There is a lot of 'free' stuff on the World Wide Web. Just about everyone likes free stuff, who wouldn't? But sometimes the 'free' stuff really isn't free, in order to get the free stuff you have to make a compromise of some sort, like agree to view ads, or let someone follow your web surfing. (This is how a lot of spyware gets planted on computers!)
What some people may not realize or stop to think about, software offered for 'free' is still the result of someone's labor. Really free software is usually offered because there really are folks, who for whatever reason, are offering software they wrote because of their own need. Once it was written they have decided to share with others the fruits of their labor.
Sometimes these folks decide to keep making improvements to their product and eventually the programs become very substantial and are no longer free, but become 'shareware'. A very well known graphics program started out this way and a lot of others as well. After all, it takes work to write, test and rewrite software. Really good software program writers deserve to receive compensation for their work.
So when unscrupulous thugs try to take advantage of someone else's hard work and offer 'cracks' for software, the people who go for it are in fact, thieves as well. Most of these same people who use 'crack' software probably would never dream of shoplifting or breaking in to someone's business and home to steal merchandise, but they are in effect stealing someone else's hard work.
There are also some 'work-arounds' offered for services. One that comes to mind is a program that offers to allow a user to get around the requirement that Yahoo email must be a paid for (premium) service in order to allow downloaded emails of their popular email service to a user's computer. Again, this is in effect stealing!
Why an otherwise honest person decides to take advantage of a 'crack' and steal is simply beyond me. I can only surmise that these folks just don't stop to think or maybe it's because they just decide they want it, so get it and phooey on ethics!
Martha
Martha's Web
