D beyond the specs

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Saturday, 17 March 2018 at 09:31:58 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad 
wrote:
> I don't know about compilers specifically, but the big 
> distributors in Europe charged some hefty margins on their 
> imports. So pricing in US was often much lower than here...

When I think of it, the distributors probably only cared about 
corporate customers for software development (and my impression 
is that distributors often didn't know much about computers and 
software anyway). Since distributors didn't know better they 
hired young computer enthusiasts to work for them, which cracked 
the software protections and spread it among their friends before 
the software hit the stores...

So European computer enthusiasts had easy access to bootleg 
copies of common software. Copying was rampant for cultural 
reasons, which included common fair use clauses that allowed 
copying between individuals and friends. By rampant, I mean 
people copied >90% of the software they used.

I knew of more people that bought "alternative dev tooling" (at 
reasonable pricing) than the offerings  from big players (which 
often would cost more than the computer hardware, and as a 
recurring cost...). There was also an attitude that "if the price 
is unreasonable high then it is perfectly reasonable and moral to 
distribute bootleg copies of it".