What could the software licensing landscape look like in 2015?
Write a short predictive analysis
The development of software licensing and software market in general has been growing exponentially over the last decade, so I might say that it is hard to precisely predict its development in 5 years. However, there are some undeniable trends in the market that cannot be ignored. There are various types of software and the licensing landscape would look different for each of them.
There are big players in the software market, mainly professional well known software such as AutoCad, MathCad, Adobe Photoshop and CorelDraw. This kind software is well known for its superior quality, good brand name (reputation), they are leaders in the sphere the program in operating in. The licensing for this kind of software wouldn’t change much in five years, because the users (mostly corporate clients) wouldn’t be able to give up the benefits they can get obtain by using it. Substituting this king of software with its freeware equivalents would need an investment to educate company’s employees how to work with the new software and also would significantly ruin company’s brand name.
Well known and widely used software, for example, Microsoft Office, would even more than now suffer from many cheaper or free substitutes entering the market. Microsoft has already started the best possible strategy and will probably continue it – provide its existing and potential clients with different types of program bundling. Microsoft currently offers several Microsoft Office versions, starting from a relatively cheap one that is meant for students and has only the basic features and ending with a huge and expensive Microsoft Office Professional edition for business clients. In order to cope with the expanding competition Microsoft would probably offer the basic edition of this package for free after 5 years.
In my opinion, the market for small and non-business oriented software will be completely overwhelmed by proprietary software in 2015. People won’t be willing to buy such software, and, if we assume that the illegal software downloading will be reduced by that time, we will all be using legally downloaded free software.
Write a short analysis about applicability of copying restrictions - whether you consider them useful, in which cases exceptions should be made etc.
The idea of copying restrictions is in line with the concept of copyright. Copyright is used to protect original creative works, published editions, sound recordings, films and broadcasts. It exists independently of the recording medium, so buying a copy does not confer the right to copy. Limited copying (photocopying, scanning, downloading) without permission is possible is some cases, e.g. for research. Publication of excerpts or quotes needs acknowledgement. Copyright is not registrable because it arises automatically on creation.
If we put the formal definition aside and look at the real cases, we can see that the wonderful idea of copying restrictions doesn’t work in many cases. A perfect example for that is a software market. The illegal downloading of all kinds of software has become a part of the society already and it might be very hard to change this habit. The access of illegal software is amazingly easy. Even a person with basic computer knowledge can dig a bit deeper into the results Google gives him/her after typing “ProgramWhatever crack” or similar phrases and get the copyright protected software for free.
Of course, one can argue that there exist free alternatives similar the software we need to pay for. But again – why to download less fancy software if I can just download a desired one illegally and don’t be punished for it? It might sound inadequate now, but to my mind the only solution for this problem had been preventing it before the illegal downloading even started. Currently fighting with this problem seems like a fight against windmill, because the change in people behavior in such big issue requires changing people’s thinking and beliefs.
There are many attempts where illegal using of software is tried to be reduced, for example, there exists software that is available free of charge for academic, non-commercial and educational purposes. I think this idea is really valuable, because it helps the society as well as improves the software company’s brand image. Also there are new forms of licensing such as Copyleft and ShareAlike (used in Creative Commons), where author can give bigger freedom to the users of his/her than as Copyright protection was used. In this case the author himself can determine the extent to which the creative work is protected. I personally consider flexible licenses like this to be a future image of different kinds of intellectual property protection.
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