My most recent column about students and software piracy stirred-up a lot of controversy. As of this writing, 65 of you have responded with comments about the ethics of software piracy and the reasoning behind my article. Some of the comments were vitriolic, some were praiseworthy, and I thank you for the responses. This is obviously a hot topic, one worthy of some additional discussion.

Many of you misunderstood or misinterpreted me. For example, nowhere in the column did I say that students are required to purchase software for the courses I or any of my colleagues teach. There are 45 computers in Cal Poly's Graphic Communication Department labs. Each one is outfitted with a tremendous amount of software, all of it legal, for the students to use. My students are required only to have an e-mail address and access to the Web, both of which are available on public computers around campus without any charge.

We provide ample time in our labs for students to complete their assignments, and we also provide Open Labs, after-hours times when students are welcome to come to work on any class project using the university facilities. We offer access to printers -- a color laser printer (Xerox DocuColor 40 with a Splash PostScript RIP), a photo printer (Fuji PictroProof with a PostScript RIP), a large-format ink-jet printer (Epson 9500 with BestColor PostScript RIP), and a black-and-white Apple LaserWriter printer.

We have five excellent scanners (Nikon, Heidelberg, Screen, and Epson) the students can use, and we have a multimedia station with loudspeakers for those who want to edit video with Apple Final Cut Pro, iMovie, or Adobe Premiere.

Obviously there is no shortage of technology available to our students. This is a result of investments by the university and by generous donations from software and hardware manufacturers. These firms have committed themselves to education.

Creative Software Development
Many of the more caustic comments in the Vox Box responses disparaged software makers as "tyrants" or as greedy corporations that exploit students (and others) through "overpriced" software. I dispute these statements as being shortsighted. I personally know many of the people who develop the software we use in our industry. I know that sometimes their balance sheets bleed red ink, and I know that occasionally one of them will go out of business, leaving us without improvements, support, or upgrade paths. The software business is a very complex and expensive endeavor. The cost of developing a new application and getting it to market is measured in the millions of dollars. Without customers and income, the firms that make these investments will not get a return on their investment, or on their dream of making a successful product. They can fail if you steal from them.

Software developers are creative people, too. They invent the tools that we love to use, and they overcome hundreds, sometimes thousands of bugs to deliver products that are effective and trouble-free. These people get as excited about a new brush, or mask, or plug-in as an artist is of a new drawing, or a photographer who has made a particularly complex image. There is no difference between the worth of the software developer and a creative artist. For anyone to imply otherwise is irresponsible and selfish. We're all in this together, folks.

Now let's talk about money.

Inexpensive Alternatives
Many people railed about paying "exorbitant" fees for software. Somehow that was expressed as a justification for the theft of software that some people deem to be too expensive. Cars are exorbitantly expensive, too, yet we don't steal cars, do we? I can't justify that. How can you?

Many readers said that software companies should charge less for their software, and that students would pay for it if the price was lower. But, one writer, a software developer, commented that his firm makes a Photoshop alternative that sells to students for $29.00 ($49.95 list). The company, MicroFrontier, offers its product, Color It! to the public for this low price, yet the firm still sees significant software piracy. So, is price really the issue? It must not be, or students would be buying this product and others like it in droves.

Adobe Systems offers Photoshop Elements for $99. This is essentially Photoshop "Light." Elements is a great tool for students. It is inexpensive -- $49 for students -- and it provides an introduction to Photoshop at a fraction of the price, so you can still get a "brand-name" experience without shelling out big bucks.

Others suggested that because Enron stole money from its investors, that students can steal software from software publishers. I won't dignify that suggestion with a response. Another writer accused Microsoft of charging too much for its Office application (and one writer praised them for being generous to students!).

In addition to the disc-only student version of Microsoft Office that I mentioned in my article ($30 at our student bookstore), I found that Microsoft offers a complete version with manuals to students for $199.95 (available throught the campus store). If these versions are not available to you, Apple Computer and Microsoft have teamed-up to offer a complete version of Office for $199.95 (until April 7, 2003) with any new Macintosh purchased.

An alternative office-type suite is called ThinkFree Office, a product that offers word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications that read and write equivalent files from Microsoft applications. ThinkFree Office is $49.95 (cheaper if you look around a bit). ThinkFree runs on both Macintosh and Windows.

There is also the $40 OpenOSX Office, an application that runs in UNIX (and Mac OS X). Included in this package are word processor, spreadsheet editor, and a vector drawing application. An optional image manipulation application will open and edit Photoshop documents -- even those with layers.

On the fonts front, there are thousands (tens of thousands maybe) of free fonts and shareware fonts. When I taught Advanced Typography in the Fall, my students freely downloaded dozens of fonts for use in their projects and used these in addition to the fonts available to them in our labs. Many of the world's leading font foundries offer select fonts for free, and many of the start-up font foundries offer TrueType versions of their fonts as sales incentives for their PostScript libraries.

Some of the best examples of this are fontdiner.com ("1,622,823 Billion Served!"), fontfont.com, and myfonts.com, each of which offer free fonts from time to time. Or, if sensory overload is your pleasure, type "free fonts" into Google, and be assaulted by a list that goes on for pages and pages. 1001freefonts.com will answer your need for a font to entitle your newest horror movie! My students were able to find nearly all the fonts they wanted on these sites without paying a penny to any "software tyrants." I was mightily impressed with the quality and variety of the fonts they found, and grateful for the free offers (though some of the free fonts crashed computers here and there).

And, those "tyrants" at Adobe Systems have recently announced a font collection – available only to students and teachers -- that includes more than 400 OpenType fonts for less than $100. I bought this disc recently, and am amazed by the offering. I have long been a fan of Jim Parkinson and his type designs, and have purchased a few over the years. I wanted to buy the Jimbo series, but was never able to afford the whole set. With this package from Adobe, I now own legal copies of the entire Jimbo font set, all of the Minions, Adobe Garamonds, Myriads, Warnocks, Lithos, etc. etc. etc. Adobe Type Classics for Learning, is designed to expose students to the new font format while establishing a beachhead for the new OpenType format. What a deal!

And, Adobe also makes packages of its design software available to students at substantial discounts. The Design Collection carries a student price of $499 and includes Photoshop 7.0, Illustrator 10, InDesign 2.0 and Acrobat 5.0. That combination of applications is almost all a student would need to produce professional designs and publications. It is a bargain at that price.

With all these alternatives, there are no reasons for the ethical student not to have legal and current copies of these great applications or their alternatives.

Vox Populi Vituperi
In another column I will address horrible spelling, grammar, vulgarity, and name-calling, all of which were part of the recent responses to my article on software piracy. I'll call that one "Civility in Public Places" when I write it.

Read more by Brian P. Lawler.