Some of our domestic software companies, including quite a few promising application software developers, often set very high prices when launching their software and adopt advanced "encryption technologies" to prevent piracy, either out of eagerness to recoup their investment or for other considerations.
However, they overlook that after their software is cracked, the number of users will inevitably increase significantly due to the lower price, thereby increasing the software's market penetration rate. Moreover, since cracked software will inevitably have some problems during use, this will in turn promote "genuine software purchases" due to work and other needs.
But the premise is whether your software is truly "excellent."
Here I'd like to quote Mr. Xu Guangbin, founder of Blue Mango Studio: "Although our company's software is pirated, I still want to thank those who use pirated software because they give me confidence that my software is truly useful. What we sell is not just the software itself, but more importantly our service and the process of growing together with our partners."
So all along, I haven't been very supportive of those software companies that come out to blame "pirated" software for affecting their survival.
Because while piracy may indeed cause them some harm, what's more frightening is that their software quality doesn't warrant being pirated.
Editor's Note: This article was written in 2003, when the software industry ecosystem was quite different from today. Now, the SaaS (Software as a Service) model has become mainstream, and the concept of "selling services rather than software" has long been widely accepted. Looking back at this article, one cannot help but admire the author's forward-thinking vision.