I have a friend Ill call Dave. (No, thats not his real name. Yes, hes realthis isnt a cover-up for me.) He works for a fairly large software company where he started as a programmer and has moved up to mid-level management. Its always interesting to talk about software piracy with him, because hes clearly of two minds about it.
On the one hand, working for a software vendorhe used to put in 14-hour dayshe hates the idea of people stealing what he worked hard to create. You ever notice that the people who say software should be free arent the people writing anything other than utilities? he said once.
On the other hand, hes the guy who showed me the beauty of Kazaa: the heir apparent to Napster, and a great place to download music, videos, and applications. His sister does a family newsletter, so one weekend he downloaded copies of Office XP, Photoshop, PageMaker, Quark, and Acrobatall the latest versions, each worth several hundred bucks, and all pirated.
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