Slashdot Mirror
Design Software Giants Target the Unemployed
avishere writes "People are losing their jobs, but for some execs the economic meltdown seems like the perfect time to get their software into the hands of those who can't afford their multi-thousand-dollar price tags. Software giants Autodesk and SolidWorks have each latched onto the worst-economic-disaster-since-the-Great-Depression meme and released free versions of their flagship computer-aided-design brands before their potential users are forced to sell their laptops on Craigslist. 'In these uncertain economic times,' Autodesk coos sympathetically, it will give away temporary licenses of AutoCAD and other software to those unemployed in the fields of architecture, engineering, and design. (They are also developing a Mac version, two decades after abandoning the platform.) SolidWorks was quick to respond with its subtly titled Engineering Stimulus Package. So if anyone out there has their weekdays free, jumpstart your hardware and design projects for cheap. Legally, too."
It's actually cost effective to freely distribute your software to people who want to learn it.
It's like someone figured out that someone will eventually pay for a license for software you are good at using.
"These uncertain economic times"
I'm tired of hearing it. It's like the PR tool's qualifier for everything.
Bow-ties are cool.
This actually makes sense. The most important thing for a software company to be successful is to have people who know how to use their software. Which is why student prices and Learning Editions exist. And there have been reports that some laid off workers are starting their own companies, so getting your software into the hands of those people would be a smart move, too.
I...I'm attacking the darkness!
No kidding.
Maybe if people stopped calling these "economic times" "uncertain", then they'd stabilize!
Convert FLACs to a portable format with FlacSquisher
You may have been marked as funny, but you do deserve a bit of insightful for that.
Perhaps not all of it, but a portion of the 'uncertainty' is due to the fact that everyone is certain that we are in 'uncertain' times. If we stopped pushing that down folks throats, then there might be less panic to keep things stired up.