because: 1. it's easier for the Chinese steal it 2. it's a lot cheaper to built stuff in China 3. after the Chinese build the weapons and use them in war, following the design 4. the US mil can remote control the weapons

Is electricity so shortly supplied? In my county, half of the food stores install a socket next to the dining table ...

Giving out something and expecting return, itself, is a business. Programmers are sometimes artists. They just want to express themselves via beautiful and useful codes. They just want to share, not expecting any return. Isn't that beautiful?

will Google continue to provide the free search service to us?

I am not a game developer. I write shareware.

Few years ago, I wrote a launcher program to celebrate the lovely Treo 680. It was $12.95 and registered users will receive a key code to unlock the full version, which turns off a random "Please register me" message.

As usual, the crack was posted within a few days.

I logged on one of the active Treo discussion forum (not a crack site) and asked "Why you people use a crack, instead of paying for my hard work?".

"Too expensive!"

So I discounted the software to the point whether most forum users said, "fair enough."

"More features!"

Then I add whether features I can do, as options.

...

Eventually, that become one of the longest thread in the forum history. And I earn more than 100 registered users in the country, which I could never dream of.

So, a brief conclusion:
- people are willing pay for what they love, if the price is right (for them)
- listen to customer, usually the early versions lack one or two "critical" features
- pirates are also human, they just want to earn a living (or flame, or.. what), because
- when I was young, I also loved boot code trace my Apple II box, some day, they will become a programmer ;-)

Just in case you want to know the thread, pls Google: treo launcher hi-pda.com ohho