According to bsa.org, the BSA is
"the foremost organization dedicated to promoting a safe and legal digital world. BSA is the voice of the world's commercial software industry and its hardware partners before governments and in the international marketplace".
And they have a few members in this alliance you may have heard of like "Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, Avid, Bentley Systems, Borland, CA, Cadence Design Systems, Cisco Systems, CNC Software/Mastercam, Dell, Entrust, HP, IBM, Intel, McAfee, Microsoft, blah, blah, blab, blab,..." You can check out the rest of the members at their site (if you want to).
Here is an excerpt from the daily mirror article.
"Studies have shown that a reduction of software piracy will not only promote the growth of the local software industry, it will create new jobs, attract foreign direct investments and generate additional tax revenues from legitimate businesses to the government".
Yes of course! Why didn't I think of this before? It must be because I'm an idiot. I always suspected this. The local software industry will grow if there's no piracy. Yes!. Virtusa will create the next-gen operating system for us locals called 'Sinhala-Dows' and will dominate the market thereafter. IFS will have to eat the scraps off Virtusa's table. Or maybe IFS can create an Office package for us Sri lankans (Lets call it Kaar-yaa-la-ya, or maybe, car-ya-liar).
But this is not the best part. No sir, not by a mile. The best part is, this will generate additional tax revenues to the government. Yay to the chinthanaya! More taxes! Now our politicians can buy more and more bulletproof BMWs. But then again, they might go all 'Deshiya' and stuff, and get some of our local mechanics to build a bulletproof bullock-cart (I wouldn't count on it being bulletproof though if I know anything about our local products. But then again, I dont know much about local products, simply because there aren't many, so I might be wrong). This is exactly what our little country needs. More taxes so the great minds by the Diyawannawa can live it up. I heard their brains have a starting threshhold of infinity.
OK, now I've vented all my anger... wait. I'm not angry. Everything I said above is sincere...
Well no, I wasn't sincere. But then again, from the hard working software engineers point of view, what we are doing is wrong by them. They work their butts off creating good software (I heard once that windows' main function is 5-6 million lines of code, but I might have heard myself speaking so dont trust that statement too much) and we use it without paying a cent (Why is he suddenly talking like this you wonder. hmm... I tell you it has nothing to do with the fact that I might also one day, hopefully, if I pass all the exams, become one of those hard working SE).
The thing is, even if you managed to completely wipe out piracy in this country, the software houses wont start writing any general purpose software, like Operating systems or Office packages. You might argue that piracy is the only thing keeping them from doing so, and I agree to a certain extent, but the fact is, piracy isn't the only thing thats keeping them. For starters, there are free alternatives available, so there's no point in making new ones, and also, there is a lack of what I like to call, a 'software buying trend'. We dont walk into a shop and buy a boxed set of original software, unlike in the States or Europe, and it'll take some years for this trend to catch up and become a norm in our IT culture.
There are a lot of things to say about this, and many people I talked to had many different things to say. Leave a comment (If you want to), but in the meantime, all you Pirates out there beware! the BSA is out there, waiting, watching, smelling out the scent of free software right to your doorstep. Yes, you. You're a pirate. Did you really think Windows was free? Have you been living under the cost of living all these years you... What? ME! What about me? Ha Ha sucker! I use Ubuntu. They cant catch me... They wont..... Ha ha....
Yes of course! Why didn't I think of this before? It must be because I'm an idiot. I always suspected this. The local software industry will grow if there's no piracy. Yes!. Virtusa will create the next-gen operating system for us locals called 'Sinhala-Dows' and will dominate the market thereafter. IFS will have to eat the scraps off Virtusa's table. Or maybe IFS can create an Office package for us Sri lankans (Lets call it Kaar-yaa-la-ya, or maybe, car-ya-liar).
But this is not the best part. No sir, not by a mile. The best part is, this will generate additional tax revenues to the government. Yay to the chinthanaya! More taxes! Now our politicians can buy more and more bulletproof BMWs. But then again, they might go all 'Deshiya' and stuff, and get some of our local mechanics to build a bulletproof bullock-cart (I wouldn't count on it being bulletproof though if I know anything about our local products. But then again, I dont know much about local products, simply because there aren't many, so I might be wrong). This is exactly what our little country needs. More taxes so the great minds by the Diyawannawa can live it up. I heard their brains have a starting threshhold of infinity.
OK, now I've vented all my anger... wait. I'm not angry. Everything I said above is sincere...
Well no, I wasn't sincere. But then again, from the hard working software engineers point of view, what we are doing is wrong by them. They work their butts off creating good software (I heard once that windows' main function is 5-6 million lines of code, but I might have heard myself speaking so dont trust that statement too much) and we use it without paying a cent (Why is he suddenly talking like this you wonder. hmm... I tell you it has nothing to do with the fact that I might also one day, hopefully, if I pass all the exams, become one of those hard working SE).
The thing is, even if you managed to completely wipe out piracy in this country, the software houses wont start writing any general purpose software, like Operating systems or Office packages. You might argue that piracy is the only thing keeping them from doing so, and I agree to a certain extent, but the fact is, piracy isn't the only thing thats keeping them. For starters, there are free alternatives available, so there's no point in making new ones, and also, there is a lack of what I like to call, a 'software buying trend'. We dont walk into a shop and buy a boxed set of original software, unlike in the States or Europe, and it'll take some years for this trend to catch up and become a norm in our IT culture.
There are a lot of things to say about this, and many people I talked to had many different things to say. Leave a comment (If you want to), but in the meantime, all you Pirates out there beware! the BSA is out there, waiting, watching, smelling out the scent of free software right to your doorstep. Yes, you. You're a pirate. Did you really think Windows was free? Have you been living under the cost of living all these years you... What? ME! What about me? Ha Ha sucker! I use Ubuntu. They cant catch me... They wont..... Ha ha....
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