Rant: The Typical Pinoy "Gadgeteer"

I have this not-so-good observation on the typical gadget-addicted pinoy: They spend thousands of pesos (hundreds of dollars) to buy the gadgets of their dreams (laptop, PDA, desktop computer) yet they can't do the same investment in getting legitimate copies of software for their gear. The moment they get their gear, the first thing they do is go to Greenhills and get bootleg copies of the programs that they think they'll need.

This is one of the reasons of the low penetration of Apple in the local market. One of the first things a pinoy asks about an Apple computer is "may pirated ba yan?" (are there pirated apps for that?). What they do not realize is that they do not even have to pirate software with the proliferation of open source applications all around the internet. I've been using my Apple iBook for almost three years now and I did not have the need to get a pirated copy of MS Office for Mac because I discovered and used NeoOffice as my default office suite. It may not have all the bells and whistles of MS Office but it has enough features and functions to tide me over and even exchange documents with my MS Office using colleagues. I did not have the need to rip off Adobe in pirating Photoshop because I've been using the GIMP for my image manipulation tasks.

My point here is this: If they don't think that they can afford those expensive commercial programs, they can always search around for free and open source alternatives to them. Not only will they become better citizens but their use of these open source alternatives also help in supporting the "movement".

technorati tags: rant, software piracy, gadgets, open source advocacy