An Open Letter to Software Publishers

This letter should be more articulate, but it's not. I'm frustrated. I'm upset. I pay for your software, purchase your software, but then when I try to install it, to use the software that I've paid for, I'm forced to deal with cumbersome license keys, registration keys, security key, and validation keys.

For example. The company that I work for purchased Symantec Ghost, and enough licenses for our entire organization. This is not inexpensive. After installing the software, generating a registration key, emailing the registration key to Symantec, waiting for there response with my authorization key, and entering the registration key I was able to use their (our) software. It's now maybe 2 to 4 years later, and I'm trying to reinstall this software (the software that we've purchased) and I can't because I can't get the license key to work, even after repeating the above steps. So, I call Symantec's technical support, only they can't help me because this software is not serviced anymore. So, I'm not able to use this software (which we've paid for) all because Symantec is trying to prevent piracy. And, while I sympathize with the fact that they do not want to lose money to theft, I hope they understand that they have lost my money, as I will not purchase software from Symantec again. Unfortunately, Symantec is not the only software publisher with these business practices. It's more the norm than the exception.

In conclusion, this note is written mostly for me, to vent my frustration, and with small (very small) hopes that this may get through to Symantec and other software publishers who engage in similar business practices. And maybe, just maybe, they'll decide not to punish their customers, in an attempt to stop theft.

Feel free to discuss your experiences in the comments section.

Thanks for reading.