Software Piracy
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??
[quote]Or are Indians just used to getting stuff for free?? [/quote]
Yep. That’s the reason. The thing is, we have accepted it as a way of life.
The Big K
19 Jun 09 at 6:20 pm
Two comments –
1] Where did you get the 75% vs 25% data or did you just SWAG it?
2] The problem is that Indians see the US$ symbol in front of the software price and that drives them away. The software seems high-priced just because of that.
Maybe we need a couple of such cases to stop us Indians from expecting free stuff – http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/18/minnesota.music.download.fine/index.html?eref=rss_topstories
Aina
19 Jun 09 at 11:02 pm
@K – Sadly, yes
@Aina – No, I did not SWAG it. Its the piracy data as per Microsoft’s annual survey. I think what you are hinting towards is more ideas like beer-ware
kidakaka
20 Jun 09 at 10:33 am
Sometimes it is because it is ingrained habit in us and it just takes to understand Newton’s first law to change it.
First there is a problem of awareness, some wont even know that the software is pirated and it is a wrong to use it that way. Secondly, it hits the bottomline. If the rules are implemented correctly and people who violate it are given strict punishments and fines and IT ACTUALLY GETS PUBLICIZED, the everything will change as external force is acting for change… Then people using pirated software will become less.
Ananth
26 Jun 09 at 4:31 pm