>That might not be such a bad thing for those countries MS outsources to. There are some big MS operations in India (for example)- it would seem that a lot of prospective employees in those countries would use pirated software to prepare for work at those MS shops. Eventually the cost of piracy would be offset by the low cost of trained (on pirated software) workers coming to work at Microsoft.

There is not much software development outsourced outside the U.S., mainly some things like support and such. Certainly not any VFP development, so there is any logic at all to what you say, it wouldn't apply at all to VFP. Plus, the ratio of the number of people hired versus the number of people using various software is not even comparable. Most software companies who put lots of money into development applications and tools view piracy as a bad thing.