>>>You can always get a full version copy from China for $10.
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>>Or in most other developing countries, for that matter. I am sure pirated copies of VFP 8 will appear soon here in Bolivia.
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>And this brings up a very interesting point, to my mind... I think that every time a company like Microsoft makes its EULAs more and more restrictive, it (at least indirectly) encourages piracy.
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>Take one of my clients as an example (I'll call them XYZ). Four years ago, a new tech support guy at this small company decided that he needed to rid the entire company of pirated software -- apparently there was a lot of it floating around not only on user PCs, but also on the servers due to some very suspect decisions by a prior consultant (not me! I swear!).
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>So this company spends time and money to become entirely legal. They start including software piracy statements explicitly in their employment agrements, etc., etc. In other words, they do everything the industry could ask of them.... They become model citizens.
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>Earlier today, when I explained the EULA, they sounded quite dejected. They started throwing ideas around of what to do, and one guy several times said, only half jokingly, "this never would have happened back when I had a cabinet full of unmarked disks!"
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>As with anything, when you create rules that seem to be too strict, people are less likely to follow them; and once they've broken one part of a rule, they are more likely to break others.
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>I can't imagine MS really wants to head down this somewhat steep slippery slope.

The main problem in developing countries, of course, is the price. After all, US$ 500 (for example) is more than a month of salary for most people in the World.