Bernie works for a large consulting company. When he was on holiday in South East Asia he found an Office suit that looks identical to Microsoft Office. The package he found costs R50 compared to the price tag of R3000 back home. Bernie knew that the seller does not honour US copyright law. Despite the documentation looking like it has been photocopied, he decided to buy it and returned home with it.

It is 1980 and Bingo software has just developed a new operating system called BOS. BOS is better than anything else around but Bingo is a small firm and needed venture capitol to start up. It spent 3 years bringing the product to the market, after which it launched and sold well for a year. At this point, it has recovered about 25% of initial investments. Pirate Pete entered the market with PPOS which is cheaper and has more features than BOS – but it appears to be a copied or slightly modified version of BOS. In addition to this, copying of BOS is rampant with customers making copies. Bingo did not last long and went bankrupt within a year.

Earl develops a virus tester which is very good. It detects and repairs all known viruses. He makes the software and its source code available on the web for free and he also publishes an article on it. Jake reads the article and downloads a copy. He figures out how it works, downloads the source code and makes several changes to enhance it. After this, Jake sends Earl a copy of the modified software together with an explanation. Jake then puts a copy on the web, explains what he has done and gives appropriate credit to Earl.