[Palladium]

Yea I'm new here, but I've got to pull my soapbox out of the closet...


So many points... So little time...

As several others here I've been in software development for a while (since the early 80's). Maybe my take is a little different but here we go...

Piracy is the theft of software etc for resale or monetary gain, so lets use the proper terminology, use of unlicensed software...

First software is Intellectual Property, although the product is intangible it is still the product of someones thought and ingenuity, using it without a license is still theft. Just because IP laws have not kept up with technology is no reason to discount it as not being theft. (a spade is a spade....)

I have developed apps with limited markets (1-10 customers) as well as general purpose tools for data acquisition with very broad markets. Long story short software IS expensive to develop. For most of my limited market apps ran a minimum of $20-$30K, my smaller tool apps incurred 5-10K in expenses (my time, uncle sams cut...). Granted PPC apps are much smaller and simpler, BUT if you suspect that 10% of your potential market may simply copy your work from someone else and not pay you would be a fool not to include that potential loss in the price (even if you don't mind it happening). I agree that software is WAY overpriced, especially with the expanded size of the market (as compared to 20 years ago) but the only thing that the unlicensed use of software accoplishes is to force that price upward so that everyone else pays for those who used unlicensed software.

Unfortunatly, the Micro$ofts of the world do allow greed to drive their pricing, (but again it is economics, price the product at what the market will bear), but to extend that to the small developers (read innovative) who rarely do that kind of market research and tend to reasonalby price their products, does a great disservice to them, and cripples their development efforts. (Please indluge me for one small example) Excel vs Spread 32 (by Bye Design), Both are Spreadsheets, Spread 32 supports 99% of what Excel does (minus VBA and some other advanced features), one costs $200, the other $20...

I've rambled long enough, time to put the soapbox away....