by EvLwMn » Sun Oct 20, 2002 12:11 am
I look at things this way. Pertaining to Windoze software - I might "borrow" a copy of something to try it out. If I like it and it runs well on my machine - I'll buy it. Linux is another story. Since it's free it's cool to copy it. However, if you find a distro you particularly like, I say show your support by throwing some money their way once in a while. The SuSE 8.0 distro I have was purchased. I could have downloaded it from the ftp site but I wanted to support the effort. I'm not saying I'll go out and buy each release - I won't. If I want to update I'll probably DL the kernel from them and install it. But by the time say 8.6 or 9.0 comes out - I'll probably be ready to buy it again.
Games - if you like the game you should buy it - for many of the reasons I stated above about Linux. You need to support the game programmers or you won't get new and better games. They have to feed their families and pay their bill just like the rest of us. However, once again, I don't think it hurts to "borrow" a game to try it out if the game isn't available in Demo form. Just buy it if you like it.

Which reminds me why I want to start working on a beowulf-on-a-backplane design: I want to be the one to write the program called "clusterfsck."
-- Adam J. Thornton, a.s.r.