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The software buyer/hacker spectrum
By Jon Gillespie-Brown | October 27, 2008
Saw an interesting article today by Peldi Guilizzoni and he mentions what many people think is true about the user and their propensity to use pirate software.
I don’t think it’s very scientific but it is a valuable argument, who will pay and who will not and why?
I also think the basic concept is sound - unfortunately people will avoid paying if a free/ripoff alternative is easily available.
The easy way to fix the conundrum in any event is to make your software easily available and to protect it will a user friendly but robust licensing solution and let the power of fully functional trials (rather then cracked software) do the viral marketing for you!
Here’s what Peldi says:
I don’t like generalizing, but here it goes. I believe there are 3 main categories of software users when it comes to purchasing software versus stealing it: “those who’ll buy”, “those who might buy” and “those who will never buy”.
I the pie chart below I refined it a bit to 5 categories, and since I don’t know how big they really are, I intentionally made all the pieces the same size, except for the yellow one, which I believe is the biggest one:
Let me describe each piece before discussing how I approach each one.
- At one end of the spectrum are those who will never spend money on your software. This category includes actual criminals who will steal your SW to repackage it and sell it, high school kids who like to show off their hacking skills, and also very legitimate and respectable entities like the Free Software Foundation.
- Then there’s a piece of the world population who simply cannot afford to spend money on your software, or at least not a lot. These people probably don’t feel great about using cracked versions of your software, but they do it because they need it and cannot afford what you are charging for it. In other words, they have bigger problems to deal with.
- I think the majority of people in the world fit in the yellow (gray?) area in the middle. They’ll use pirated software if it’s easy to get, but will pay for it otherwise. The more expensive the software, the more these people will shift towards the red pieces.
- Then there’s a piece that only pays for software because they fear getting caught stealing it. I think this pie includes a big chunk of businesses too.
- The last piece is the nice guys, the honest people who pay for what they use, pay all of their taxes, etc.
In the end its about getting the maximum amount of the "pie" for you for all your hard labor with the minimum hassle to both you and your customers…we think a hosted licensing solution is the answer!
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Topics: Software Piracy |