Selling Software To Thieves

Today a reseller of an AutoCAD clone decided to use my blog to promote his software by posting this comment. Instead of deleting the comment, I will list a part of it here and then tell you exactly what I think about it. Here goes:

This is to spread awareness only. Please each steps below and take necessary action to protect your company from further harassment by Giant CAD companies.

1. These days the most popular CAD Company is raiding organization like you in search of any their pirated version used by your CAD users.
2. If they found, you became their prey. Whatever way they like, they will start harassing you mentally, socially and economically.
3. They will dump all the computers with your years data where they will find their CAD application used illegally in a room and seal it with High Court’s order. These will remain close until the High Court clear the case against you. So just imagine the amount of loss you are going to incur.
4. In Indian Market, piracy is popular due to CAD software’s high price.
5. Previously there was no cost effective alternate CAD available in Indian Market.
6. Now it is available.

So if I understand this correctly, this reseller is pitching his AutoCAD clone to thieves using pirated AutoCAD. This is precisely why I think some AutoCAD clones are their own worst enemy. In my opinon, this is negative marketing at its absolute worst.

Software piracy is a global menace. And seeing these people desperately trying to make use of this menace for their benefit is simply despicable. This is equivalent to saying, “Listen you thief, Autodesk is screwing you a lot. Come to me, I’ll screw you a lot lesser.”

I have absolutely nothing against low cost software. Heck, my reverse engineering solutions are priced at $295, which happens to be far lesser than the cost of products from larger reverse engineering software vendors. But I market my products positively. I focus on their capabilities and nothing else.

Just this afternoon, a classmate from my Engineering college gave me a call asking me for advice on whether he should renew his SolidWorks subscription. He was thinking of switching to Alibre Design. He tried explaining to me the kind of stuff he was using SolidWorks for. I interrupted him by saying, “The only person fit to advise you whether to make the switch or not is yourself.” Since he had about a couple of months left on his SolidWorks subscription, I told him to stop using SolidWorks completely, download a trial of Alibre Design and begin using it for his next project. I firmly believe that if you simply want to go up or down one floor, you really don’t need an express elevator.

So I get this whole concept of low cost software, clones, alternatives, workalikes or whatever people choose to call them. What I absolutely don’t get is this shameless negative marketing that people like this reseller employ to sell these products.

Now since this reseller has used my blog to try and sell his software to thieves, I feel like doing the same. So here goes.

“Listen you scumbags. Stop handing your rear ends to giant CAD companies and your front ends to small CAD clones? Aren’t you tired of being screwed from both sides. I have a solution to your money problem. It’s called DraftSight. It’s completely free. With DraftSight you will never ever need to hand either of your ends to anyone again.”

Bah! I’m outta here.