subject: How Piracy Actually Hurts Open Source [print this page] Piracy is a problem for software, music, movies, books, and almost every other form of digital media. Steps have been taken, like digital rights management and software codes, but many people have easily broken this type of protection and make versions of the files that are open for anyone to steal. Generally, piracy is seen as hurting paid software but it actually also hurts open source software as well.
Piracy keeps the idea that industry standards are the best. Let us take Photoshop as an example. Photoshop is a highly pirated piece of software. This is the industry standard for editing and making graphics. There are also open source alternatives like The Gimp, which is a quality editor that is actually free. If the software is pirated, then the industry standard keeps dominance and open source options, which would be sought out and used ethically, are largely unnoticed because everyone is using Photoshop legally or illegally. Stopping piracy would make people turn to open source as the free option, which would help develop the software quite a bit faster
Piracy also stunts the growth of open source. If those without the money to buy the paid software were to use open source, they would become part of the community. Those with the ability to break digital protection could be working on improving the open source applications, putting in the functions and features the free alternative might not offer. Developing for open source could be greatly improved by using these computer skills for good instead of using them maliciously to crack copy protection.
Piracy also keeps the idea that paid software is better than open source software. This is really a mentality. The concept is that if the software has a price but stolen for free, you got a really good deal because you didn't have to pay for something that has a real market value. The free software is just seen as subpar because it is just free and does not have a cost.
