Script Limits in 2.8.0 [was Spreadsheet]

[Andre Garzia]

I had my first company (called macrowarp, silly name, I didn't choose  
it) bankrupt due to "piracy". It was a very specific case, we had a  
big contract for creating a web portal, it was very big so we devoted  
the whole company to it. We were going to earn about 25k USD, this  
was enough for the salaries and paying the financing of our machines  
and the rent. We used our reserves to keep floating while we  
fulfilled that contract. In the end, the contractor was trying to  
talk his way into paying less or paying later, one of our directors  
decided to try to show them a snapshot of the project so that they'd  
be happy with it and pay. They copied the snapshot, we never saw the  
money, portal went online and they hired a cheaper company owned by a  
relative of one of their employee to maintain it.

we were so broke that we didn't even had the money to sue. legal  
system in Brazil is so slow that can take many many years to solve  
something. We went bankrupt, closed the company. Weddings were  
cancelled, Universities abandoned. I was the one that suffered less,  
I just lost two computers and money. And the worst part was seeing  
the portal up and seeing my comments in the HTML.

This is not the standard case of piracy but it is piracy indeed. Most  
piracy of little sharewares don't hurt, they actually help to spread  
the product and if your software is good enough and priced right,  
even the pirates will buy it out of goodwill. This was big piracy... :-/

On the other hand, I was the first one to create a Blog client for  
the Macintosh, it was done in RB for MacOS 9. It was shareware and it  
sold well, never saw piracy but that would just give me more exposure  
I think.

andre



> On 14 May 2007, at 19:43, David Bovill wrote:
>
>> On 14/05/07, Chipp Walters <chipp at chipp.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Would that suppose we should never copy protect our applications  
>>> as we can
>>> use law to sue pirates? That said, I do agree with your 25 lines
>>> restriction.
>>
>>
>> Out of interest has anyone on this list had software pirated /
>> re-engineered? I'd be interested to hear of any cases. End user  
>> copying is
>> very common - but I've not come across stories of someone or  
>> taking an app
>> and copying the code illegally to sell a derivative version, but  
>> then I
>> might just be being naive here? Go-on make me paranoid :)
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