The comment on pirating was not directed at anyone in particular, just a general question since plenty of people who might have swung with Linux seem to just get OSX and pirate Apps instead. I have seen people who hang out on IRC spend mad money on hardware and not a cent on software.I don't know whether to take offense at that remark, or not , so I won't, but sweeping statements like that do annoy me, no matter how true they might be. You sound like a record exec on one of those 'You're a young person so you don't buy any for your music you download it all off BitTorrent' rants.
FWIW I pay for anything I think justifies its price tag in quality, usability and actual use in my everyday routine. That covers 95% of what's installed on my Mac Pro. I am BIG supporter of small software companies and have over 20 registered Mac OS X shareware apps on my drive ATM that I use regularly and enjoy immensely. I also notably have a copy of OS X for every OS X capable Mac I own, including the 8500. I've long since given up ripping everything. If I can't afford something I'll find a cheaper or free (as in beer) alternative.
One reason I love Sun is they made their entire OS Open Source and free to licenseNot only that but they roll the best developments on the Open Source side into their mainline enterprise OS.
I can't say I have a legit copy of every app I use, but I try to get a legit copy of anything I use more then a couple times to test. I don't bother getting multiple copies on my OS since I don't generally have more then one machine on at a time anyway and I am the only computer user in this house.
Oddly enough even for my retro collection I try to get every app, game, and utility I use to be legit (my house is overflowing with boxed mac and some old pc software , just added Norton desktop 3 for Win 3.x this week).