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!

I just use FOSS. I don't trust that proprietary garbage. I generally don't pirate software in general. Its far too easy to trojanize it. I also buy games on steam to support linux/deck and valves investment in the ecosystem, I buy them steeply discounted though. With Roms, sales and free games I have a massive backlog so being patient pays off.

I also find that the quality of the FOSS stuff is better and way more configurable. Not hating on anyone that does pirate software or prefers proprietary stuff, to each their own

I use FOSS whenever possible.

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

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.

For me, it's a simple ordeal. I don't mind paying so long as the product on offer is worth the cost of payment.

Adobe's pricing model is abusive, so I went with Affinity which is much cheaper and not a subscription. Zynamptic's Morph sounds sweet and is reasonably price, but it comes bundled with a driver based DRM. So I got it for free without the DRM bollocks.

With games I used to pirate, but games nowadays are dime a dozen. If it looks interesting, I might try out a demo. If the game is shite, refund which is the loudest review you have. Piracy generally isn't worth the risk for software entertainment in my eyes, yours may differ.

The only thing I still consistently pirate is movies, and that's because they all have DRM up to where the sun doesn't shine. I want to support creators, to help fund what they create. But if I have to pay to have what I bought held for ransom. I'd rather have it for free and forever mine.

To my memory the only movies I have bought were DVDs, the movie "Ink" (check it out on GOG, it's DRM free and its a pretty cool indie movie) and helped fund a S.T.A.L.K.E.R short film on kickstarter.

To wrap it up, Gaben was right. It's all about the product/service, its cost (not just price, but ease of access, DRM if any, risks, etc) and what it offers the consumers.

If I pay for a license which can be taken away at any time, that is one cost. If I can get the same thing for free and forever, but with the minor risk that it can be bundled with malware, that is another. With how bloated pricing models are and the constant DRM abomination that are forced into everything, it's no surprise Piracy is still alive and well today.

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

As a teenager I pirated everything, but that was mostly because I didn't have the money to buy it anyway. These days I mostly use FOSS and buy things like games. That being said, my 11yo likes The Sims 4 and it is almost $1200 for everything so fuck EA.

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

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.

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.

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 and buy games.

I used to pirate games because I was a high school/college student but buying them from Steam is just more convenient.

I pirate media though, I used streaming services when Netflix was basically the only game in town but now that there are 25 different platforms all wanting $10/mo, f that. I can setup Sonarr and Radarr on a seedbox for cheaper and it provides more flexibility of use, no limitations on sharing (seedbox provider aside) and no annoying DRM or unexpectedly getting a 720p stream instead of a 4k HDR stream because I didn't install the latest firmware on my TV.

I'm paying for music streaming because Spotify is basically music Netflix but I'm experimenting using scrobbling/Lidarr/Airsonic.

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.

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.

Edit: I don't pirate the mentioned software.

I'd love to use FOSS exclusively, but it's frankly impossible under certain conditions.

Acrobat is a must. Alternatives such as Evince or their back-end library can't handle the following situations:

• Formulars, such as calculating a sum based on the preceding fields.
• Field formatting, such as appending .00 to a currency amount conditionally upon field unfocus.
• Everything related to government forms due to the above.
• Large password protected PDF files.

Besides, if anything is wrong, you're on the hook for not using Acrobat.

Microsoft Office is a must.

• OnlyOffice, WPS free as in free beer, and especially LibreOffice can't handle anything beyond intermediate documents.
• OnlyOffice and WPS struggle with more advanced features, such as forms.
• LibreOffice notoriously renders Microsoft Office documents incorrectly in my experience.
• Everything in LibreOffice except LibreOffice Writer feels unpolished to me, particularly LibreOffice Calc.
• OnlyOffice supports only few fields.
• OnlyOffice permits free form input for fields that aren't.

Adobe is a must.

• Alternatives don't integrate as well with each other as Adobe apps.
• Rendering whatever you have to import that into another app is a slow workflow, compared to Adobe Premiere that embeds Adobe After Effects sequences, for example.
• Alternatives don't support scripting sometimes. Scripting is necessary to speed up slow and error-prone manual processes.
• Adobe has a rich plugin ecosystem, whereas alternatives don't support plugins at all, or don't have any notable plugins.
• Alternatives don't support Adobe file formats as well as Adobe.

You face similar problems to Adobe with alternatives, such as:

• Inconsistent keyboard shortcuts.
• Inconsistent file format support.

Overall, I'd love to, but can't. FOSS isn't good enough.

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

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.

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.

At this point I only pirate media that I can't find through legit means. I think it's honestly hilarious that they don't just make every movie or album available to purchase and download without DRM, since that would be the best way to combat piracy.

I pay for what I can, but I'm also a big Linux user who loves FOSS software. Adobe can get bent. I use Gimp, Krita, and Audacity/Tenacity.

Microsoft can also get bent.

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.

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.

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.

Yeah, FOSS alternatives are good nowadays so i mostly use them.

However recently i needed Adobe Illustrator, and i sat there looking at the free trial page wondering if i was really going to send my credit card to Adobe on the pinky promise that they weren't going to charge me. So i decided to pirate, and what do you know, that's also absurdly good nowadays.

And by the way, i found what i needed from the r/piracy wiki. We need like a megathread of recommendations, like if you need to crack Photoshop here's where to get it, that kinda thing

I mostly use FOSS, but most games arent FOSS, so thats the only thing I pirate now.

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

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).

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!)

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.

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...)

Both, plenty of FOSS alternatives are not good enough yet. For example, video or image editing is much easier with adobe products.
Most SW I pirate are games or windows/office for friends.

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.

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

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

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

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.

I've always used FOSS wherever possible, even before I switched off Windows - mainly because I didn't like the risk pirated executables posed.

I could pirate games, but because I almost always play indie and can afford $15-$30 now and again, I choose to support the devs.

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

Been on Linux for years so I don't need pirated software.

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