[Linux-aus] Young Aussies say pirated software is OK

[Paul Wayper]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

David Newall wrote:
| There's a tricky thing.  For some reason, people often equate price with
| quality, so when you're much cheaper than the opposition, particularly
| if you are orders of magnitude cheaper, there can be this automatic
| dismissal of your offering on the basis that "it can't be very good."
| This odd bias can be even more pronounced against something which is free.

Sure, but then why are they using illegal software for free?  Does the fact
that those people paid nothing for it make it now bad software?

Maybe we need some rough calculations of how much you'd pay for the GIMP,
Inkscape, Open Office, etc. if they were competing against other products in
the field.  Picture it: "The GIMP - normally $249, but because we don't
believe in charging money we're giving it away!"  Would that make those people
'value' it more?

I do think people are capable of differentiating cost from quality.  Equating
them only suits software vendors at the top of the range.  I also think the
people using an illegal copy of Photoshop "because it's good quality" are not
the same set as those using it because it cost them nothing.

I do think that people realise that that $450 package of Photoshop still gets
them absolutely no help from Adobe, and that they look to the community for
help rather than the software author.  When the software author _is_ the
community, this closes the loop.

Just some thoughts,

Paul
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.9 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Fedora - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iEYEARECAAYFAkmOBaMACgkQu7W0U8VsXYKL0wCcC8ox1B7kFqqK5COVtaPpXgKN
sWcAn0xx2nEc63gUc9ePXFLrB5wIjJyW
=itp1
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----