Simon Willison’s Weblog

What is the real risk of pirating Microsoft software as a startup business vs an individual user?

22nd September 2013

My answer to What is the real risk of pirating Microsoft software as a startup business vs an individual user? on Quora

I agree with David S. Rose—integrity matters. Look in to BizSpark.

Also, something you may not have condidered is due diligence..

If you ever want to sell your company you’ll need to go through a due diligence process with your acquirer, and software licenses will definitely be part of that process. It won’t look good when they find you’ve been pirating software—probably not bad enough to sink the deal, but do you really want to take on that extra risk?