The crack's are appearing...

Matty G, over at The Losers, was recently discussing the use of pirate software for educational purposes and the options that exist for someone wishing to be part of an industry that expects the graduates and the wanna-bes to already possess the skills when they come knocking at the door.

This is intended as a reply to his post, that grew a little too large in the comment box...so its moved over here to take root.

Many artists I know, including myself, are self-taught. We’ve poured over tutorials, videos and expensive books while pursuing our own projects, endeavouring to learn the ins and outs of the tools of our trade, or the trade we aim to make our profession. But, is it wrong? Yes, in each case using cracked software is a violation of the software’s licence. Is it a bad thing? No.

This is a interesting topic and one that is relevant to my own field of work too. Being a software developer, the choices of development platforms and environments range from the free open-source options (the Bazaars) up to the expensive, propriety solutions such as Microsoft Visual Studio (the Cathedrals).

Depending on where exactly you wish to work as a programmer and which career options you'd like available to you, there may not be as many choices as first thought. The fact is that the Visual Studio IDE is the most popular and, if you want to learn Windows programming, you don't have much choice but to pay for it. Its in Microsoft's long-term interests to get students and up-and-coming developers to get hooked on VB.NET, C#, MFC etc; but their focus is on the financial gains of selling software licences.

I try to draw the line personally as much as possible and opt to use legally owned software. In the past few months, I've started exploring open source alternatives for graphic design, video editting & web page development. These are normally things I do for myself, not really with education in mind, but instead focussed on the end result. These are things I want to be able to produce with legally owned software. But none of these things I do for commercial pursuits. These are all amateur hobbies of mine, so I will never see a return on an enormous investment into propietry software solutions...the Adobe Photoshops, Illustrators, the Macromedia Dreamweavers & Fireworks, Adobe Premier & AfterEffects and Sony Vegas software solutions that I know and would use if I was doing any of these pursuits for profit.

Thankfully, there are options out there. Thanks to great sites like www.osalt.com and more like them, the open source alternatives to the big names can be easily found and, even though, these open source alternatives may not provide the same diversity of features and level of support that the expensive solutions have, they have many things a hobbiest could want...passionate communities of users, a fast development turn-a-round for new features...and being open source, the code that produced the program freely available and waiting to be cracked open. Nothing stops a programmer like me from implementing the features I want anyway. Besides, there're plenty of good lessons available from 'poping the hood' and checking out these program's internals.

For open source alternatives to most programs that you currently use, visit the following sites.

www.osalt.com
www.opensourcewindows.org
www.digitaldarknet.net/thelist/

...and, if anyone cares to know about the seminal discussion on open source solutions, check out The Cathedral and the Bazaar.