Can Open Source Cure Global Software Piracy?
And it's regarding a topic about which most people have a very strong opinion: software piracy.
Dina's comments have been kicking around in my head for weeks for random processing, but I felt especially inspired to write about this subject on a gloomy spring morning in New York, the day of the Broadway opening of "The Pirate Queen." (Sheer coincidence.) Plus, I ran an abridged version of the letter in our print edition this week and wanted to get the online dialogue about global software piracy started.
Dadian's controversial thesis on software piracy comes down to this: efforts to curb the practice in emerging markets fail to take into account the underlying reason it happens in the first place. Most software born in the United States is priced completely wrong for most emerging markets, given their economic state. There are also cultural considerations that are way beyond our U.S.-centric world view.
When Dina returned to Eastern Europe last year for a family visit, she was struck by the dilemma faced by small businesses and the academic community in the Ukraine. When it comes to technology, it's pretty simple, these organizations buy what they can afford. If they see something in the market priced reasonably, why wouldn't they buy it, just like one of us don't pause to think before we buy knock-off tee-shirts or watches or sun glasses in New York's Times Square.
Most Ukraine citizens don't walk around worrying about whether the software they have is legal, they're simply paying what the market will bear and what is available to them. When you consider the average salary in the Ukraine, Dadian figures, the cost of most "legal" software, comparatively speaking, is roughly 17 times what it is in the United States.
The disconnect in how we deal with fixing this is mainly cultural. Because, yes, it should be fixed.
First off, we need to be just a tad more culturally sensitive. Most of us take so many simple things for granted here in the United States. Apple's dispute with the European Union over iTunes is another example of how much we have to learn about the way things are done elsewhere. Doesn't matter whether you believe it's right or wrong based on your upbringing.
This is where the open source movement comes in.
As Dina writes, many software companies have been dealing with the global software piracy problem in a very punitive manner. Open source changes that.
If markets like Ukraine and Russia and China and India begin adopting open source options at a furious clip, there could come a day when the U.S. market leaders aren't leaders outside their local market. Not only would the "price" be more economically acceptable, but the source code (in theory) would include coding philosophies and features more tuned to the local market. And then, software piracy will be the least of the big ISVs' problems.
What's your opinion about software piracy? Share your comments at [email protected].