There was an incident when I was working in a particular start-up. The company was not used to buying original software licenses for any of its users. One business manager decided to go and register his pirated software. Within a week, the CXOs in this start-up recieve a nicely worded legal notice from you-know-who (Billu bhaiyya and his cronies). The notice said, that the CXOs are liable to go to jail and a penalty of some 3-4 lakhs!! Within days, a software audit was done, and a no. of software licenses were bought. We decided to keep on purchasing licenses till we were completely licensed. It took some months, but it was done!!
75% of the corporates in the country are using pirated software right now. The other 25% are not because either they have taken an ethical stand on this issue, or their clients have taken that stand for them, or they are people who have been caught and are now aware. It’s just a problem of awareness, and of seeing value in buying proprietary licenses. So why not have a hybrid model, where the software firm launches a software for minimal or free of cost, and gives all the killer features for that price. Would that work? Or are Indians just used to getting stuff for free??
