The Urge to Steal

A person I know approached me with a box full of blank CDs with a request to ‘write software’. Happens this fellow had recently purchased a computer (A Punteom Phor, nothing less). Now he wants the “latest and best software”. What for, I ask. Anything…everything, he replies…ahem..what for, repeat…”music making, photo making”.

Duh! It was not over here. Apparently he got Office XP pre-installed (pirated of course), but he’s not happy. Thinks he’s being ripped and wants nothing less than Office 2003 on his fastest Pentium 4 2.8 GHz.

Which irritates me so. Why do people want to indulge in software piracy when they don’t even need to? People who won’t be able to make out the difference between Microsoft Wordpad and Microsoft Word want the latest Office Suite, just becuase it can be had for a Rs. 100. People who cannot use or do not need to use even Windows Paintbrush insist on getting Adobe Photoshop pirated pre-installed on their assembled computers. I cannot imagine the reason behind this greed to horde software. Using a pirated copy of an operating system, on computer assembled on a shoe string budget, is a different story altogether. Now, don’t take me otherwise, I’m not advocating pircay. What I’m trying to say is that while stealing operating system has a clearly discernible motive, that of running the computer (like a hungry man stealing bread for instance?) the latter has no rhyme and reason whatsoever (kleptomania? softoklepto…watever?).

Oh, and btw I tried to convince the guy that he does not need Office 2003 and he started fuming and accusing me of behaving like a meanie not sharing software…double duh…