I couldn't agree more with Roman's call to donate. I'm not
    completely sure how I feel on the issue of software piracy in
    poor countries. Certainly, they have a more legitimate excuse
    than those who have money. And I almost buy the argument that it
    doesn't hurt the company because they couldn't pay anyway.

I think... What bothers me about using cracked software when you can't
afford the real version is...  There ARE cheaper software alternatives, and
there ARE companies who have "non-comercial" and freeware versions of their
software, and there IS freeware from all sorts of places (of widely varying
quality, of course.)  By using a cracked C compiler instead of JAL freeware
or the free 16F84 version of ??'s C compiler , you are not only failing to
support the vendor of the cracked software, but you are ALSO failing to
support the authors and/or communities of the software that you CAN afford.

The Microsofts of the world can probably survive cracked versions in the
hands of poor software geniuses, but freeware survives ONLY on the basis
of its continued use by a community, and usually on the feedback and
contributions from that community as well.  Cracking microsoft may be
illegal, but failing to support the software that you CAN afford is just
stupid...  I also find it difficult to comprehend why someone "needs" a
cracked microsoft word when we'd probably all be better off if they were
creating plain ascii documents in a micro-emacs clone instead...

BillW

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