Solidworks piracy fine

Reminds me of the Safety Transport International (STI) in Atlantis incident back in early 90's. I worked for them at the time, but lucky I was using CADDS 4x on their Sun Sparkstation, lawyers & cops arrived - locked the main gates and systematically searched all pc's - they were caught red handed using 10 cracked PC versions of autocad.

Rumour has it they were whacked with R100k fine per seat! plus they had to buy a full version of autocad as well.

Was quite a big deal back then even made it into the newspapers.

no need to hack / crack or pirate anymore when you can download FREECAD with all the features for free?
 
spiff said:
Reminds me of the Safety Transport International (STI) in Atlantis incident back in early 90's. I worked for them at the time, but lucky I was using CADDS 4x on their Sun Sparkstation, lawyers & cops arrived - locked the main gates and systematically searched all pc's - they were caught red handed using 10 cracked PC versions of autocad.

Rumour has it they were whacked with R100k fine per seat! plus they had to buy a full version of autocad as well.

Was quite a big deal back then even made it into the newspapers.

no need to hack / crack or pirate anymore when you can download FREECAD with all the features for free?
Click to expand...
Freecad is impressive, but it is not Solidworks (at least last time I checked around 2 years ago).
 
Little Mac said:
Just heard from someone who was fined R500k for a dodgy solidworks installation. Some of these modules are stupid prices... the plastics add-on is way more than the main app - R170k as opposed to 110 or so. Daft.
In case you're wondering, yes they pay attention to detail with the telemetry when the machine phones home and those "cracks" and router tricks don't work lol.
The moral of the story? Pay your solidworks license, it's the right thing to do :p
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In other words, hearsay?
 
The company I work for periodically scan's our machines for unlicensed software.
 
Iv heared of 3 people having to "buy"or face a fine. usually a single seat licence of R100k.

Pay your licences, its the right thing to do. I begrudgingly pay for 3dsmax, Corona renderer, vray, substance painter, adobe suite, forestpack and PTgui...
 
AntennaMan said:
Freecad is impressive, but it is not Solidworks (at least last time I checked around 2 years ago).
Click to expand...
no obviously not as slick as SW, but it has everything most other package charge extra for. I've used it and some of my students are getting into it. I teach Catia at all our colleges and we are looking into using FREECAD for our students, they can atleast download it and play with it at home for free.
 
Little Mac said:
I suspect they look at your client base and decide what they can get away with
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Well it is their software.

The license fees alone is daylight robbery though, but I have to suck it up and pay it. What other choice do we have.

Our biggest challenge is competing with the companies who pirate their software and charge low to basically zero rates as they do not have expenses to cover. This is not fair.

In South Africa it is even worse.

Then there is the flip side of the coin, You want another job, you need Revit or Archicad experience. Or of you into mechanical, Inventer or Solidworks etc. How do you get that experience if you don't get the kind of income as an individual only a large company can afford? Same in the engineering field. The so called "solo" licenses, or "student" license have strict limits and you can't properly learn on it. In most cases they are basically useless.

I don't say pirating the software and using it to gain an income is right, just that these software companies also don't realise they are part of the reason some people have no choice but to pirate it.

It is a two edged sword.

The same way Adobe was forced to change their model, I hope the same happens to all these software companies.
 
Joke is on Solidworks...

What tech company in 2021 still need their potential customers to contact them for a quote just to get the pricing, instead of a "buy now" button with price that goes to a credit card checkout. :eek:

Screenshot 2021-08-31 at 06.01.10.png

Also, many enterprise software companies (eg Adobe, Autodesk) moved to a monthly or annual subscription based business model and that reduced piracy quite a lot.
 
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