Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

I use FOSS whenever possible.

Paid Software Experience:

• "Hi, Thanks for choosing us! Please sign into or sign up for your account! You agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy right?"
• "Great, and thanks for your purchase! Did you know we have a limited time sale on our Ultra Pro Superprofessional Edition?"
• "No? Well we also have a monthly subscription plan that can get you very cool features! Wanna check that out?"
• "No? Alright we'll get on with installation. But first, we need to make sure you're not running a VM, VPN and other software we don't like from our handy DRM software."
• "Oh, that DRM software also happens to collect your contact information and read your files so we can sell that for money. Thanks and enjoy!"

FOSS Experience:

• Aight you got enough disk space? Here's the GPL. Where we droppin? Cool, enjoy your program! Support me if you feel like it, bud!

Much like yourself I always try and use FOSS first and haven't pirated software since my teena

🎵 FOSS FOSS FOSS, FOSS it up! FOSS FOSS FOSS, FOSS it up! 🎵

About 20 years ago, I saw this exact same discussion on mozillazine. Everyone was raving about FOSS being nicer, friendlier, and more convenient, and how piracy is bothersome.

Then this guy posted a reply, to the tune of "Yeah, and now imagine your entire OS was like that... you should try it."

A little later I did, and never looked back. For me, FOSS is convenience.

I use Arch btw.

FOSS. I don't even own a Windows partition.

Except for games I use FOSS on my Linux desktop and on my Android phone. The FOSS alternative is often better than the proprietary software.

I use mosly free foss apps. It's has become a hasle to use programs that force online acounts. Kinda hate it when a app is slowly turned into a weird web app with heavy drm. And exploitive licenses

100% FOSS. I never use pirated software with the exception of games, and even that is rare.

FOSS over piracy for sure. While the UI and/or functionality is not often as good as the proprietary option with FOSS apps, I feel a lot more comfortable using them because they are free and you can see what's going on with them better.

I only use free software. Not all of it is FOSS, but a most of it. Well, I do use Linux so using some pirated windows software is a lot more annoying.

I don't pirate software. Usually closed-source, proprietary garbage has a lot of sketchy stuff built in already, and I don't have the energy to reverse engineer every cracked binary blob I download to make sure it doesn't have spyware or ransomware or anything. Just pirate media, not software.

I always perfer FOSS whenever possible.

I figure if someone out there is working on a project and wants me to use it, I owe it to them to at least give it a shot.

Occasionally, the proprietary stuff is the only option. And occasionally-occasionally that company isn't worth supporting or the price is unreasonable or more than I could afford. In which case, perhaps some seas are sailed.

Mostly FOSS since moving from Windows to Linux, still use the odd proprietary software (pirated of course).

With the recent rumors that Microsoft is moving to move Windows in its entirety to be cloud based I feel like I switched to Linux at the right moment.

FOSS has come such a long way that I don't need proprietary software anymore for most tasks. The commercial software I use for work is 'free' anyway.

I just use FOSS.

Media I pirate, but there's nearly always decent FOSS alternative for proprietary software

FOSS. I don't pirate at all, it's a security nightmare. If I were to, it'd be heavily sandboxed and definitely not anything important to my day-to-day. It's just not sustainable or ethical, not to mention extremely inconvenient. I just pirate some movies occasionally.

Besides games I'm almost 100% running on FOSS

Much prefer to use FOSS where I can.

Most people absoljutely do not 'need' photoshop or MS Office, but are too lazy to try out free alternatives. Sure they don't offer 100% of the features, but for most home users they are more than enough What are people using Word for at home anyway? Creating a CV once every few years - its not like they are knocking out documents day after day.

I haven't pirated software in probably 10 years? I think I used to pirate Internet Download Manager back in the slow internet days. Now, I all the applications I use are free. Now when it comes to games, I always buy on Steam. Had my steam account since the Orange Box launch, it's just to convenient. Steam sales are always priced pretty good which has given me a library of nearly a 1000 games. Don't ask me how many I played.. Gabe was 100% correct in my eyes that piracy is a service problem.

FLOSS. 99% better anyway. Why would i pirate something else?

Okay. Maybe i would pirate games, but my laptop is old and games that run on it are 15 years old anyways and cost next to nothing.

It was early 2002 when I decided I had enough with proprietary software. Without much thought on how successful my transition would be, I just downloaded a popular distro at the time and tried to make it my new home. I'm glad I did that.

It has as smooth a ride as climbing the Himalayas, but that gave me a much necessary DIY attitude to tinker and find solutions for which I'm deeply grateful for.

So if I see someone feeling inclined to jump ship and go all FLOSS, I not only encourage them, but give them the necessary push.

By the way, I'm not a programmer. I'm not even STEM trained. I've made my career in the humanities.

I also use open source options whenever they fulfills my needs. I am not changing to linux yet because of gaming.

I grew up relatively poor, so burning cd-s for each other and trading games was the jam when I was in school. Games I usually still pirate and even when I buy them I have already tried them to an extent, or finished them 5 times. Steam sales are a godsend for multiplayer only titles tho. I have nothing against supporting devs. But ubi, ea and those responsible for games with 0 content and giant day1 patches, season passes and all that crap can get fucked.

I rather spend that money on zero knowledge mail and vpn, maybe a donation to foss devs for things that I can't live without anymore. I need to get into the habit of donating some at least. Now that I am out of the financial danger zone.

I'm in the same boat. I haven't run pirated software in the last 10 years.

You have to ask yourself- what are you trying to accomplish?

To me- it's not ONLY about getting software that does what I need it to do. This is a very short point of view. It's more important that I have the freedom to accomplish what I want, the way I want to do it. This is why FOSS feels good. For me- It's not so much a matter of paying for the software... it's a matter of creating a computing environment that's healthy for what I think is important. This is part of the reason why I think using FOSS is better than pirating closed source software- you're actually doing them MORE harm this way (and that should make you feel good!)

In my younger years I just pirated the hell out of software. From Photoshop to Sony Vegas. Nowadays i use Foss because of my Linux use, but even for my Boyfriend PC's I mostly leet him choose between Pirated Programms and FOSS software and he mostly just needs an easy software. FOSS isn't as feature full as paid software but mostly for the normal stuff you do you can just use FOSS.

Foss pretty much exclusively, but how easily possible this is really depends on what you do.

Mostly FOSS nowadays. Ever since I got a little bit into cyber security I just stopped trusting a lot of software, so I just migrated everything to their respective open source alternatives.

Overtime I stopped being so paranoid, but I still find the FOSS alternatives better anyway. I mostly pirate tv shows/ anime/ movies and very rarely some games, since I mostly play full f2p gachas now a days (I know, ironic considering my previous statement about trusting software, but oh well...)

usually use FOSS, it has been long since I pirated software

When I was a student I had almost everything pirated, because of the lack of money and unreasonable pricing. Back then it was easy because in most cases I knew someone who knew someone who already had pirated the program.

Meanwhile I switched for alternatives (for instance I used to have Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, now I have purchased Affinity Photo and Designer) as the trend leads into the direction of subscribed software (software-as-a-service). I prefer software to be installed locally and not dependent of a stable internet connection. Also, I have no problem with paying for proprietary software, given it is priced reasonably.

For tools and stuff: FOSS

For games: No need to pirate thanks to Epic overloading me with free stuff. If I want something specific, keyforsteam usually does the trick for a very reasonable amount of money.

Both of these categories are just not worth it to risk a potential infection due to malware in the pirated stuff.

The only places where I do do some pirating are:

• TV shows/movies if they aren't on the two streaming services that I pay for
• Games for the hacked retro consoles that I own
• Android apps that I can hack myself

These categories are pretty safe

I use Archlinux BTW and I use FOSS software 99% of the time. (I need BurpSuite but rarely)

FOSS software just takes a long time to catch up with paid-for software in terms of functionality, but sooner or later becomes much better than its paid-for competitor, for example: Blender, OBS, Matrix (chat), etc.

From time to time, I pick up a few cracked games, but I also buy a lot of them. Sometimes I pay for games and end up buying the cracked version because DRM just gives me a big stutter in the games.

On my dual boot Windows 11 (MassGraveled) I do have StartAllBack (Homemade patched), Photoshop (M0nkrused), Ableton (R2ed) and an Office Pro Plus pack (OfficeTooled + KMSed) that I almost never use. If I start up on Windows, it's to amuse myself by either EDR bypassing, Reverse Engineering Games and Programs, doing some malware analysis, or dev some games cheats.

It must be 4/5 months since I've relaunched Windows because all the games I play run natively or with wine/proton on Linux with almost no loss (for some I've even gained in performance).

The last software I aquired unconventionally was photoshop. Then came windows 10 and my migration to linux, so that was the end of adobe on my systems.

Both actually, there are certain softwares like photoshop, ms office suite,idm etc. that I pirate. I try to use foss for almost everything else.

I only use FLOSS software. It's just a better thing being able to see the source code.

I always search for a foss alternative first when it comes to software games are a fairgame for piracy tho unless they are indie

It's a mix of both. On my windows gaming rig I have ms office, photoshop sketchup and fl studio pirated. I haven't found a good foss alternative for photoshop, sketchup or flstudio (using gimp is worse than being an actuall gimp ). On my Linux laptop I've been using more and more foss. I'm getting use to Libre office but it doesn't do everything I need. Switched chrome for Firefox, vscodium as a code editor, waydroid for Android apps

FOSS. Not everywhere though. I still use windows and still use SwiftKey. I'm just not adept enough for Linux. I tried it. SwiftKey will be switched eventually.

I used to pirate everything. But, I have never used/installed any commercial software since I jumped onto the FOSS bandwagon since at least 2010. I love the freedom! I even support the developers when I can.

Used to pirate apps all the time but I started getting into Linux and learn more about privacy. Now i just look for foss alternatives and have stopped pirating apps altogether.

Open source is better these days but it still can't entirely replace everything. One day, we'll be able to make the switch though

FOSS if I can find a good Windows alternative to what I need.

Warez if I can find a trustworthy release, but it's kinda rare these days.

The only program I have considered pirating in the last few years has been Topaz Gigapixel AI. I then realized that I could wait as there will likely be open-source alternatives available in the future. Upscaling old videos is not a priority for me.

Other than Windows I guess everything I use is Foss with only few free stuff (like visual studio). And it's a lot. Many different Software.