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@tomX (m)
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Yeah, Piracy is an industry killer. It drains the resources of the software developers and realy kills initiative. For many years I could not see any future for computer programmers in Nigeria because I felt why bother spending so much time developing a software only to see it on sale for #150.00 (one hundred and fifty naira) by hawkers in computer village.
But the ugly truth is that it is the same piracy that led to the current IT explossion in Nigeria. I think we would much fewer programmers, web-developers, animators, etc in Nigeria if one had to pay some #50k or thereabout for Visual Studio.Net, then pay similar sum for your Microsoft office, auto cad, studio max, etc. The ability to readily get the software you need has removed a lot of hurdle from poor aspiring Nigerian (African) programmers who would ordinarily have had to put there ambitions/aspirations on a shelf to gather dust while they try to source for non existing funds to buy softwares.
The piracy issue also brings out the ingenuity of the programmer. I've had to find ways of progamaticaly protecting the softwares I built against unlicensed installations and multiple installations. I'm currently working with a friend to help create dongles which will serve as hardware locks for our softwares. It might not be fool proof but I think the kind of crackers that can break the security will not be intrested in a small african start-up, not when they could be flexing their muscle against industry giants like microsoft and adobe.
While I look forward to a world free of piracy of any kind, I also hail all the pirates across the world through who's efforts I've been able to get softwares that brought me to my present level as a programmer.
Long live pirates of the Niger!
Long live pirates of the World!
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