Today I encountered a commenter on Cerulean Studios’ blog, named John, who stated the following:

I’ll be honest and say that I’m one of many who have pirated an alpha build of Astra without an Astra account. I do realize that I’m missing a number of features but… I don’t feel like I’ve lost out. I upgraded to Windows Vista when it launched and wanted a pretty new IM client… and Astra was the top choice.

John also went on to state a caveat to all other pirates who would dare steal Cerulean Studios’ next flagship product, Trillian Astra, that in its essence said that the alpha build had a lot of bugs and the user pirates at his or her own risk. He also stated that there is no reason for anyone to want to get in on an alpha program to quickly. To his statements, I must ask: When is piracy okay?

John is absolutely correct in most everything he states in his comment, which you can read by clicking the link above. He’s rational and collected, as he should be. However, as proven by he and numerous others who have pirated Trillian Astra, it’s hard to resist a product proven good when it and every “feature” (I say this lightly because it’s in alpha stage) is free of charge and handed to you directly from the developer. More than that, it gives the end user a sense of being special. If you’re an alpha tester, you’re in with the in-crowd, you’re with an exclusive people who get to test one of the internet’s favorite products completely free of charge, while your opinion stands out as well. The developers are more likely to listen to your meager suggestion if you are an alpha tester, rather than a beta tester, as these hand-selected people are so few in number and as such are not taken lightly.

Moreover, it’s still free, and nobody is going to pass that up. Whether it’s alpha, beta, or even final, somebody is going to want it for free. When it’s in alpha or beta, it actually is, yet the same cannot be said for final. But with all the pirating going on just for an alpha build, who’s to say that there won’t be the same amount, or even more, of this piracy when the final build is released? And all subsequent upgrades? People are through getting their hopes up. People are impatient, and it seems like it’s just a fact that when people get impatient, their rationale eventually comes down to this: “It’s a bunch of code, so it’s not like there’s any production cost now that the company is producing it. That’s almost like the product is free. I should pirate it instead of waiting!”

Is it sad that a person’s rationale comes to this? Surely, but hopefully Astra’s account system will prevent this by clearing the settings each time a user exists Astra, significantly reducing the appeal of not purchasing the registered Pro version, or bumping them back to the free Basic version. A good idea might be to include whether or not a given Astra account is set for pro or basic, that way if a person does register an account through the free client and then attempts to pirate the pro version, hoping to log in with his or her Astra account, they will be rejected because the system will inherently know which type of Trillian the name is registered to.

I am not a paying v3 customer, and as such do not believe it is right to pirate Cerulean Studios’s software, even if it’s in alpha stage. I also believe that being a paying v3 customer does not give you the right to pirate their unreleased software. I’m not speaking directly to John, nor am I directly criticizing him or his practices, but am speaking out to all of the lovely pirates who are sick of waiting for a program that may well crash their computer. If you’re not patient waiting for the alpha, you certainly won’t be patient when you wait week after week for an alpha that doesn’t crash even after you send in all those bug reports you promised (which half of you probably won’t).

I was offered, out of the blue, to be a beta tester for the popular software Pzizz. I accepted, but not on the grounds that it was free software. Since receiving it, I have pointed out every bug I’ve found, and my computer has crashed several times. The program is a mess, but I love it enough to risk my computer for the sake of the thousands of other users who enjoy the program and enjoy a stable upgrade. There’s a joy in that, and that’s why many people want to be an alpha tester. Those who pirate it most certainly only want the free software, and have no interest in helping to develop and expand the program nor submit bug reports. There’s a difference between the dedicated tester and the free software monger.

The idea is that the software is not for using. The software is for testing. By no means should the Trillian Astra Alpha, or even the Beta, become your full-time IM client. You’d be risking your computer more than you should, and if you’re replacing your stable IM client then you most likely just wanted the software for the sake of getting it early. Using the alpha full time is a risk, and is for development purposes only. The satisfaction any user gets out of it should be the satisfaction of being part of the development process, not the satisfaction of getting free software.

I think many people need to learn this. When they do, they might find out that running an alpha build and looking for bugs isn’t their cup of tea, and they might not want to participate in it as much as they used to. On the other hand, I know equally as many people, if not more, actually want to test for bugs and go all-out with the alpha, kicking it in the ass until it spews out all the bugs it’s got. I’m thankful that there are people like that around, and I hope that this post is incredibly wrong in accusing so many of simply wanting the free software and not wanting to actually test. Unfortunately, the amount of piracy that surrounds these alpha builds is not encouraging.

(To close, I will state that this entire article was posted in Cerulean’s comment system before posting it here. I had not realized, at the time, that I wrote so much, but I felt that since it was long enough to be some sort of an article, I should put it here as well.)