I use FOSS whenever possible.

I just use FOSS. I don't trust that proprietary garbage. I generally don't pirate software in general. Its far too easy to trojanize it. I also buy games on steam to support linux/deck and valves investment in the ecosystem, I buy them steeply discounted though. With Roms, sales and free games I have a massive backlog so being patient pays off.

I also find that the quality of the FOSS stuff is better and way more configurable. Not hating on anyone that does pirate software or prefers proprietary stuff, to each their own

Paid Software Experience:

• "Hi, Thanks for choosing us! Please sign into or sign up for your account! You agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy right?"
• "Great, and thanks for your purchase! Did you know we have a limited time sale on our Ultra Pro Superprofessional Edition?"
• "No? Well we also have a monthly subscription plan that can get you very cool features! Wanna check that out?"
• "No? Alright we'll get on with installation. But first, we need to make sure you're not running a VM, VPN and other software we don't like from our handy DRM software."
• "Oh, that DRM software also happens to collect your contact information and read your files so we can sell that for money. Thanks and enjoy!"

FOSS Experience:

• Aight you got enough disk space? Here's the GPL. Where we droppin? Cool, enjoy your program! Support me if you feel like it, bud!

Much like yourself I always try and use FOSS first and haven't pirated software since my teena

Except for games I use FOSS on my Linux desktop and on my Android phone. The FOSS alternative is often better than the proprietary software.

As a teenager I pirated everything, but that was mostly because I didn't have the money to buy it anyway. These days I mostly use FOSS and buy things like games. That being said, my 11yo likes The Sims 4 and it is almost $1200 for everything so fuck EA.

🎵 FOSS FOSS FOSS, FOSS it up! FOSS FOSS FOSS, FOSS it up! 🎵

FOSS. I don't even own a Windows partition.

For me, it's a simple ordeal. I don't mind paying so long as the product on offer is worth the cost of payment.

Adobe's pricing model is abusive, so I went with Affinity which is much cheaper and not a subscription. Zynamptic's Morph sounds sweet and is reasonably price, but it comes bundled with a driver based DRM. So I got it for free without the DRM bollocks.

With games I used to pirate, but games nowadays are dime a dozen. If it looks interesting, I might try out a demo. If the game is shite, refund which is the loudest review you have. Piracy generally isn't worth the risk for software entertainment in my eyes, yours may differ.

The only thing I still consistently pirate is movies, and that's because they all have DRM up to where the sun doesn't shine. I want to support creators, to help fund what they create. But if I have to pay to have what I bought held for ransom. I'd rather have it for free and forever mine.

To my memory the only movies I have bought were DVDs, the movie "Ink" (check it out on GOG, it's DRM free and its a pretty cool indie movie) and helped fund a S.T.A.L.K.E.R short film on kickstarter.

To wrap it up, Gaben was right. It's all about the product/service, its cost (not just price, but ease of access, DRM if any, risks, etc) and what it offers the consumers.

If I pay for a license which can be taken away at any time, that is one cost. If I can get the same thing for free and forever, but with the minor risk that it can be bundled with malware, that is another. With how bloated pricing models are and the constant DRM abomination that are forced into everything, it's no surprise Piracy is still alive and well today.

About 20 years ago, I saw this exact same discussion on mozillazine. Everyone was raving about FOSS being nicer, friendlier, and more convenient, and how piracy is bothersome.

Then this guy posted a reply, to the tune of "Yeah, and now imagine your entire OS was like that... you should try it."

A little later I did, and never looked back. For me, FOSS is convenience.

I use Arch btw.

FOSS and buy games.

I used to pirate games because I was a high school/college student but buying them from Steam is just more convenient.

I pirate media though, I used streaming services when Netflix was basically the only game in town but now that there are 25 different platforms all wanting $10/mo, f that. I can setup Sonarr and Radarr on a seedbox for cheaper and it provides more flexibility of use, no limitations on sharing (seedbox provider aside) and no annoying DRM or unexpectedly getting a 720p stream instead of a 4k HDR stream because I didn't install the latest firmware on my TV.

I'm paying for music streaming because Spotify is basically music Netflix but I'm experimenting using scrobbling/Lidarr/Airsonic.

I always perfer FOSS whenever possible.

I figure if someone out there is working on a project and wants me to use it, I owe it to them to at least give it a shot.

Occasionally, the proprietary stuff is the only option. And occasionally-occasionally that company isn't worth supporting or the price is unreasonable or more than I could afford. In which case, perhaps some seas are sailed.

FOSS over piracy for sure. While the UI and/or functionality is not often as good as the proprietary option with FOSS apps, I feel a lot more comfortable using them because they are free and you can see what's going on with them better.

Mostly FOSS since moving from Windows to Linux, still use the odd proprietary software (pirated of course).

With the recent rumors that Microsoft is moving to move Windows in its entirety to be cloud based I feel like I switched to Linux at the right moment.

At this point I only pirate media that I can't find through legit means. I think it's honestly hilarious that they don't just make every movie or album available to purchase and download without DRM, since that would be the best way to combat piracy.

I pay for what I can, but I'm also a big Linux user who loves FOSS software. Adobe can get bent. I use Gimp, Krita, and Audacity/Tenacity.

Microsoft can also get bent.

FOSS has come such a long way that I don't need proprietary software anymore for most tasks. The commercial software I use for work is 'free' anyway.

I use mosly free foss apps. It's has become a hasle to use programs that force online acounts. Kinda hate it when a app is slowly turned into a weird web app with heavy drm. And exploitive licenses

Besides games I'm almost 100% running on FOSS

I just use FOSS.

Media I pirate, but there's nearly always decent FOSS alternative for proprietary software

FLOSS. 99% better anyway. Why would i pirate something else?

Okay. Maybe i would pirate games, but my laptop is old and games that run on it are 15 years old anyways and cost next to nothing.

I don't pirate software. Usually closed-source, proprietary garbage has a lot of sketchy stuff built in already, and I don't have the energy to reverse engineer every cracked binary blob I download to make sure it doesn't have spyware or ransomware or anything. Just pirate media, not software.

Mostly FOSS nowadays. Ever since I got a little bit into cyber security I just stopped trusting a lot of software, so I just migrated everything to their respective open source alternatives.

Overtime I stopped being so paranoid, but I still find the FOSS alternatives better anyway. I mostly pirate tv shows/ anime/ movies and very rarely some games, since I mostly play full f2p gachas now a days (I know, ironic considering my previous statement about trusting software, but oh well...)

I only use free software. Not all of it is FOSS, but a most of it. Well, I do use Linux so using some pirated windows software is a lot more annoying.

100% FOSS. I never use pirated software with the exception of games, and even that is rare.

It's a mix of both. On my windows gaming rig I have ms office, photoshop sketchup and fl studio pirated. I haven't found a good foss alternative for photoshop, sketchup or flstudio (using gimp is worse than being an actuall gimp ). On my Linux laptop I've been using more and more foss. I'm getting use to Libre office but it doesn't do everything I need. Switched chrome for Firefox, vscodium as a code editor, waydroid for Android apps

I mostly use FOSS, but most games arent FOSS, so thats the only thing I pirate now.

FOSS. I don't pirate at all, it's a security nightmare. If I were to, it'd be heavily sandboxed and definitely not anything important to my day-to-day. It's just not sustainable or ethical, not to mention extremely inconvenient. I just pirate some movies occasionally.

Open source is better these days but it still can't entirely replace everything. One day, we'll be able to make the switch though

I haven't pirated software in probably 10 years? I think I used to pirate Internet Download Manager back in the slow internet days. Now, I all the applications I use are free. Now when it comes to games, I always buy on Steam. Had my steam account since the Orange Box launch, it's just to convenient. Steam sales are always priced pretty good which has given me a library of nearly a 1000 games. Don't ask me how many I played.. Gabe was 100% correct in my eyes that piracy is a service problem.

Much prefer to use FOSS where I can.

Most people absoljutely do not 'need' photoshop or MS Office, but are too lazy to try out free alternatives. Sure they don't offer 100% of the features, but for most home users they are more than enough What are people using Word for at home anyway? Creating a CV once every few years - its not like they are knocking out documents day after day.

It was early 2002 when I decided I had enough with proprietary software. Without much thought on how successful my transition would be, I just downloaded a popular distro at the time and tried to make it my new home. I'm glad I did that.

It has as smooth a ride as climbing the Himalayas, but that gave me a much necessary DIY attitude to tinker and find solutions for which I'm deeply grateful for.

So if I see someone feeling inclined to jump ship and go all FLOSS, I not only encourage them, but give them the necessary push.

By the way, I'm not a programmer. I'm not even STEM trained. I've made my career in the humanities.

I use FOSS as much as possible over pirating. It's generally just easier, and if I want to count on something existing years later FOSS is the way.

But every now and then, yar har fiddle dee dee.

I'm in the same boat. I haven't run pirated software in the last 10 years.

In my younger years I just pirated the hell out of software. From Photoshop to Sony Vegas. Nowadays i use Foss because of my Linux use, but even for my Boyfriend PC's I mostly leet him choose between Pirated Programms and FOSS software and he mostly just needs an easy software. FOSS isn't as feature full as paid software but mostly for the normal stuff you do you can just use FOSS.

Both, plenty of FOSS alternatives are not good enough yet. For example, video or image editing is much easier with adobe products.
Most SW I pirate are games or windows/office for friends.

I've always used FOSS wherever possible, even before I switched off Windows - mainly because I didn't like the risk pirated executables posed.

I could pirate games, but because I almost always play indie and can afford $15-$30 now and again, I choose to support the devs.

You have to ask yourself- what are you trying to accomplish?

To me- it's not ONLY about getting software that does what I need it to do. This is a very short point of view. It's more important that I have the freedom to accomplish what I want, the way I want to do it. This is why FOSS feels good. For me- It's not so much a matter of paying for the software... it's a matter of creating a computing environment that's healthy for what I think is important. This is part of the reason why I think using FOSS is better than pirating closed source software- you're actually doing them MORE harm this way (and that should make you feel good!)

Yeah, FOSS alternatives are good nowadays so i mostly use them.

However recently i needed Adobe Illustrator, and i sat there looking at the free trial page wondering if i was really going to send my credit card to Adobe on the pinky promise that they weren't going to charge me. So i decided to pirate, and what do you know, that's also absurdly good nowadays.

And by the way, i found what i needed from the r/piracy wiki. We need like a megathread of recommendations, like if you need to crack Photoshop here's where to get it, that kinda thing

I use Archlinux BTW and I use FOSS software 99% of the time. (I need BurpSuite but rarely)

FOSS software just takes a long time to catch up with paid-for software in terms of functionality, but sooner or later becomes much better than its paid-for competitor, for example: Blender, OBS, Matrix (chat), etc.

From time to time, I pick up a few cracked games, but I also buy a lot of them. Sometimes I pay for games and end up buying the cracked version because DRM just gives me a big stutter in the games.

On my dual boot Windows 11 (MassGraveled) I do have StartAllBack (Homemade patched), Photoshop (M0nkrused), Ableton (R2ed) and an Office Pro Plus pack (OfficeTooled + KMSed) that I almost never use. If I start up on Windows, it's to amuse myself by either EDR bypassing, Reverse Engineering Games and Programs, doing some malware analysis, or dev some games cheats.

It must be 4/5 months since I've relaunched Windows because all the games I play run natively or with wine/proton on Linux with almost no loss (for some I've even gained in performance).

If the Foss alternative dose everything I want use that

If not I pirate

My Policy:

FOSS if there is something I like that does what I need in a way I can understand.

Paid software if its useful software that doesn't have a stupid high price.

Overprice software or software that thinks their software needs a subscription service? Raise the flag!

Mostly FOSS these days. There's just so many options now. There's a few things I have from the old days as I've updated from Windows 7 through 10 over the years.

I also use open source options whenever they fulfills my needs. I am not changing to linux yet because of gaming.

I grew up relatively poor, so burning cd-s for each other and trading games was the jam when I was in school. Games I usually still pirate and even when I buy them I have already tried them to an extent, or finished them 5 times. Steam sales are a godsend for multiplayer only titles tho. I have nothing against supporting devs. But ubi, ea and those responsible for games with 0 content and giant day1 patches, season passes and all that crap can get fucked.

I rather spend that money on zero knowledge mail and vpn, maybe a donation to foss devs for things that I can't live without anymore. I need to get into the habit of donating some at least. Now that I am out of the financial danger zone.

When I was a student I had almost everything pirated, because of the lack of money and unreasonable pricing. Back then it was easy because in most cases I knew someone who knew someone who already had pirated the program.

Meanwhile I switched for alternatives (for instance I used to have Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator, now I have purchased Affinity Photo and Designer) as the trend leads into the direction of subscribed software (software-as-a-service). I prefer software to be installed locally and not dependent of a stable internet connection. Also, I have no problem with paying for proprietary software, given it is priced reasonably.

FOSS by default. Proprietary if an absolute must

FOSS if I can find a good Windows alternative to what I need.

Warez if I can find a trustworthy release, but it's kinda rare these days.

Foss pretty much exclusively, but how easily possible this is really depends on what you do.

For tools and stuff: FOSS

For games: No need to pirate thanks to Epic overloading me with free stuff. If I want something specific, keyforsteam usually does the trick for a very reasonable amount of money.

Both of these categories are just not worth it to risk a potential infection due to malware in the pirated stuff.

The only places where I do do some pirating are:

• TV shows/movies if they aren't on the two streaming services that I pay for
• Games for the hacked retro consoles that I own
• Android apps that I can hack myself

These categories are pretty safe

The only program I have considered pirating in the last few years has been Topaz Gigapixel AI. I then realized that I could wait as there will likely be open-source alternatives available in the future. Upscaling old videos is not a priority for me.

I use FOSS. You can't ever truly know if a pirated piece of software is back doored or not, so why even risk it?

I only use FLOSS software. It's just a better thing being able to see the source code.

Both actually, there are certain softwares like photoshop, ms office suite,idm etc. that I pirate. I try to use foss for almost everything else.

Most of the time FOSS, but things like After Effects that already has a huge community or plugins or things that make it super easy to use, then I just pirate it.
Yes, I know there are alternatives, but most of the time the curve to learn how to achieve the same thing is much more steep or it lacks the free plugins/presets that make it simple for a normal home user that might use it every now and then to create a shitpost or something.

I always search for a foss alternative first when it comes to software games are a fairgame for piracy tho unless they are indie

If kdenlive was even in the same ballpark of usability as Premiere maybe, but so far it's not even in the same country.

FOSS all the way. I don't want to be dependent on proprietary software as much as possible.

yes

usually use FOSS, it has been long since I pirated software

I used to pirate everything. But, I have never used/installed any commercial software since I jumped onto the FOSS bandwagon since at least 2010. I love the freedom! I even support the developers when I can.

The last software I aquired unconventionally was photoshop. Then came windows 10 and my migration to linux, so that was the end of adobe on my systems.

FOSS. Not everywhere though. I still use windows and still use SwiftKey. I'm just not adept enough for Linux. I tried it. SwiftKey will be switched eventually.

Other than Windows I guess everything I use is Foss with only few free stuff (like visual studio). And it's a lot. Many different Software.

i have slowly bought games i started playing 20+ years ago on steam for a few dollars each on sale. i largely use FOSS i still pirate windows i don't play AAA games the new games i play are largely free/crossplay/splitscreen

I mostly pirate games and when I play 10 - 20 hours and like the game, I buy them. Exceptions are when it's EA, because fuck EA and their greedy bullshit. I'd rather burn €10,- than to give it to EA

Always FLOSS I even stopped my hobby of producing music because Ardour was just not good enough for that.

I don't trust any proprietary software. I don't like putting a lot of work into something only to have the rug pulled out from under me by an arbitrary change from the dev. Open source means I can always keep using the software, even if it means I have to push code myself.

If I have a nice FOSS alternative that will fulfill my needs, then I will always prioritize FOSS. If not, then I pirate the proprietary option.

The problem is, Bitwig is not Free Software, and on top of it it costs quite a lot of money, and I left my soundcard in Sweden when I moved to Korea ^^.

I think I'll check out Ardour more thorowly. Now with Pipewire it should wor more hasslefree compared to when I had to switch between Jack and Pulse Audio manually all the time.

Both

Used to pirate apps all the time but I started getting into Linux and learn more about privacy. Now i just look for foss alternatives and have stopped pirating apps altogether.

I use FOSS where I can. If I need a certain software for something I'll pirate, but only think I can think of that for is 2013 3DS Max for FFXIV animation modding. Beyond that FOSS is more than enough.

I mostly use FOSS, and occasionally I use proprietary if there’s no proper FOSS alternatives.

I only really need Microsoft Office and Adobe Acrobat Pro for most of my needs. Other software is either FOSS or Free

MS Office and Windows are activated using MAS and m0nkrus (may he be blessed) provides my Adobe software.

I usually use FOSS when I can. Commercial software simply isn't necessary for most tasks, and you take the least amount of risk if you use the least amount of pirated software possible.

Little bit of both personally

I use FOSS for almost my entire workflow except for Maya because I really cannot get used to the Blender UI. I also still have windows on dual boot cause unreal engine runs really badly on linux (with my crappy specs anyway)

FOSS unless there is no close alternative to whatever the best is.

I use Gimp, but I also have legit Photoshop, Lightroom and DXO because Gimp is, in my opinion, pretty terrible for prosumer photography. I have not yet tried affinity, but may in the future because Adobe's subscription model is bullshit

I don't pirate software anymore, the risks aren't worth it to me

FOSS and buying games, usually. If Steam or one of my consoles ever screws me over, its good to know that I have alternative piracy methods for restoring them but I generally buy them first.

If there's a free software alternative to what I want to pirate, I always use that instead. Software is like sex. It's better when it's free.

Depends, if that software have a FOSS alternative I use the FOSS software, if not, i pirate it

I use FOSS whereever possible.

One thing I do for Games is buying used ones. I still have a PS4 and I am not playing much, so there's a ton of 2nd hand older AAA Games I haven't played yet, that are sold for a few bucks.

Both actually. I will prioritise FOSS if there's something that catches my attention, but usually just piracy.

Only games, except for indie ones (which I'd pay for)

I have not had to pirate software since I was a teenager. There are free/FOSS tools that do all of what I need well enough that I haven't needed to even consider non-free options. Documents I just use Google Docs/Sheets, video editing I use kdenlive, sound recording/editing I use audacity, screen recording and game capture I use OBS, photo/image editing I use GIMP, etc.

It's not that I am opposed to software piracy, I just have not had to do it. I would if I needed too but it just hasn't come up. For games I typically either buy them for a console or Steam and don't pirate them.

The only thing I really pirate with any regularity anymore is tv/movies/music, and most of that is just finding things to add to my jellyfin rather than anything that's new/current.

I much prefer using FOSS, but sometimes they’re not good enough compared to paid alternatives (AutoCAD vs FreeCAD; Tupi Tube vs. Adobe Animate).