is the software coming out in other platforms like the IPhone and the Droid. They are getting robbed more than you, and may be making more money than you as well - even though most Iphone apps are not over 3bucks. But you will gain nothing allying with them. We want you to take the fight to them, and if you tell us so, and that you need our support to make better software than Apple, we will support.
Improve your marketing, keep working on making your software more candy like and more touch orientated, lower the price - compete with the Apple store, and you will see how together we can all help your company rise above the rest. Just dont talk about us
, let us be geeks.
We all live in the same community, which is Windows Mobile - the workers, the underground, the think tanks, the revolutionaries, the marketers, the developers, the crackers, the fans. We have to clean our home ... because the developers, the users, the crackers we are all slowly leaving WM. And that is the real problem friend, not your fans.
One love WebIS, my heart goes out to you. Now I am going to check out your software for the first time and compare it to Iphone apps. I hope to find myself impressed.
forever yours ,
CheTzu a Pirate