@hakui >yes we're losing a portion of sales due to piracy so clearly keeping it proprietary is a failure, we should release it and lose almost all our sales instead
The whole concept of unauthorized copying == lost sales is complete bullshit.

A company has *made* money if someone has actually paid for a copy and then unauthorized copied it (with the company losing $0 with each successive copy made) - unfortunately each of those copies is a potential sale from each sucker.

I know this, because microsoft was and is very pleased when China and many other countries use unauthorized copies of their software instead of using GNU/Linux - as all of those people get locked-in the proprietary jail and eventually it becomes time for them to pay.

That is one of the reasons why I recommend against running unauthorized copies of proprietary malware - eventually many of those people will be forced or convinced to pay and humanity loses.

>why would you buy a john deere? it's not critical to your survival you can cut the lawn with a pair of scissors instead
Yes, only the stupid now buy a John Deere farming implement instead of farming implements available elsewhere.

Farmers who previously made the mistake of renting a John Deere tractor usually never do so again - some have even gone back to using decades old tractors that they have no problem repairing.