I was using VisiCalc from the start, in 1981. I used it for hundreds of hours, particularly for school work, over years. The skills I learned carried over to other spreadsheets over the last 40 years.
But it was a stolen copy, I never paid a dime. Now I feel bad about that. Maybe they could put up a VisiCalc spreadsheet that would help me calculate how much I owe them now. I might need to caclulate an installment plan.
But don't feel too bad. Note that even Microsoft realized that individuals and developing nations using software for free were expanding the market for future sales.
(In interviews over the years, MS spokesmen never focus on users that can't afford business software.
They (the SBA) did a few raids in Indonesian mall stores, where individuals really can't afford licenses. The average monthly salary at the time was about $100/month, and even today it's still around $200/month pre-corona.) But the raids might have been from having close relationships with the DEA and other US agencies moreso than the reach of the SBA by itself.
Also, large US companies know that site licenses and corporate sales are the real cash cow, with accounting and tax rules encouraging self-compliance.
FYI: What's interesting is that when I worked in Japan around 2005, all of the common desktop software was either Microsoft or Adobe at a very large company, with the odd internal program. (For servers, they were just switching from FreeBSD to linux.)
>FYI: What's interesting is that when I worked in Japan around 2005, all of the common desktop software was either Microsoft or Adobe at a very large company, with the odd internal program.
What's so interesting about that? Did you expect the company to have its own internally developed desktop software, or that Japan would have developed its own for its companies?
But it was a stolen copy, I never paid a dime. Now I feel bad about that. Maybe they could put up a VisiCalc spreadsheet that would help me calculate how much I owe them now. I might need to caclulate an installment plan.