Over $50 billion lost to software piracy: How can we prevent this?

Open source software which is a free software which can be downloaded by anyone. A lot of different software can are licensed as open source. Open source software are under the license free software license. There are also different upgrades for these open source software that can also be freely downloaded from the Internet. By using open source software, people don't need to worry about spending a lot of money for original copies of software. This will also lessen the number of people who are using pirated software as there are alternative programs that can be used.

Why do people use pirated software? Why is it predominant in Asian countries? I think the answer to both these questions is the exorbitant price of software, particularly those sold by American and European companies. If a popular software is priced at ,say $20, in the US, it is not a very high price for Americans. But if the same software is sold for Rs.1000 in India, people will think twice before buying it. Because, Rs. 1000 constitute a major fraction of the earning of an average individual in India. So piracy thrives. But if the company is wise enough, it will sell the software for, say Rs. 200 in India, and their market will zoom to compensate for the reduced price. The point is, software must be priced at comfortable levels in the local currency.

Open source is good, and should be there always. The majority of the commercial software, however, is better supported or maintainable. At the least, there is someone responsible for the wellbeing of the software.

'Giving away' the software to avoid piracy is like giving everybody access to all your possessions so that if someone takes it, it is not stealing. There is no need to buy anything if you can get it for free too. But if it is all for free, why work for it or do anything at all?

Piracy is theft. Using pirated software is aiding a fellony. The argument that software is expensive doesn't hold ground. Software is cheap in respect of the amount of work it takes to create. Software would be even cheaper if everybody bought it.

This idea is not "originally mine". It was picked up from a seminar conducted by ETTDC - now it is known as ET&T. This was in 1987 The MD had said there that the prices of software should be brought as close to the price of media as possible. Add burning charges - virus free guarantee, and support charges if user requires.

This will involve a lot of activity in Open Source also - e.g. Linux (say Redhat) is available both off the net - free and in a shrink wrapped version at a cost. Let the user choose.

One method to reduce pirace is to renting out the s/w or leasing s/w.

The rent should be minimal to stop piracy.

Also , we can now implememt Saas i.e Software as a service which will be on demand

It cannot be posible for all bt yes most popular softwares as Google started it off and many are adapting it

We can avoid the software piracy issues with use of copy righted medias (CD/DVDs) and with the use of online licensing method (whereby as a installation procedure, the license can be incorporated online with the valid souce media and paper license or the registration details).

• I would say for end users, all s/w has to be free. If someone wants to improve the software, they should be given the source code for a price.
• Give s/w for free and sell services around the software.
• Make parts of S/W available instead of selling them in packages

Think about it, why would I pay Rs.8,000 for MS Office if the only thing I'd do with it is create simple text documents? I dont want Excel, publisher, ppt etc but i'm forced to buy them all if I were to say no to piracy. Thats why 85% of MS Office in India is pirated. Same goes with the rest of the S/W.