This just came through my feed reader (NNW of course).
Don’t treat your customers like thieves
It was listed in a feed update I did shortly before lunch but had been removed by the time I clicked on it. I have a feeling they took it down for an edit or two given the potential volatility of the subject. I’m delighted to see that it got reposted. We could spend a lot of time (and I plan to do some of that in future posts) talking about the software industry in general and piracy in particular but it’s not often that you see this sort of transparency. I have long held to the 90-10 theory of software piracy. 90% of the people are honest and will pay you for your work. 10% aren’t and no matter what you do or how hard you try they will find a way to pirate it. If you were to take all of the time and effort that you spent thwarting the piracy of your product(s) and put that effort into making your software better for the 90% who support you, piracy would be a very small blip on your radar screen. Now, that’s not to say that I support piracy in any way, shape or form. These guys that sell illegally obtained software from the like of Microsoft, Adobe, etc. and make millions doing it need to be stopped. And generally it seems as though they are sooner or later. But software activation schemes and other methods that “phone home” just get in the way of the paying customer and do little towards thwarting full scale piracy. We always felt that if you bought our software you could put it on all of the machines that you used. If your fellow workers wanted to use it, or your family members, or whoever, they had to buy a license. Plain and simple. Marcus’ post is well thought out. It’s refreshing to read.
