Crying Foul At the BSA's "Nauseating" Anti-Piracy Tactics 235
Barence writes "The Business Software Alliance (BSA) has been accused of heavy-handed tactics that could drive small companies to incriminate themselves. The Microsoft-backed piracy watchdog generates a quarter of its cases by offering employees cash rewards for informing on their own employer. 'It is basically harvesting allegations from disgruntled employees and farming them out to expensive law firms,' one small business owner told PC Pro, who said he was 'nauseated' by the tactics. The BSA then sends out a letter demanding the business owner fill out a software audit, or potentially face court action — even though the BSA has no power to demand such an audit and hasn't pursued a court case in five years. 'It's designed to scare the recipient into thinking that they're obliged to provide certain information when, in fact, it's difficult to see that they are,' said a leading IT lawyer."
Re:Use Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
And open-source software in general. Yeah, this kind of scaring will just scare organizations right into the lap of OSS. Keep it, suits! You are doing an outstanding job!
They should be investigated for racketeering (Score:5, Interesting)
It pretty much fits the definition...
I had a one man consulting company once. In order to appear larger, I often filled out web forms and indicated I had 50 to 100 employees. The BSA sent my company letter with their racketeering scam. I laughed because at the time I was a purely Linux and Mac environment. I wish I had kept that letter.
Re:Use Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why call out "Microsoft-backed" and not others? (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't like the BSA, and I'm pretty neutral about Microsoft, but what is the point of saying the BSA is "Microsoft-backed"? They're also Adobe-, Apple-, and Dell- backed, among many others.
The real reason is everybody hates Microsoft. It grabs eyeballs and gets a good debate going.
What people will claim the 'real reason' is is that Microsoft is a high profile target and if you focus on them it'll cause them to change and everybody else will magically fall into line. The same thing happened with Apple and Foxconn. So far it has proven to be an effective way to cause short-term change with one company, but you'll notice that there hasn't been any real hubub on Slashdot about the Chinese workers there. That died down, so the other companies can merrily go about their routine. Looks like there's a downside to focusing all that rage on one target.
So, yes, maybe a little more attention should be directed at everybody backing the BSA.
Its all a Business Model (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why is anyone surprised? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've told the story here before but about three or four years ago the company I was working for went through a SAM review. So far as we could tell, it was because the company had bought out a previous organization, including software licenses, and then we had decided not to renew the very expensive Software Assurance agreement.
I get this very pleasant email from a Microsoft business partner telling me that they were going to conduct the audit, with a spreadsheet for me to fill out. I did my thing, even working with the reseller who had sold the previous company most of the licenses, got it all tickety-boo, and then the fun began. The guy kept coming back with more requests for clarification, with more issues, and finally, as this dragged on to three weeks, I finally lost my cool and sent the guy an angry email, CCed to the reseller, telling him that as far as I was concerned we were in full compliance, we had shown we had licenses for everything, and that this process was going to wrap up now.
A few days later, the guy sent me an email saying that 5 CALs on one of our Server 2003 installs wasn't a proper match, and to bring us into compliance I would have to convert them from user CALs to device CALs. I sent an email back saying "Sure thing" and that was that. Never did convert them to device CALs either, fucking assholes. So far as I could tell, the whole process was designed to try to trip me up so that I would have to buy more licenses of something... anything. I'm sure the business partner would get a cut from that. My boss felt like sending the company a bill for the time wasted.
Re:Use Linux (Score:5, Interesting)
The guys here can live in their perception bubbles and go "herp derp use Linux" which is so completely fantasy island i don't even know where to start,
That is so shortsighted, uninformed, and unfair, I don't know where to begin.
If Linux don't have the software they need to work its pointless, which 99 times out of 100 DOES NOT EVEN EXIST on Linux
Untrue. With the exception of a few specialized applications there are equivalents for nearly everything.
Quickbooks/Quicken, photoshop, vegas, etc. And NOOOO Gimp is NOT a substitute, its a kid's class project. no really, not being snarky, it actually IS a kid's class project, look it up,
First off, not every machine needs to be Linux, and not every machine needs to be Microsoft.
Quickbooks and Quicken have online editions. Considering how it is backed up, and the client can be anything, not such a bad idea to look into. In any case, providing accounting with some Windows PCs is not a big deal.
YOU don't think GIMP is a substitute. It works just fine for a lot of people, including myself. I still have Photoshop and I am used to it, but I can use GIMP just as easily to get something done. It's not black and white. Sure, there are going to be some hardcore people that really do need Photoshop for the stuff they do. Is that representative of everybody? No.
A Linux admin with the skills to troubleshoot all the problems with a couple of dozen desktops or more will cost a MINIMUM of $75,000 IF you can even find one, whereas MCSEs are cheap as dirt and just as plentiful
Later on you rail about how IT is treated like shit and now you advocate hiring MCSEs "cheap as dirt"? Sounds a bit contradictory to me.....
If you are a medium sized business with 50 employees you better damn well be paying somebody $75,000 a year to take care of your business regardless.
MCSEs are not worth a fucking shit. That is the most worthless certification I have seen in my life. It does not mean you are qualified to handle a Microsoft based network and infrastructure by itself. It means, at most, that you can be trained on the job for a year or two with experienced people.
It tells you nothing about that person's real skills.
You can compare an experienced Microsoft admin and a Linux admin and they will cost about the same. In fact, the ones that are really good have overlapping skill sets.
I can work with Linux environments just as handily as I can with Microsoft environments.
Since 99 out of 100 software they need does NOT exist you are talking about hiring a development team to build it, that's a good $60,000+ for each software of any complexity and that is IF you don't get sued for stepping on the patents of company whom you are ripping off.
You're wrong about the 99/100 anyways, but if you are a medium sized company chances are you already have a development team. So you are being disingenuous to say the least. Whether or not your team codes with Microsoft based technologies or platforms or Open Source is not relevant to the risks of software patents. Do you think just because you coded it in .NET and it runs on SQL Server that you are somehow immune to patents?
Furthermore, choosing Microsoft as a platform for your developers can have significant added costs that are not present in Open Source platforms.
Ultimately, it comes down the needs of your project, the vendors and 3rd parties you have to deal with, etc. All of that needs to be factored in when you choose.
Hell you still don't even have a substitute for Access, Excel, Exchange and Sharepoint yet, not that works
Wrong again. Sooooo Wrong. Wrong.
There is no fucking substitute for Access. If you are using it, just kill yourself. Save yourself from the pain. I have