When I personally used pirated stuff it was because I couldn't afford to buy it or there was no other possibility to get a digital copy that is easier to search and transport.

It is only greed that is stopping our world from becoming something with all the good features of series like "Star Trek" including access to all those books for free.

The greedy people think they can gain even more money by forcing poor people to buy their stuff by punishing them. The greedy who have money influence governments to make laws against this piracy and investigate against them with public money.

In the end the poor can still not afford to buy the books, music etc. and will just be punished which costs more public money than giving them free access in the first place.

This is just another thing that is very wrong in our world.

But in the end artists just like open source maintainers need money to pay their food and most of them can't afford to stop charging for their work.

I would love to do that but I can't afford it so I won't. If the system changes and the government gives every citizen 1k $ / month we can start this discussion again because I would really much appreciate to do things that I like without having to take money for my work.

The difference between $200k and $300k is a lot, but I see a lot of unattached young people not really caring. Ironically, it seems much smaller than the difference between $20k and $30k.

But most artists don't have people breaking their door down to compete for their time. And anyways, coding is a creative profession; I'm sure that plenty of techies are aspiring artists who didn't like their odds.

I'm surprised that more people don't see exclusively 'ex post facto' rewards as a sort of corrupting influence on the creation of art, rather than a motivator.

In which context do you see that?

> ex post facto' rewards as a sort of corrupting influence on the creation of art

So ... Patronage only? Commissions only?

Without piracy, which was essentially a for education free trial of sorts many graphic designers would probably be using other free or cheaper alternatives

Pirating CS6 can only go on so long, right? After a while its ui will simply be too out of date compared to the current cc offering right?

How is GIMP coming along these days?

Any other open source projects people recommend?

Authors are motivated to write books because of money. A lot of authors who are not make their books available for free in pdf and other formats. Almost all ORielly books are found as pdfs on internet too.