I’ll admittedly say I’ve downloaded way more than my fair share of illegal copies of software many, many times. Even HouseOfRave.com was originally built with a piece of software which I downloaded the demo then cracked the serial number during high school.
Not that this would solve the solution, but it would be nice if companies had small “Donate” buttons on their sites somewhere, much like shareware sites have. I would love to send $100 bucks or so to Adobe to thank them for their software I’ve used for so many years, but there’s currently no good way of doing this.
Not that $100 makes up for the price of the software, but at least it’s something I can afford and would be willing to send. Perhaps companies should setup these “Donate” accounts to where the company takes 15% of the pot, and the rest is somehow divided up to the developers. This would be like a virtual “Tip Jar” for the software developers.
Pictured: Me giving Photoshop a hug.
When I was in high school and college there was NO WAY on earth I would pay for software. This was especially true for things like Adobe Photoshop which cost well over $1,000 to legitimately buy, but are also extremely easy to download for free from various sources.
From what I know about companies like Microsoft and Adobe is they make a majority of their money from businesses that must legitimately buy their software. They make much more here than in the individual consumer market.
So suppose one day when (if) I grow up, I have some sort of firm that deals with graphic design in some way and I eventually have to buy software to support this. My most logical choice will be an Adobe product since I’ve happily used their products for years with great satisfaction.
However right now it almost seems illogical for me to pay $1,000+ for the latest version of Photoshop when I can so easily go to mininova.org or some other BitTorrent site and download a full version completely gratis.
A while ago I put a little inconspicuous tip jar on NevBlog on the bottom-right navigation bar…
…and its actually got a couple of donations! Perhaps I should put one on HouseOfRave too in case someone enjoys the free videos or pictures, would like to send some money, but doesn’t necessarily want to buy anything.
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Speaking of these little virtual tip jars, I always thought they can be used as an interesting way to get a bloggers attention (like Steve Pavlina or some other big dog blog). You could send them a series of small denomination donations: $1 the first day, $2 the next day, $3 the next day….just to mess with them :-)