Hi all,

After some heavy discussion with Ed Rauh about piracy and illegal use of licensing I felt the need to discuss this on the whole UT.

First of all, let me say that I really reject software piracy. But like all things not everything is black and white.

-When we talk about illegally copy software, distribute it and make money out of this, I think we all agree that this is the most rejected form of software piracy.

-Also if we professionally use illegal software, I think this kind of piracy cannot be tollerated.

-Though also rejectable but far more common is that people at home have one or more products installed without licenses for use at home. You can think about games for the kid in the house or an old version of Word for mom or daddy.

I've seen situations where the owners of the computers didn't even know they owned illegal software.

Though this all is illegal (I really think so), there is nothing to win for the software companies. If they banned out this illegal use, much less people will have a PC at home because all software is too expensive. Virtually all people who have a PC at home for recreation have illegal software installed. Now I can hear you say: "But you live in the netherlands !". I'll bet that the situation in the US is just the same (BTW here in holland we've about the lowest rate of illegal use of software in Europe).

In fact I really think that this kind of illegal use of software has helped the integration of the use of computers and helped the software development in general. If computers were only bought by proffesionals we would still be working on a 486 with 8 or 16 MB and Fox 2.x would cost about $5000.

- When we come to the gray area of legal. I find it much harder to reject the use. Last year I called MS if I can use a Dutch localized version of MS - office while I own a English version of MS office (my girlfrend isn't too confortable within the english version). They said I couldn't do this because i've had to buy the dutch version. Here I really get the impression MS is sqeeuzing all money out of us, and don't find it rejectable to install the Dutch version.

- Though many of you will find this rejectable (at least ed did), sometimes i'll evaluate software without the proper licence. A few months ago I got an order from a client which had a licence for Crystal Reports to see if CR could be an added value to his products. After I've had succesfully evaluated the software I did order my CR version. If it was not succesfull i would have removed it from my HD.

Though I know many people cannot speak freely about this subject (Big brother is watching you) and this subject is very sensitive, I'm curious what your standpoint is.

Regards, Walter