No surprise AutoDesk is aggressive towards small businesses.
The small businesses I was working support for were not promoting piracy, but the guys at user level kept offering me copies of AutoDesk. They understood the dilemma - how do you get a job that requires use of £1000+ software when you do not earn enough to buy it legally?
Most of these small firms would not consider training someone with general talent to get them up to speed with the software. The Drawing Office managers would quietly promote (or sometimes supply) use of copied software, because they were the ones trying to keep their office fully staffed. It was always quietly admitted that everyone working there had to started out learning it by obtaining software or activation key by non-legal means
You need to think very carefully before you embark on using libre software, it starts out with the small things like a text editor and before you know it owns your system 
typo? should this not read "before you know it, you own your system"
But agree it does require thought, not so easy to accept responsibility
Sorry, I was making an ironic pun...
...clearly it didn't work 
apologies for being too literal
If the free beer is better than the expensive beer the choice is easy. If the free beer isn't as good there will always be some who will still want it (in UK we call them 'rugby players' 
) and some who will prefer to pay for the better product. The astute cheapskate will try to help the brewer of free beer make it better
My whole family uses Libre Office. It is amazing what people can learn to "make do" with when Dad refuses to pay for something:)
I remember when software came with an actual book on how to use it. No one ever read it from cover to cover. Office had to be 4 inches think.
Most people would never use all the features found on WordPerfect 5.1
Part of my argument is that they actually are (as you put it) a natural phenomenon.
Part of running a business is protecting your financial assets. Do you honestly believe that you can protect opensource intellectual property AS WELL AS closed source property?
Actually, I really liked WP5.1. I had an old garbage bin recycled IBM XT running at a whopping 4.77 MHz, which by the way is just over a quarter or what a bloody Arduino runs at. WP5.1 ran totally smooth and without any lag on it, with the IBM keyboard, it was a word processing dream. I actually saw no reason to upgrade my PC for a very long time because all of the Windows 3.11 with WP5.2 or MS-Word or MacIntoshes with MS-Word, had far more lag and a far inferior typing experience. For my music needs, I actually used an Atari, because there was proper low lag software for it, which wasn't the case for either Windows or MacOS at that time. And for heavy computational, I had a UNIX based hacked system with 17 68000's, which was a that time a throw away chip. It boggles my mind how people spend a lot of money "upgrading" to effectively slower or lower efficiency solutions just to get a bit more graphics on a screen or to have to learn less (and then defend the right to know less with aggression as we've seen above).
I usually use the Calligra suite these days in KDE, because it's the fastest system I've ever used short of vim or LaTeX. Especially on Gnome, in linux also things can be really slow and laggy, not as much as in Windows or OSX, but still a lot, to the point that I just can't accept it. Evolution for instance, Gnome's PIM/Mail Client, is really annoying because the writing lag is just impossible to live with. KMail on KDE does more and has no lag. On Gnome, I use Claws Mail, which is a bit 20th Century to be honest, just because Evolution is unbearably laggy and slow.
So the price of the software is not really the factor, but the "make do" part you mention is very important, I just won't accept that at all, it either performs, or I don't use it. So I just refuse to "make do" with slow laggy programs. That's why I don't use Windows or OSX, but also why I don't use Gnome Shell Evolution for instance. Everybody has his/her own dealbreaker-type requirements, mine are efficiency and user input lag and response. I'm more happy with an Atom-based system running KDE with Calligra and Kontact for mailing and making documents, than with a dual Xeon running Windows with MS-Word and MS-Outlook or Gnome Shell with LibreOffice and Evolution, because the first works faster in that application and doesn't get on my nerves and doesn't make me lose time, whereas the second does. People not applying the real highest standard, but instead staring themselves blind at marketing materials and pricetags, are a huge problem.
The real question is: if you can't protect your IP with all the money in the world and even with illegal systems of mass exploitation and massive human rights violation, political corruption and judicial bribery, what is your IP worth then? Is it not more valuable to have an attribution in open source to your name and no hassle, than to have tons and tons of negative value assets that cost ever more to keep as overvalued as they are on your balance sheet? It's not because the hyperinflation of software IP isn't officially recognized for all sorts of reasons that it isn't real lol...
Yes you can..Because both are based on the same copyright protection laws...FOSS is copyrighted. It is not public domain....It is just that FOSS has no requirement for protection by default from ¨unauthorized distribution¨ cause you are free to distribute. It is a completely moot point
How is a business model a natural phenomenon? This makes no sense.
What you decide to do with your code is your choice as a business. Abobe is not forced by external forces to keep their source closed. Just like the krita guys for example were not forced to make their application open. People just set business models based on various aspiration of business, purpose and profitability.
My point is that with copyright law of any kind, it only protects the code and MAYBE the methods you have used to make the software. Anyone can change the code to perform the same function and call it something different and redistribute it.
You can't reliably prevent people from forking your project. I mean for fuck sake just look at all the court cases that take months or years over patent infringement which is a lot easier to defend in court.
As far as "natural phenomena" goes. I was thinking that you were using it a weird way and I was just playing off it. Companies usually have to close the source for the software because the market is full of sharks who will do what ever they can to skirt around the law and undercut their competitors.
So as a result of the "natural" environment of the dog eat dog free market, the "phenomena" that we witness is that companies are less likely to open source their software and choose a more traditional business model.
Its a fucked up interpretation of your words, so I apologize. Hopefully you can better understand where I was going with that.
8 slots instead of 5!
Forget if it was 8 or 12 clock cycles for one instruction, and a 16 bit cpu on an 8 bit bus.
I love how MS beat Lotus 123 with Excel. Sabotage Windows code. When Lotus finally wins in court they are already bankrupt and it is too late. Dirty deeds done dirt cheap.
That is the point of FOSS business. You do not have to do that. The code protection is not an asset you rely your business on. You do not have to protect anything, You just have to be on top of the game in terms of technology and support, manage development through community participation and let the community of users and developers go with it. You want things to be forked, You want more people to use piece of the code. The greater the environment the greater your sustainability, even if you are not the only one developing or controlling everything.
Adobe is forced to do things otherwise cause they purposely begun their business the traditional way. It is not the only option any more.
I'm not sure what to say except to maybe suggest you read up on FOSS, libre software, and the GPL and why it exists. You seem to completely misunderstand free software at a fundamental level.
Yes. But only under the terms that the original author set. In many cases this is things like the GPL that requires that they share alike keeping the GPL with their code changes.
For this reason, they are getting exactly what they want, and their code is being protected exactly how they want it to be.
Its just a different method of business, and no less a valid one.
Companies like Microsoft and Adobe are turning more and more to controlled subscriptions in an attempt to keep absolute control over their software.
Companies like Red Hat push their software out under the GPL in an attempt to increase availability, participation, and productivity.
Why do people pay Red Hat money? For support, for development of the software they use, for being able to ask red hat to fix bugs and add features.
Why do people pay Adobe? Because they control the market with proprietary formats and essentially monopolised software, so you have to pay Adobe because there isn't any other choice.
(its a excessively simplistic and very incomplete example, but its a reasonable example)
This is a problem with patents, not free software, and is everywhere in software, not just free software.
Right, but people also have to eat.
If joe writes a piece of software one day and he wants to turn it into a business, then under foss he would have to be constantly developing it and pray to the gods above that someone doesn't pull the carpet out from under him.
So what happens if a software company comes along and forks joes software. Lets say they change it enough to redistribute it. The small company will have more developers, better distribution and support channels, and will ultimately offer a better product.
You are telling me that joe's dream of starting his own company goes poof.
Whats your point?
This happens more often than your think with proprietary software.
If robers come into my house, I don't give them the key to my safe.
IDK why we are trying to make it easy for shitty people to steal software.
And this is why I say i think you're missing the point at a fundamental level. No conversation here is going to change anything until you get that I think..
Somewhere the point of libre/open source software has been lost on you. There is no fear of them stealing the software there is;
1) An onus on them making the source code available if they redistribute their changes to your code (if under a copyleft GPL style licence)
or
2) An incentive for them to send the changes upstream back to you so that when you make modifications and release a new version of your product they don't then go through merge-hell trying to put their changed code back into the new version of the original product e.g. they can't have their cake and eat it. (if using a permissive FreeBSD style licence)
No. Its that there are fundamental problems with FOSS and the GPL.
Call me crazy, but I have run a business before. I know competition is like, and I know there is no honor among thieves.
Probably the most important thing is that I also know how scary it is to have a very small start up company heavily rely on sales and trade secrets.
If we lived in a perfect world, we wouldn't be having this conversation.
I think the people who violate the GPL will have 0 regard for its rules. If they do break the license, I think your options in court are limited. Now maybe this is different in other countries. But here in america, people break the law and get away with it all the time. The GPL licenses is a glass shield. Even full blown copy right is pretty fucking weak.
And if someone shares the same lack of faith I do, I don't think its fair to have richard sthalman dance around and demonize us simply because we want to protect our business ventures.