I practically spat my coffee out onto the screen at that one... LOL (funny but also sad.).
Is Software Piracy for these products still a major "Thing" / problem (in China) ?
Good that your firm is "Street legal" on the software front !
Its absolutely horrid how bad the pirating is. I can honestly say that I have never met a Chinese machinist that didn't have at least one form of cad/cam cracked on his/her laptop. I used to give lectures on cutting strategies at the Zhongshan Polytechnic School and they had every software imaginable but not one was licensed. Now, this school is the Harvard of the machinist world putting out more than 1500 machinist a year. And like Harvard they have jobs waiting as soon as they're excepted. When I would go in and interview a group for a position I always asked what software they are fluent in. They would always pull out a Mac running a pirated copy of Parallels, running a pirated copy of Windows, running a pirated Cad/Cam. Seems the government ran colleges provided free pirated software.
Its really sad to see the ethics of the Chinese but on the same note these software companies went from dongles to that flex licensing server and made hacking a breeze. I watched how they did it and it just blew my mind. basically delete the .dll file that request the license, create a new one with some garbage text, then point the licensing server to the file. Less than five minutes and bang, $80k worth of software ready to go.
If you want a good laugh and have a few spare minutes just wait till the next time a Chinese shop emails or calls you trying to be a supplier. Just hint that you have a lot of work to be quoted but what software do they use and they must provide proof of purchase. Typically you get a hateful email back about how good they make parts and the proof does not matter. You can send them a one liner and they will spend half a day replying.