"Jim Watt" <jimwatt@aol.no_way> wrote in message
news:q3u6m11fu38h979efvi13s59vl76aa1ot4@4ax.com...
> On Sat, 29 Oct 2005 11:27:36 GMT, "Hairy One Kenobi"
> <abuse@[127.0.0.1]> wrote:
>
> <snip>
>
> >Absolutely. Just be wary of saying that stealing a Ferrari from the
factory
> >is fine, because someone /might/ not have bought it
>
> Of course the difference is that the Ferrari cost money to make
> wheras copies of software involve no cost to the manufacturer.

Yes and no to that one: you recoup your development cost from your expected
sales. Until you make that back, you're down (I'm utterly sure that you well
understand this, but I'm trying to make it crystal clear to everyone..)

In other words, if you invest $1m developing something and expect to sell
exactly two, a price of less than $500k is going to leave you in trouble.

Expect to sell 100k of 'em, and you can start the bidding at $10 plus your
profit, cost of capital, etc. If, OTOH, you expect 90% of the 100k users to
be using pirated copies, you set the price a bar higher, at $100. So that
the 10% of legitimate users end up footing the entire development bill.

Of course, the pirates then respond that they're only doing it because the
software costs ten times what it should...

Basically a chicken-and-egg situation.

> However, on trying to sell someone our payroll package, they
> already had a nice one, does it do xyz oh yes. indeed it did all
> the things ours did because it was. Pleased to say they went
> bust.

Ditto - that's why we've pretty much pulled out of the Far Eastern market:
there are a helluva lot of legitimate customers to be had, but it just got
too expensive to compete against our own software :o\

> But a lot of the 'piracy costs millions' is hype.

Agreed. Particularly in the music industry - wish they'd make up their mind
as to whether I'm buying a license or the media. Having already had money
from me for both vinyl and CD, damned if I'm going to start buying the whole
lot all over again in electronic format!

H1K