Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ

Paid Software Experience:

• "Hi, Thanks for choosing us! Please sign into or sign up for your account! You agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy right?"
• "Great, and thanks for your purchase! Did you know we have a limited time sale on our Ultra Pro Superprofessional Edition?"
• "No? Well we also have a monthly subscription plan that can get you very cool features! Wanna check that out?"
• "No? Alright we'll get on with installation. But first, we need to make sure you're not running a VM, VPN and other software we don't like from our handy DRM software."
• "Oh, that DRM software also happens to collect your contact information and read your files so we can sell that for money. Thanks and enjoy!"

FOSS Experience:

• Aight you got enough disk space? Here's the GPL. Where we droppin? Cool, enjoy your program! Support me if you feel like it, bud!

It's a mix of both. On my windows gaming rig I have ms office, photoshop sketchup and fl studio pirated. I haven't found a good foss alternative for photoshop, sketchup or flstudio (using gimp is worse than being an actuall gimp ). On my Linux laptop I've been using more and more foss. I'm getting use to Libre office but it doesn't do everything I need. Switched chrome for Firefox, vscodium as a code editor, waydroid for Android apps

If I have a nice FOSS alternative that will fulfill my needs, then I will always prioritize FOSS. If not, then I pirate the proprietary option.

About 20 years ago, I saw this exact same discussion on mozillazine. Everyone was raving about FOSS being nicer, friendlier, and more convenient, and how piracy is bothersome.

Then this guy posted a reply, to the tune of "Yeah, and now imagine your entire OS was like that... you should try it."

A little later I did, and never looked back. For me, FOSS is convenience.

I use Arch btw.

Except for games I use FOSS on my Linux desktop and on my Android phone. The FOSS alternative is often better than the proprietary software.

I just use FOSS. I don't trust that proprietary garbage. I generally don't pirate software in general. Its far too easy to trojanize it. I also buy games on steam to support linux/deck and valves investment in the ecosystem, I buy them steeply discounted though. With Roms, sales and free games I have a massive backlog so being patient pays off.

I also find that the quality of the FOSS stuff is better and way more configurable. Not hating on anyone that does pirate software or prefers proprietary stuff, to each their own

Edit: I don't pirate the mentioned software.

I'd love to use FOSS exclusively, but it's frankly impossible under certain conditions.

Acrobat is a must. Alternatives such as Evince or their back-end library can't handle the following situations:

• Formulars, such as calculating a sum based on the preceding fields.
• Field formatting, such as appending .00 to a currency amount conditionally upon field unfocus.
• Everything related to government forms due to the above.
• Large password protected PDF files.

Besides, if anything is wrong, you're on the hook for not using Acrobat.

Microsoft Office is a must.

• OnlyOffice, WPS free as in free beer, and especially LibreOffice can't handle anything beyond intermediate documents.
• OnlyOffice and WPS struggle with more advanced features, such as forms.
• LibreOffice notoriously renders Microsoft Office documents incorrectly in my experience.
• Everything in LibreOffice except LibreOffice Writer feels unpolished to me, particularly LibreOffice Calc.
• OnlyOffice supports only few fields.
• OnlyOffice permits free form input for fields that aren't.

Adobe is a must.

• Alternatives don't integrate as well with each other as Adobe apps.
• Rendering whatever you have to import that into another app is a slow workflow, compared to Adobe Premiere that embeds Adobe After Effects sequences, for example.
• Alternatives don't support scripting sometimes. Scripting is necessary to speed up slow and error-prone manual processes.
• Adobe has a rich plugin ecosystem, whereas alternatives don't support plugins at all, or don't have any notable plugins.
• Alternatives don't support Adobe file formats as well as Adobe.

You face similar problems to Adobe with alternatives, such as:

• Inconsistent keyboard shortcuts.
• Inconsistent file format support.

Overall, I'd love to, but can't. FOSS isn't good enough.