Toolpath,
My hat off to you for taking such an ethical stance. I wonder why, though, you haven't been to your manager, or his/her manager to ask them to explain why you are being asked to use pirated software, and explain that you wouldn't think it ethical if you copied design details for their firearms and handed it on to a third party? It seems as though you enjoy your job and they appreciate you, and that they have no other problems with you, so why not?
kchayfie,
I starting writing my last post before you submitted yours, so apologies - it appears we made the same point.
I see we have diverted a bit from the original posters Q but have had an interesting discussion.
I think everyone would agree that open file formats benefit the consumer but not the software provider. Business planning and careful evaluation of software systems for their use and future retirement are needed in an engineering enviroment to prevent having to make difficult choices about accessing your data.
Perhaps if we work together software companies will be prevented from forcing user agreements and/or proprietry data storage schemes on us.
For the Canadians at least, remember we must be able to access our records to defend our designs for forever plus the expiration time for filing a complaint. The expiration time starts from the time of discovery of a fault or suspected fault.
