CompuServe Messages

<<Almost everyone in USA or West Europe can buy every IPAS. A lot of peoples can simply buy 3D Studio which cost less than their one-month salary.>> Somebody wake up this guy or I'll faint… If it's so cheap to buy 3D Studio then why there are so many people looking for secondhand copies? <<Average salary of a very good programmer or computer expert is around $500 – $600.>> That's how much advertising costs in the US magazine that has a circulation of 60,000 – 100,000 copies (average price, black&white and half the size of a credit card, placed at the back of an issue). <<Large companies (like DELL, ZENITH, IBM, etc.) have their offices here in Prague. The average salary of the director of such office is around $1000 – $1500. The average price of 30 sec. of the computer animation is around $1000. Under these conditions, companies here in Czech republic simply cannot buy any IPAS at almost any price.>> This means nothing to me Pavel. I don't live in the Czech republic and I have to pay for my food, clothes, rent, software and hardware. You can have my sympathy but I do not accept your arguments. Nobody here gives me a break just because I'm young and want to build a company. <<This amnesty was based on the simple rule. The price for everyone who has illegal copy of Borland product was $10 (yes, ten dollars).>> If I sold my products at $10 then I'd go broke. Borland did this because they already had a large sum of money from people who bought legitimate copies and upgrades. It is the Western computer users who financed this marketing move. Eastern Europe is just beginning to see piracy as a crime. I've seen Eastern Europe's computer fairs organized in schools (!), stadiums, etc. where literally thousands of illegal copies of software were sold with photocopied manuals. How could you survive and build a company as large as Borland in such environment? I get the feeling that you've never been to the West or you've never understood how the software industry works. Jacek Artymiak (Bitmap Studios Ltd.)