This is a survey to see how many people can claim to have "clean"
hard drives, i.e. no pirated/bootlegged software or unpayed for shareware.
My bet is that far fewer than 50% of the people who respond will have
"clean" hard drives.  Note this is not to endorse warez, the piracy of
software, but to get a feel for how common it is the computer community.

17 responses total.

        I'll start the survey by admiting that my HD is not clean.

It might be more useful to permit unpaid-for shareware that is still under
evaluation or not being used. The way you are asking it will seem that
everyone is dirty.

I have a clean hard drive w.r. to pirated/bootlegged code. I do have unpaid-
for shareware, but I have paid for the shareware that I use regularly. 
I consider myself to be clean. I would point out that it would be hypocritical 
for me to be otherwise, as I am a shareware author.

        Good point about evaluating shareware.  I guess I felt it was implied
that unpayed for ment unpaid shareware being used beyond the evaluation
period.  I can the wording was unclean now, thanks Steve.

        errr wording is unclear I ment... <sigh>

um..i can't remember buying anything..
I have alot of opinions on the whole warez-piracy issue. I think piracy 
is what makes this world go round.  I don't buy the common argument that
it increases costs to end users, simply because 95% of the stuff i have,
i would have never bought.  Yeah, if i find a good program, i go out and 
buy it.  But thers so much crap out there, i can't afford to find out
first hand what is good, and what's not.

That's exactly why I, as a person capable of writing quality software, do not
trust the shareware users to pay for using my program. I use shareware as a
marketing strategy. My excellent Mac solitaire game, Spider, is shareware,
but has important features disabled. 

People can play my game for a long time, and learn a lot about the difficult
game of Spider. they can do it all for free for all I care. Those people who
really appreciate it will have no choice but to license it, though. 

People who bitch at me for providing "demoware" or "crippleware" have only 
people like  Matt to blame.  My strategy works very nicely, btw.

Spider home page is at http://www.izzy.net/~srw/spider.html

Matts, if you haven't bought anything, does that mean that you have yet
to find a good program?  It's a wonder you use a computer at all, if that's
the case.

Raven, it's an interesting question, but I think a non-anonymous survey
will be very biased.  I doubt many people are interested in announcing "I
violate federal copyright law" on a system that's at least occasionally
read by federal law enforcement.

ok im not part of any warez group or anything, but i wont lie yes i've
had pirated software on my pc. is it a crime to have so? i mean everyone is
doing it, actually that isn't a good reason. a lot of the software of there
is not written in a couple of days, it takes a lot of thinking and hard work
for the programmer to come up with these programs to sell to these bigger
companies who make millions while the programmer himself makes a small
percentage. so who is the criminal here? the computer pirate or the company
who sells the software for a ridiculous price? i say the compnay is to 
blame. without software piracy thse companies wouldn't exist! why? well if
you really think about it while these companies are losing money - they are
also gaining money from the losses. even more then they would make if we
didnt pirate software. this is no b.s. ask any compnay and they will
probably lie to you about theis very issue, but then again you might find
a disgrunteled employee of a compnay who will tell you the truth. even
some people i know who work at stores like electornic boutique or other
places like these - borrow software off the shelves and then put the plastic
back on and sell it! who is to trust when we cant even trust the people
we buy the software from? we cant - so go ahead people and copy away!
illegal yes, but then again - its illegal so that the gov. can steal 
more money from you! that is if you look at it that way, which i do.
i personally do not pirate software for i dont have the time or money
to invest in buying a cd burner or a fast t1 line modem to download all
the pirated an cracked software on the net. i would much rather settle for
my 56kv.90 modem with redhat5.0 and hack away till the break of dawn.
there is much information out there, pirating software is only a
waste of time. that is unless you crack software - that can be very
entertaining but a tedious task at the same time.

I will admit about 98 percent of my hard drive is pirated software. Lol I am
not kidding.

i have no probz with warez peps they are our brothers just like other hackers
n crackers n phreaks, long life the free loading life :) 

I use Linux, I've no need to use pirated software.  All the software I need
is available under the General Public License :-) 

software is overpriced. i write games in my spare time and there's no way i
can afford the expensive 3d modelling software i need. i make no profit from
this (or even any money at all!), so despite this being illegal, i can hardly
see what harm is being done.

I dont have an impeccable hard drive either.  As a linux user, i dont see the
point of paying for something that "would be dirt cheap if not run by
profitteering gluttons".  I mean, how much money do you think is going to the
real people behind the software, and how much do you think is going to Mr.
CEO and the board of directors in each company who dont know shit about real
computers!  I think that all companies should be forced to distribute their
programs as open-source.  Im sure they could reamin self sufficient just by
selling manuals and such, and having advertisements on thier web pages.  The
real problems are the capitalistic profiteers that are behind the computer
world...they screw it up for the rest of us.

About 4 years are passed, but the question is really live like yesterday. I
use a linux distro, and i use them for a lot of years... i have the time to
know the free software and i have the time to appreciate it... free software
is a real way to make technologic progress really fast! If i've produce any
software, i can release it under GNU GPL or other kind of free software
license. My concurrent can take my software, increase the potential or the
functions, and redistribuite this software. At this moment, I always can get
the new version of this software and make this better too... in this way
software become better in very few times... i have only free software on my
computer, and i have my hard drive clean... best tool are free software, i
don't want to crack software 'cause i don't have necessity to crack for have
good software... in this way, i can crack only systems (:D lol)

Is your hd really clean 'cause you use GPL software ?
I mean, do you have only free mp3 and free videos in your hd?

just asking 

I am curious, a former colleague had software installed in her laptop by
the company she worked for, using their site-license. Since she is no
longer employed by the company (but was allowed to keep the laptop, once
she demonstrated that there was no proprietary information stored in
that laptop), is she considered to be pirating the software? The
software in question was Windows Server, Microsoft Office and Visual
Studio (all things she needed for work, and also things she needs now
that she quit to go back to school (ok, Windows XP would probably serve
her better, but she already had Server installed and had it configured
the way she likes)). The rest of the software in her laptop is
open-source/freeware (PuTTY, Cygwin, etc). Just curious what you guys
think. 

If they still have the CD and key then she is out of compliance.
If she has the CD and key then she's golden.
My advice?  Load Win2kPro and call it a day.

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