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MS To Virginia Beach: Prove You Own Your Software
Corey Winesett writes: "Virginia Beach, the largest city in VA, has been ordered by Microsoft to audit its software and produce documentation. The city has 5900 employees, 3500 computers and is '99%' Microsoft dependent. The city says that this could cost thousands of dollars and called the letter 'jolting.' Here is a link to the story." From the article, one of the great arguments for software that doesn't need a file cabinet of certificates: "Microsoft, like most software companies, includes contracts with its merchandise explaining that the company reserves the right to ask consumers at any time for proof of purchase and an inventory of what is being used. The rule applies not only to governments and privately owned companies but to individuals." Aren't you glad you use Open Source?
Sales receipts typically aren't any better.
Last he heard, they had bought a $70,000 application (including hardware) to keep track of licenses so they don't get caught with their pants down twice.
The Web is like Usenet, but
the elephants are untrained.
like nearly all products the price you pay is NOTHING to do with the costs of production.
.oO0Oo.
Go get an economics book and read the chapter on elasticity of demand.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
I've read through the posts and am ashamed of you people. You seem to think that the license agreement is even close to valid. It's not... they don't know wether I "signed" it or not. The only way they could know if I signed their agreement is if I actually register the product. So if I choose not to register windows with microsoft then they can't just assume that I'm running their products. It could be argued that M$ could tell I'm using their products by looking at my email headers or http client info, but who's to say I didn't hack pine and mozilla.
Let's say I have 20 machines in factory. 19 of those machines run some Unix for cad and 1 runs windows and Office. I signed 2 agreements with Microsoft period. They only have the right to check one and only one computer (maybe 2 now that wine runs office). If they assume I'm running their products on any of the other 19 machines then they're stupid. It's like the world's nastiest virus. If you bring any micro products into your building then they automatically get the right to look at all the machines? Get your heads out people! We are innocent till proven guilty and unless they have good evidence that I'm ripping them off, then they don't have the right to look at any more machines than copies of their software I've registered.
I'm really pissed... I do still have some rights here in the US and am sickened by those of you that just want to bend over and take it up the butt.
(See my other post a few posts below)
why not go the whole hog and copy the entire directory tree with all the files the correct size but filled with zero's
.oO0Oo.
I can here your screams in the iron mask now now "but I'm the King of France"
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Uh, you're kinda, uh, lying about that eh? I think maybe if you read the article, you would have noticed that it says "The campus is doing a survey of students to see if they want to be offered access to Microsoft software and upgrades. Students would have to pay $20 for this access."
Not that they have to pay the $20 even IF the majority of students wanted the option, only that they COULD.
The article's only point against this is that most people already have M$ products, and if they don't, they can just borrow a CD from a friend to install (STEAL) it.
I don't like Microsoft, but a lot of their products are worth paying for. If you don't think so, then don't use them at all.
"You must do the thing you think you cannot do" E.Roosevelt
the time for the idle process, will always be less than the real uptime, the time next to that process, is the time the CPU has spent running that process, so when something else is running, the idle process isnt, and not gaining any time. Throw a distributed.net client on that machine for a couple days, then use your method and tell me its uptime. My guess is that your "uptime" would only be the time between the system boot and starting the dnet client.
The SOFTWARE PRODUCT is licensed, not sold. is one of the first few lines of the first MS EULA I laid my hands on (Midtown Madness 2, but I'm pretty sure it's boilerplate).
Virginia Beach have (probably) licensed the right to USE the SOFTWARE PRODUCT, but do not OWN anything, according to MS anyway.
"don't fall into the fallacy of believing that Perl can solve social problems. Maybe Perl 6 can, but that's a ways off"
8ball.federated.com probably gets a lot of traffic unrelated to Slashdot -- authors describe mechanical problems caused by constantly pouring requests. As for Mozilla, now it supports mime multipart just fine -- I know because my webcam uses it.
Contrary to the popular belief, there indeed is no God.
--
More likely the registry was trashed before you turned the machine off. You didn't turn it off fast enough.
Asking to confirm your licensing is "intolerable", period. If they have a real case, they can arrange for a real judge to hear their arguments why a real search warrant should be issued.
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JADBP
The question is really what are you going to for your companies to make sure it does not happen to you. First thing do not use pirated software. Second fight things like the UCTIA when it comes to your state.
This isn't Microsoft's fault... it is the fault of an incompetent IT department.
We made a similar mistake where I work, except with hardware. We decided to lease hardware, went with GE Capital and then got into a bad contract.
On top of that we weren't tracking hardware inventory well and had a lot of stuff which had expired off lease but nobody knew where it was.
As such we were still paying stiff lease costs on old hardware, and were facing some stiff penalties on the contract and had to spend a month scrambling around cleaning up the mess.
It was the same deal, because of some bad decisions and a lack of proper management, we ended up in a bind and had to scramble to save our asses.
Just look at your story. This is what your IT department did which caused the screw up:
- Failed to listen to client needs when choosing an office suite forcing them to install something in addition to what you choose.
- Failed to monitor and lockdown desktops from having unsanctioned/unlicensed software installed.
- Failed to enforce a policy with the support staff about installing unlicensed software.
- Failed to track purchased licenses and other accounting stuff.
These painful lessons wouldn't have been a problem with competent management looking proactively at the problems. Same with our hardware lease problem we had.
That's a good point. Very often, in law, people who are required to do/allow something don't necessarily have to do it for free.
--------
Life is a race condition: your success or failure depends on whether you get the work done on time.
problem als could have been avoided by tracking the licenses of software, and/or not ripping it off.
-Reid
This wasn't really intended to be 'funny' as it was modded, although I do realize the idea of copy protection might cause a few smiles some place. I'm not 100% advocating copy protection, but it still seems to me that if they really were interested in cutting down piracy, they'd pursuit this angle more. It would be cheaper in the long run to force more purchases than it would be to spend $ to track down illegals, but...
:(
As someone else pointed out, no protection means that they increase market share, as they have done so much in the past few years.
Also, it does seem this is probably more about Office than the OS. The OS is starting to be effectively copy protected more with newer distributions of CDs from OEMs - most new machines you get now only include the OS as part of a 'backup/recovery' CD. The OS doesn't exist independantly of the rest of the 'default' installed system. Yes, it'll help if you completely mess up your system, but you can't take that disk and use it with VMWare, for example. Even though you've paid for a copy of Windows, they are severely restricting how and where you can run it.
For example, I can't take my HP Paviliion copy of Windows 98 and install it on a different system, even though the license I agreed to says I can move the OS to another machine if I delete it from the first.
creation science book
I work in computing services in a small university, and I must say, sometimes I sure am glad I'm in a position of influence over stuff like this. There's no way in hell this sort of thing would happen so long as I work here.
Jason.
counting the time on the idle thread is valid only if it's a mostly-idle machine. that number will be severely low if the machine is mostly busy (for example, has a distributed.net client, but probably also a heavily used server).
ufdraco
Gosh, what have I been doing at work for the last three years without these programs?
What happens, however, if a user turns his PC off with out shutting it down - It happens, especially when they want to get out of the office as fast as possible on a Friday evening. Chances are that Linux will not boot up again,
Yes, this is a serious problem on a server. For a desktop client, the computer is idle most of the time so it has plenty of chance to sync, and the fsck passes 99% of the time. But your support costs will still go up, and your help desk will spend a lot of time saying, "No, don't reboot the machine, no, don't turn it off, yes, you can leave it on all weekend." Anybody that turns off a desktop machine here, regardless of OS, gets a stern warning from management, since the desktop people have a habit of pushing out updates via Tivoli over the weekends or at night.
For the really stupid users, try disconnecting the power button.
Their presentation app is ridiculous and practically unuseable, besides why run KDE when StarOffice insists on having it's own (terribly bloated) desktop environment.
I understand the bloated prsentation manager is off by default in OpenOffice or whatever it's called this week.
Linux has significantly higher support costs.
Higher than Windows 9x, sure. Anybody can come along and screw up the machine. NT doesn't really have this problem unless you give everyone the administrator password (you didn't, did you?)... So where are the support costs? Training? You have that expense with NT anyway. Migration? A one-time expense. Not one to ignore, certainly, but still a one-time expense. Help desk? Field techs? It's not hard to find people who know Linux. Ask around, I hear a lot of them hang out on this place called slashdot. You might even have a few of them among your current staff, and not even know it. And I guarantee they'll all be more competent than your average overpaid MCSE.
Nearly all desktop clients get rebooted daily.
I think I covered this one already.
But, as I've already said, you have to evaluate this kind of thing very carefully. For some organizations, such a migration is worth it. For others, migrating SOME of the desktops to Linux is the best bet. For many, not migrating from Windows is the way to go.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Linux tends to recover fairly well from an improper shutdown. Most of the time, it only runs into things that fsck can fix automatically. Even if it doesn't, you can set fsck to run with the -y option, which will automatically fix just about anything. (In Debian, there is even an option in a config file to set for this.)
Windows is about the same as the default Linux behaviour, at least as presented to the users. When Windows is rebooted without properly shutting down first, it will run scandisk and will pop up a box asking what to do if it finds errors.
However, neither of these is really that much of a problem if you have your users shut down the machine before turning it off. I only have about 15 users that I support, but every one of them has been able to understand the concept of telling the computer to shut down before turning it off.
--Phil (And to think I just barely missed your UID cutoff point.)
355/113 -- Not the famous irrational number PI, but an incredible simulation!
Microsoft's ninja thugs broke down my door in the middle of the night the other night and dragged me out of my bed, kicking and screaming, into the middle of the street where they proceeded to beat me into submission. They told me I was running an OS that wasn't liscensed by Microsoft.
"lusers" (what an intolerant term)
.oO0Oo.
the term is not necessarily an insult
It is because anyone that tries to use a computer to do work (such as wp or accounting) is going to lose - i.e. the software won't work
so it's almost an affectionate term, expressing sympathy in advance for the poor saps who will be frustrated by their terminals and need to call in the wizards because for instance Windows locked up and they had to power cycle their PC.
Incidentally my at work Windows is fskd for this very reason - it came pre-installed on my Packard Bell from PC World (before you say anything it was something over which I had no control). Since day one it would never shut down and I had to just switch it off before it was "safe" to do so. I've lost some file or other 'cos now network neighbourhood doesn't list the SMB shares on our network.
Luckily I've had a few days "spare" to install Mandrake on it - which succeeded with everything but the PB's built in sound. Soundblaster PCI sorted that one out for £20 so I'm happy.
There are places where the networks are not touching,and there are places where they are-Boeing's Lori Gunter
Yes, so it's illegal to circumvent copy protection. What does this have to do with reverse engineering?
I certainly look forward to book publishers checking to make sure groups aren't using photocopies or cover ripped books.
What about second-hand books? Wouldn't they be illegal, too, if we applied standards like this?
Seriously, I photocopied a book once; it was 20 years out of print, and it cost me at least half the price the book would have cost me if I could buy it, plus over an hour of my time slaving over a hot photocopier (not pleasant). Anthony Burgess writing on James Joyce, IIRC...
deus does not exist but if he does
When did I miss the change to the United States of Microsoft? If Microsoft so much as suspects you are involved in the usage if illicit software they can simply command you to be auditted? What gives Microsoft the authority to make such an audacious demand of anyone, much less an entire city government? I do so hope that city officials put Microsoft in it's place.
No one seems to get it: UCITA doesn't matter. It's not a big deal. In this case, UCITA is irrelevant.
The demand letter described above is and has been for years common and routine. An audit demand has been SOP for any claim of software misuse by a BSA member, typically followed by a demand for some multiple of the license fee as a "penalty."
Microsoft's conduct was its routine before UCITA, it will be its routine after UCITA. There is no way a plaintiff would sue only under the license or UCITA defaults -- which do not provide for either an audit, statutory damages or an award of attorney fees.
And MS would never consider putting an attorney fee provision into a EULA, exposing Microsoft to fees along with every customer complaint. Why should it? The Copyright Act provides all the hammer, and only the licensor would be able to use that.
By the way, have you ever considered how easy it is to sue a municipality in its own municipal court?
Yeah - just add it the list of items an annual internal audit has to verify; an inventory of software assets that is provably licenced. Doesn't seem to be that big a deal to me. Oh sure mechanically its a real nightmare to actually track what packages you have deployed to whom and what the lic. #'s are. Or alternatively you count the number of packages and hope that if you're '99% reliant on MS' you have some kind VPA, site licence or similar agreement. Then the auditors come in, say whether they can pass you on that task or not. If yes, great, if no then you've failed your audit and are usually given an amount of time to remediate. If you can't remediate then 1 or two things happen: a) the vendor, MS takes you to court for damages. b) your bond rating drops. Either way its no big deal for a government. It's not likely that anything like this could bankrupt a government but even if it did technically then you would have a default and things would continue on as normal except w/o capital improvements and other vendors, etc. getting paid.
Oh, and by the way.
Microsoft's claim here is that the municipaility is using the software without having purchased a license for it. If that is the gravamen of their claim, how could Microsoft sue under UCITA or the license for unlicensed use? If you aren't licensed for the copies in dispute, how would UCITA or the license control?
That, by the way, is what the Copyright Act is for! Providing a remedy for a person making copies of or using software without permission.
Unless you like old classic window managers....
The problem being, even if they switch to Linux, they still have to pay the licensing for past use of the software. This is true of all commercial use of software. On the plus side, a court of law would not require the production of the individual licenses, just the financial records showing that they were paid.
As to the private individual, there is no feasible way to police licensing.
Shrink-wrap/Click-wrap licenses have been enforceable (and generally considered enforceable) for over a decade, and after the ProCD v. Zeidenberg case it has been virtually a fait accomplis.
Of course, there is no such clause presently in the Microsoft EULA, notwithstanding any of this. Have you considered why?
Microsoft almost certainly has no right at law to demand an audit, either pre-UCITA or post-UCITA.
The original post was just demagogical pabulum.
"Shouldn't it be up to Microsoft to prove that illegal copies are being used? Innocent until proven guilty, isn't that in our Bill of Rights?"
Not really. "Innocent until proven guilty" descends from British Common Law and applies only to criminal cases. The Microsoft action falls under civil law and the standard of truth required to win in civil court is "preponderence of the evidence." He who piles it highest and deepest usually wins.
Look at anti-bigomy laws. Gov't will try to scare people like mormons, in a 3+ way marriage, into one pressing "charges" against the other, or threaten to prosecute all three. But if push comes to shove, gov't mysteriously drops all charges. Why? Anti bigomy laws cannot stand up to Amendment I, freedom of religion. By not letting the law come to trial, the law can stay on the book to intimidate the next guy, who may likely roll over and comply with an illegal law to save time and expense he cannot afford.
Crypto export laws are another example. See Bernstein vs. the DOJ/FBI/CIA/NSA/endless-list-of-PH33R-agancies. Sure he "won" but at what cost? After millions of dollars from lost work time, flights to courts, hiring lawyers, legal research, and over a decade of his life (this he can never recover). How many others just gave up out of necessity. And the gov'ts response? They "grant" (my how gracious) Bernstein his export permission, but are ready to whack anyone else with the same law all over again. Did Bernstein "win" his case? Nope. The 9th circuit simply refuse to hear it and let stand a lower runing allowing Bernstein to export crypto. Until the Supreme Court hears and issues a favorable ruling on the case, the law is anything but dead.
On platforms where IE and netscape are both available, IE is preferred 3:1. Down in the ragged fringes of the outlyers you will find that 1% use Mozilla and 0.3% use BSD.
Easy solution for your mp3's: put them in an encrypted file, or a password-protected partition. The inspectors have no right to look at any data files you have, so you wouldn't have to open it up for them. And it wouldn't get in the way of your daily mp3 playing.
Yes, but the *reason* OSes have bad uptime is because they *crash*. Crashing, AFAIK, is the number one problem users have with Microsoft products. Ever overheard a complaint about a computer? It's almost never about something that is a consistent problem with their computer; it's usually about how "I was just using it and suddenly it froze". Although 200-day uptimes aren't necessary, the point is that Linux won't just up and crash for no reason.
err... making it good for the Server Environment?
Seriously though... consider this user complaint:
"I was just working and it crashed... I lost all my work this morning"
Have you ever considered that they weren't doing any work that morning? It's a great excuse for users to perpetuate the myth of the unstable operating system... So which operating system bears the brunt of the blame? Well, it'll be the one that workers use.
I may just see if we have any "Intranet" workers and see if a Linux/Netscape build PC crashes as much as a WinNT/Explorer build... Let's face it, Linux hasn't really been tested on the non-tech workforce yet. Users are pretty good at messing up systems. Sometimes they deliberately sabotage them in the hope of getting a new laptop.
MS persecutes it's own customers! Way to go. Just what a business needs to worry about: A visit from the MS Inquisition. Maybe they should set up a hotline (or hotpage) where you can nark on your competition. This just makes Linux a better choice. "Our three main weapons are..."
Why?
Big deal, make all students pay 20$ and make lab passes 20$ cheaper.
Later
Erik Z
Democrats or Republicans. They are both taking us to the same place and they are not afraid of us anymore.
If you worked for the cable company and you have reasonable suspicions that they are stealing cable then yes you could do what Microsoft is doing.
Its not like some guy is trying to see if they are using legit Microsoft software, Microsoft themselves are.
Have you had 100 unclean shutdowns?
No, I've had many more than that, especially on my laptop, which likes to spontaneously un-suspend while I'm not looking, and it's unplugged. I've had fsck -a bail three times in the last six years, and all three were traced to hardware failure, and none of them were on my laptop.
78 days uptime on a box is not a big deal, regardless of the Operating System.
No, it's not a big deal, unless that box is used in common by 15 users accustomed to Windows (AND rebooting). Maybe it's because I haven't told them HOW to reboot the machine. The box has been running Linux for a year and a half, and no one's needed to know how to reboot it, except for me, when I update the kernel.
These problems are difficult to troubleshoot as NT provides no sure fire way of finding out what is wrong.
By contrast, Linux tells you exactly what's wrong, and sometimes will even tell you how to fix it! Of course, if you have a bizarre and mysterious error message, you should cross reference it against sig11.
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Presumably M$ was "tipped off" that there is abuse going on in this particular case. Still ... is this smart business? For this to justify the bad publicity there had better be one hella pile of license abuse going on.
Why does MS have this right and other software vendors don't? Surely that's not the case. Maybe other vendors don't include such a clause in their contracts, but they could...
It's a contract, if you don't agree with the contract then don't sign it. If you feel Microsoft software is so necessary to run your organisation then you're either going to have to try to negotiate different terms, or lump it.
Otherwise don't buy it. It's not a human right for software to be provided to you according to whatever terms you wish. It's a market place. Sure MS have distorted the market in other ways, but I don't think this is an example of that.
Even the guy in the article admits MS are within their contractual rights to ask for the audit.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Because it's shit.
I'm far more productive with NT4 + MS Office.
I like Linux, but I simply cannot be as productive with Linux applications as I can be with MS ones....
BTW it's not flamebait, it's the plain simple truth. If someone gave me a set of alternatives that ran on Linux that were just as good, then I'd use them.
The only time I have fsck on startup is following a power failure/glitch. The servers are on a UPS but the desktop system are not.
Yeah, they could use Linux...
And lose more productivity than they could ever hope to regain trying to figure out how the hell to use Linux.
What makes you think the entire Slashdot demographic uses open source software? I'm positive many of the readers don't.
Tell them to "Fsck Off!"
It's my honest opinion! It's much easier to just ask for them to do the audit themselves, than to get the police involved. You all know how fast they get your HW back to you.
Do you guys really want the alternative of getting the gestapo involved?
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
This isn't a job for an IT staff, this is a job for *accountants*
Preach it brother. So many of them seem to think they are IT anyway...
(pun intended)
LEXX
"Gold still represents the ultimate form of payment in the world." - Alan Greenspan, 1999
A lot of M$'s tech support is provided by Client Logic. They have a boiler room in Buffalo and other cities where a lot of my friends worked there as a "rite of passage" before getting burned out and moving on.
--
Gleepy the Hen. More intelligent than the average hen.
Well, a NT domain controller is also used for local authentication on NT workstations, so if you can get a NIS "gina" for NT, that should work. If.
Your right about an audit being a big pain in the ass, however, if you are site licencing, paying MS their due, and have policies in place, the chance of an audit is almost nil. Think of the site licence as an insurance policy - costs more in the short term, could save a significant amount of money and hassle in the long run.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
Unfortunately, it's a bad idea. I would estimate that a majority of institutions have some piracy coupled with sloppy record keeping. They are all potential criminals. The society that you get when everybody is a criminal was quite well described by Solzhenitsyn(sp?) and I wouldn't want to go there.
DB
the irs reserves the right to audit your tax return, microsoft has the right to audit for their licenses. the beach was not force to use ms software. it was their choice and it's their duty to keep the licenses up to date. true, may be they should use linux. but in the meantime, you pay for what you use.
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Yipes, I was hoping to use it as a desktop machine. Well... I'll look into it, I suppose. THanks for the advice.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Boy oh boy, for some one who is pro-linux you did not look far...
Why let the users have hard drives anyway? Other than to boot and swap (then again add memory) there is no good local use on 95% of the average desktop.
Use remote booting.
Then all data and configurations are stored on servers. The local machine is nothing more than a SMART dumb terminal. The user can flick that switch all day without a drive error.
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Why install 30 gig drives on some manager's machine? Put it in the servers!
Well, needless to say, that being a Network Admin at my new job within this organization has been very stressful. We've had to inventory every machine and send the results back to our IT department so they can compile a list. We've also got to dig out old purchase orders and recipts to prove that we bought said software and how many licenses of it we actually own. After all is said and done, there's no telling what Microsoft will do to us if we don't match what they think we should have. We've got until November 27th to comply with Microsoft. So, until then, that's all that organization as a whole is focused on right now, making everybodies lives "so much fun." Thank you Microsoft.
I just thought that some of you would like to know what is going on from inside. There wasn't a lot of details in the newspaper article, so hopefully this will inform some of you guys. After all of the hell that I'm going through, I just hope someone else isn't this stupid to make a mistake like this.
Taz757
Oh!
I thought that the system idle time "process" or "thread" would still be running on a non-idle machine (a la multitasking), and the time shown would be the time that the process has been running, ie uptime.
but that is just an aside, this Exchange server is usually particularly busy, certainly hadn't been idle for 120 days!! So, I must assume that this time is cumulative and hence is an under-estimate of the total uptime.
My point is enforced...
Thank you.
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Windows 95 can recover quite easily from bad shutdowns, Linux can't
I've, more than once, soley by turning the machine off, managed to trash the registry to such an extent that it's time for a reinstall.
I have *never* had to reinstall linux
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This situation is exactly why large companies get quite paranoid about making sure they have license trackers, and policies whereby they can fire you for using "illegitimate" software.
It may sound like a cool idea to shift everything over to Linux; it's not too likely to happen as a result of this sort of thing.
There are always rumors floating around about how "Microsoft did a license audit, and then demanded an share of equity in return for not taking legal action"; obviously not something they could implement with a government agency!
In order for Linux to represent a realistic possibility, some major system integrator like IBM, PWC, EDS, or such needs to provide a "reference" by taking a 20,000 workstation company and "disrupting" them over to use Linux to run desktop applications.
That hasn't happened yet, and despite the fact that availability of stuff like ApplixWare keeps improving, the "churn" of StarOffice versions and of Corel WordPerfect, and the perpetual "coming soon" status of KDE and GNOME's offerings mean that implementing this as a total replacement of MS Office for other than small organizations seems to be some distance away yet.
Whether the options will converge to "being enough" is another question; there's still no reasonable replacement for the ubiquitous MS Access (we have yet to see if would-be alternatives will go anywhere), and the change, when applied throughout a sizable organization, would certainly be disruptive.
Furthermore, if they put in Linux, while this might mean that OS licensing would be free, they'd still be left with the license tracking problem for all sorts of stuff with restrictive "non-free" licenses that would likely need to get installed such as:
Seeing as how all this sort of stuff does run on Linux, "switching to Linux" does not forcibly eliminate the "license tracking problem."
Indeed, by providing the implication that the issue goes away, it may even make it less tractable.
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Guys! Guys! Get over this Microsoft thing, OK? If I live down there in VA, I will get a few friends, print a few posters, burn a few CDs, hop in a car and start a "Linux install fest." campaign.
This incident is a perfect opportunity for us to get to the media, the consumer, the IT department and the like. "If you don't ever want to be audited, install another OS!"
Quit whining and take some action, take advantage of this golden opportunity, please!
Clearly, VA Beach wasn't using legitimate software. Otherwise, MS wouldn't have gone after them.
- I don't care if they globalize against free speech. All my best free thoughts are done in my head.
Why wouldn't MS want people to pirate their software? Why do you think copies of their software is installed on all 3500 of those machines in the first place? It's because microsoft has, and wants to propogate a standard - the standard being their software. If everyone had to pay a fee to use the metric system, not many people would adopt it. But if, after a few years, all of a sudden you had to pay to use the metric system, I think a lot of people would find that it is easier to pay money to keep current knowlege useful rather than throwing that knowlege away and learning something new. It takes a long time for new users to learn software, and microsoft knows full well that companies would rather pay for software than training.
________
Yeah, your right. Heavens forbid a company try and stop the piracy of their software. Anything but that.
I spent almost two years working for one of the largest companies in the world (here's a hint, they *HATE* those truth.org commercials) and it was my understanding that every year, Microsoft would request an audit of the software licenses in use. With over 50,000 employees in the US alone, you can imagine how labor intensive this would be so instead of doing an audit or letting Microsoft snoop around, they simply used a formula where they took the amount of employees with PCs, double or tripled it, and then paid for that many copies of the main MS apps in use, like Office and the OS (80% Win9x, 20% WinNT).
This "true up" check was in the MILLIONS of dollars from what I understand and Microsoft was always happy with it. I wonder why. heh
heh, how's mine?
just kidding, I love my slashdot UID.
-Davidu
# Hack the planet, it's important.
I can tell you without even looking that they are not in compliance. The city of Va beach alwasy does things on the cheap.
having recently been job hunting in this area I know that Va beach has been without a director for their computer operations for a while. The reason that this position remains unfilled is that they want someone with a MCSE and a masters in CS to fill the position. The salary? $40K. This area is so poor on pay scale that programmers only make $15 an hour on average. Tech support goes for $10 an hour and the only reason the average is that high is that Gateway and Cannon both have tech Support call centers here.
In this case I have no sympathy for Va Beach. they have sold every IT worker in the area down the river by ROUTINLEY touting how cheap their tech help is to new companies looking at the area. Va beach is reaping what it has sown. They have driven every tech who can get out , out of the area. The ones that are left are bitter and want to leave. The only thing holding me down is I want to finish my degree before I head for the hills.
So don't weep for Va Beach, if they could have gotten their claws into you then they would have happily screwed you over. M$ has done some crappy things but they have never directly and intentionally hurt my bottom line or the way I live.
Papa Legba come and open the gate
It isn't that they didn't pay, Its the fact M$ thinks they might not have. I guess in the case of M$ everyone is guilty until proven innocent. I think that is a bit backwards for a country where you are supposed to be innocent first.
Why is everyone assuming they are guilty. They don't even know at the moment. So now they spend resources on this that they will not be compensated for. While we are assuming lets assume they are all legitimate, now they are out the cost of the it resources allocated to it and they have quite a few users who were less productive since they didn't get their new machines they needed. So M$ looses nothing and the City does. Thats wrong. The cost of using M$....
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
[On Microsoft...] JonKatz needs to write an article or something.
You're joking, right?
What do you think would happen if Jon Katz wrote an article slamming Microsoft, and posted it on Slashdot?
"Grrrr... I hate Microsoft. I have to agree with the article! But wait... I hate JonKatz! I have to disagree! But disagreeing with JonKatz would mean siding with Microsoft!"
Users' brains would melt down, the entire post series following it would turn into a syrupy, heavy mass of vitriolic, incoherent ramblings as people struggle to reconcile both their gut-level dislike of Microsoft and their gut-level dislike of Slashdot's only known essayist.
In attempting to do so, some would come to like Jon Katz. (Which isn't so bad.) But then some would develop a taste for Microsoft...
---
You cannot truly appreciate Dilbert until you read it in the original Klingon.
Be sure and give them the root password! That way, when they can't mess up the whole system from their user account, they will have a way to "get their important work done."
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How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
Maybe next time you will pay for your software.
BTW, have you ever used kdevelop? The KDE/Qt libraries are much better than Microsoft's MFC for GUI programming, that's why I have abandoned MSVC. However, configuring kdevelop to use different versions of the libraries is a real piece of shit. I have written a couple of scripts to switch the library configuration between Qt-1.45/Qt-2.2.1 and kdelibs-1.1.2/kdelibs-2.0, but they are a clumsy kludge at best. Kdevelop itself, will not compile under Qt-2+, yet it's able to generate projects that will not compile under Qt-1.
I think the biggest hurdle to Linux on the desktop now is the installation issue. If only rpm was perfect...
Please keep all offers respectable. The last bid for my #413 userid was $7500. Don't waste my time unless you've have at least $10,000.
Make sure that Microsoft can not engage in this practice after the company is split. This may mean deciding if a shrink-wrap license has any legal value in society (IMHO, they don't because by right, consumers should OWN every piece of software that they pay money for).
I'm sure some smart-alec will come along and mention some configuration change that makes Linux more robust with regard to unclean shutdowns /var local, mount / sync and /var async and mount the other software and files off a server. A small / which is rarely written to will survive quite happily.
But of course... You can try things like ext3 or Reiserfs etc. However you can try the old standby of mounting the filesystem "-o sync". Try having only / and
Uptime - Are you secretly trying to agree with me here? Uptime is not a desktop client feature - it is a server feature. Nearly all desktop clients get rebooted daily.
Having worked support, The main complaint about MS software was that it crashed. It doesn't matter if the workstations have low uptime provided that the reboots are voluntary, not crashes. In a large office, there is always someone who has just lost X amount of work because Windows has just crashed - uptime == lack of downtime for the person using the computer. Uptime on the workstation leads to happier less stressed users - which leads to a happier less stressed admin. This is good.
Switching to Linux would be sweet, but it is unrealistic. Given the "experience" people have with Windows, we are bound to see that OS linger around for longer than we'd like. Fortunately, there is a really nice "Office" suite available for FREE from software602.com . This free software can read/write word/excel documents and is very user friendly. While it does not have ALL the features of MS Office, it does come very close indeed. I installed it on all my machines and even my kids love it.
Now, imagine what happens when M$ moves forward with their goals of ... the elimination of CDs
Othe corporate level, Microsoft has no such goal. For a low price (~$2500) they happily mail you out a monthly subscription of unlocked CDs all of their business software.
Don't forget the #1 mantra of MS Marketing - First Hit's for Free. They want a certain amount of piracy and illegal use, knowing they'll get their due in the long run. (Compare this to classic 'enterprise' vendors. I'm working with BEA, and we have to beg them to even get a 1 month 'evaluation' licence for WLS.)
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
What diabolical plan had seized Bill crazed imagination?
</bodytype>
First, there's the lackluster defense in court. Next, the "offer you can't refuse" to Corel. Then the hack news. Now this. Is BG trying to destroy his company? This is almost like a Greek tragedy: the personality flaws of the main character bringing him down in the end - BG's paranoia and megalomania driving his company down doobie-down-down-down. Anybody else have a vision of Bill as Slim Pickens riding a nuke down, whooping all the way?
www.eFax.com are spammers
It's called a site license and this is how they are sold.
Seriously. Sounds evil, right? I mean, I don't like it.. but..
IF someone walked into my company (granted I'm not THAT big) and said 'I'm from MS, this is our lawyer, and we want you to demonstrate that you are up-to-date on your licensing' I could give him a very fair and good showing of it in about 15 minutes. I would not have to go out and 'audit' my entire company, and would not expect them to ask me to. I can say 'We have x employees, here is a chart covering our licenses. If you wanna wait a few days, our purchasing guys can pull up all the POs if you don't believe us.
Simply the fact that the records exist would probably appease them.
I would think being asked to confirm your licensing would only seem 'intolerable' if you are not at all prepared. How do they know they are up to date?
Redhat, or somebody, should come in on a white horse, and show the benefits of open source.
"This will never happen to you again with open sourece software."
________
Obviously your company is the size of a city IT department and the IT departments in your city have nothing better to do than keep track of thousands and thousands of M$'s little bits of paper.
It is unreasonable for anyone to ask for all the licenses used in an organisation this size. I would be happy if they went into a university and requested proof of ownership for a randomly selected batch of software and took it further if the selection showed a substantial problem. This way is just shit but, of course, it doesn't cost Mammon, er... Gates anything.
Basically the department is assumed to be guilty and their fine is the cost of the paperwork and time to do the checking. No judge, no jury, just the way M$ likes things.
This is a classic "pick a slave and beat them as a warning to the other slaves; don't matter none if the one you pick hasn't done anything, so long as the message gets across to any that have" tactic.
TWW
"Encyclopedia" is to "Wikipedia" what "Library" is to "Some people at a bus stop"
Do you know where all your license information is? I don't want to keep up with all that crap. Who does? It's a royal pain. Do you think VA beach is going to be able to come up with all that? It seems likely they'll come up short. This definitely sends a message.
Arrrrrrr Matey. They're Piiiiirates!
Yessir.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
Someone needs to show these folks they CAN run their entire city FREE of MS products. If they get in trouble its managments lack of understanding of how an evil corp like MS works. opps I'm late for my MS workstaion test.... bye!
Here's my friggin license!
Are YOU listed?
If VA Beach had proper internal documentation to demonstrate their licensing was in order, this would probably not be a problem.
Of course.. how many of us think about that.
As any large company, they have an obligation to their shareholders (taxpayers) to minimize legal exposure. Every IT dept. should know that you must be able to account for your software licensing.
The problem with #2 (which sounds good on the surface) is that how do you know thta your NT machines never communicated with Redmond and sent them something unique like your NIC's ID or your hard drive's ID or at very least your IP address (assuming you're not using dialup).
Want MatLab for Linux? Don't want to pay? Try Octave. It's free, works with gnuplot, and uses many of the same commands as MatLab(you can use your matlab scripts etc with octave with very little editing). Very nice for students who don't want to pay $199 for a software package that they'll use for one quarter and will grow old.
AVS? Not sure what that is. But Google turned up a link that referenced avs.com. Perhaps this will help.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Oh Yes, When you install windows, there's a text box with the EULA in it, and an 'I acccept this agreement' radio button that has
to be selected before windows will complete it's installation. Same goes for other MS software as well.
Anyway, I booted into Windows, ran the tuxracer exe, then double clicked my Tuxracer icon on my desktop.
No, you did it all wrong. If you want to compare the two systems you should have downloaded the source code and try to compile on Linux and Windows. I'm sure you'll find that compiling things under Windows is no easier than doing it under Linux.
You should have downloaded the pre-compiled Tux Racer for Linux.
Why do I keep typing pythong?
Please tell me you are joking.
The more you know, the less you understand.
I am an employee of the City of Virginia Beach. While all of our desktop pc's run Microsoft Os's (mostly Win95 and some NT) our official standard office suite is still Corel Office. Some offices have purchased copies of Word or Excel for occasional use. However, 99.9% of users (and all official interdepartmental docs)are WordPerfect or QPro files.
I have a copy of Microsoft Office 2000 Pro installed on my pc that I personally bought and paid for a year or so ago since the IT department doesn't support it they wouldn't allow the purchase of it at that time. I only use MS Office apps on occasions when I really need to open up a file natively to extract data. I much prefer WordPerfect and QuattroPro for daily use. I particularly dislike Word.
As to the speculation as to how much this audit may end up costing us. To my knowledge, so far the 2 largest departments have come up pretty clean with only a few copies of software that can't be properly accounted for. Odds are that most of those cases are just sloppy bookkeeping rather than actual piracy. It will be interesting to see the final results of this audit.
The curious thing is that I just learned a couple of weeks ago that any pc's we purchase in the future will be coming with the MS Office suite already installed rather than the Corel suite. If a department insists on wanting the Corel Suite they'll have to pay extra for that (a mere $38.00). We (the employees) have also just recently been offered the ability to take training classes in MS Office suite apps. We have, however, been able to take Access classes for a couple of years now since many offices have started using that for their simpler database needs. Prior to the switch to Access we were big users of R:base. In fact there are still quite a few people still relying on some R:base applications - not everything has yet been converted to FoxPro, Access, or SQL Server. I keep a copy of R:base 3.1 on hand cuz I can do some things more quickly and easily with it rather than Access. We also use GroupWise - at least for the time being.
Wow. The largest city in the state is still using WordPerfect and R:base. While the vast majority of users would probably find that StarOffice will do everything they want/need the chances of us making a move to Linux/Star Office are about as good as us sticking with the Corel Suite - zero.
My guess is that rather than a disgruntled employee trying to rat us out to MS some marketing or sales droid at MS finally realized that the largest city in the state had still not adopted MS Office as their standard office suite and may be using this audit to "force" the switch from Corel.
Of course that's just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Well, I saw a low level Microsoft audit once, and the OS tally was done by counting machines in "Server Manager". The assumption was that workstation = office licence, although we only had one type of MS Office deployed.
(This was all friendly, no lawyers, even though it was at a shop who is MS's #1 competitor in a particular industry. It really just comes down to how honest MS thinks you are. The jackboots are reserved for the people who are pretty certainly ripping them off, as it sounds like VA city in question was doing. [See posts from employees there.])
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
That's the whole point of the EULA. If you don't do what Microsoft says, they revoke your license.
:-)
I would love to see THAT happens, though.
(8-DCS)
Here's how it works.
Scrambling algorithm:
Required for reading
Authentication keys available in "licensed" players
Payment required to make a simple application to play what you own.
You have two choices:
Live in a world where people who have nothing to do with you and have not worked for you extort and control the future of your business through inflexibly and poorly designed algorithms. Sorry I'm not betting my business on software that isn't versatile and on decisions made by these assholes. A world with licensing schemes that make it impossible for you to move into new emerging markets without continually asking these assholes for permission..
WHO THE FUCK DO THEY THINK THEY ARE? I SURE AS HELL AM NOT GOING TO ALLOW SOME RANDOM COMPANY TO HOVER OVER ME.
The second choice is reverse engineer. This means literally doing EQUIVALENT BUT ORIGINAL work. Who gives a fuck about uniqueness? Consumers want features not innovation. Unique work is limited to worthless novelties.
Problem to reverse engineer you need to crack the algorithm.
Therefore thanks somewhat to the DMCA/UCITA and much more to corporate hubris and consumer ignorance, all fucking hell breaks loose.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
From the way you describe it sounds more like a protection scheme the mob used to run. If you pay some money we will "protect" you from the thugs who just might break your windows and burn your store down. This kind of a shakedown has long been a staple of gangsters and apparently has now been adopted by MS. Maybe we need to go after them with the RICO laws. I guess this these things are going to go on until Billy "the bull" gates does some jail time.
I actually don't buy that whole "the chances of an audit is nil" stuff because you have no say in the matter. If MS decides to get you they will there is nothing you can do about it. You are presumed guilty and have to prove your innocense to their satisfaction. The entire matter wholly arbitrary and you have no rights. You either have to pay up to pay the lawyers to fight them. Seeing as how MS has a HUGE legal dept and are likely to cream you in court (the law only works for the rich in this country) you are screwed. You nothing but a bitch hoe of MS. When they get horny they will come over and screw you and your entire family and there is nothing you can do about it.
War is necrophilia.
A little while back I knew someone who sniffed the local network and looked at where attacks were directed. Linux boxes were targeted more than anything else. We speculated that they're common enough that lots of script kiddies can get their hands on one for learning, easy enough for someone clue-limited to use, and powerful enough to be worth hacking. Getting in a linux box is much more useful than a windows machine. Besides, if they're looking at what OS I'm running, then they might tailor attacks based on that. Of course, if you really wanted to find out what I'm running, it wouldn't be that hard. (One of these days I'm going to recompile my kernel to use non-standard TCP headers.)
"Keep at least 3-6 full bottles of hard alcohol on hand, a 2 week resignation notice,..." - Poetmatt
Actually.. they probablyu don't THINK there MIGHT be a couple bad licenses... they probably think there are a LOT of unlicensed copies running. a LOT. THey may have been tipped off that the IT Dept. was not tracking licensing, or whatever, so they decided to make a point out of it.
Yeah.. tco... any large institution/company's IT department should damn well KNOW that you have to track your licensing, and be able to account for it, simply because it opens up a legal exposure to the company. You have to track it, otherwise, HOW DO YOU KNOW YOU ARE LEGIT?
If asked this question, I could satisfy their lawyers in about 10 minutes by opening up one file folder full of licensing info.
They'd probably be happy with the spreadsheet, and budget documents. (the fact that the money was budgeted, and an internal document indicates that, on a per-employee basis, we are legit. They don't *care* about one or two rogue license.
What? You can leave a Windows9x desktop on all weekend and it wont crash?
Seriously, I mean what are the odds.
Sigs are awesome huh?
Now there's an opportunity for some Linux company to go out there and sell them on converting to an all-open-source solution.
Back of the envelop calculation 50 people costing $50/hour(inc heat/light etc), 8 hours a day for 20 working days is $400K.
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
ReiserFS, or just any journaled FS will do the trick... There are distros which includes this prepatched into the kernel (Hint, hint: Linux-Mandrake)...
Me: pro free software on the client and server. Linux: Where it suits? Windows: Nowhere!
--The knowledge that you are an idiot, is what distinguishes you from one.
"Microsoft, like most software companies, includes contracts with its merchandise explaining that the company reserves the right to ask consumers at any time for proof of purchase and an inventory of what is being used.
But what about those who didn't purchase the software legally? They didn't receive or agree to these contracts, so can Microsoft still enforce it for these users of their software?
Because the plastic sights break off! :)
the point is is that we are not concerned with M$ stuff...its all leagal, have liceses, the machines are compaq and dell. Preinstalled.
the issue is the information on those machines, and the other things they will see. My boss found he really likes mp3's...and has quite a few
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
But how do you know people aren't reading/posting from school/work? At most schools they run windows 9x. If you check the windows stats a high percentage are windows NT. Now i'm sure that some people do, but MOST people don't run windows NT as a desktop...
--
JADBP
Holy crap. You're kidding, right? For $7500 I'd want one under 100!
Free Hans!
Commercial Software - You've got three choices.
1) Don't use it.
2) Choose a leinent vendor like Microsoft and risk a audit.
3) Choose a strict vendor and deal with hardware keys and all sorts of bullshit copyprotection.
Microsoft is a racket. They spam out their software everywhere and they have to get people to pay for it. It's a better situation for everyone (even with the audits) than the copy protection stuff.
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
of course, we'll all have to wait until J. Random Judge sets a precedent.
There are other things you can do too.
1) Vote nader.
2) Protest loudly and often against stupid licencing schemes.
3) harrass the hell out of politicians who pass stupid laws allowing corporations to rape you whenever they want.
4) Contribute to FSF and GNU.
5) Lobby everyone you know and try to get the supreme court to reverse it's decision to allow soul-less immortal beings the same rights as mortal human beings with souls. This abominable demeaning of human beings has got to go.
Get activated and organized
War is necrophilia.
why incompetent?
is tailoring what's been sent so it looks nice on the software you're using being incompetent?
I just don't get it...
~
~
~
~
:wq
I wonder if Virginia has audited Microsoft and their subsidiaries this year.
For the really stupid users, try disconnecting the power button.
And so the energy costs for your company, who now have 500 PCs that have to be left on all night when before they were switched off, suddenly rises significantly too!
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
I would protest any company that thinks it has the right to look at what I have on my computer. they will need a searchwarrant, and I highly doubt they'll get one on the flimsy reason that I might be using pirated software. And RMS is welcome for a beer, but he is not getting any access to any of my boxen just to see whether I confoprm to the GPL.
//rdj
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
That's a very good point. I certainly look forward to book publishers checking to make sure groups aren't using photocopies or cover ripped books. I'll happy welcome the RIAA to audit my CD collection, I might have some copies I didn't pay for!
This isn't about monopoly power. This is about licenses containing unreasonable clauses. This is about companies doing it because they know no one actually reads the license. This is about putting the burden of proof of ownership on the customer. This is about corporations rewriting the law so that you're guilty until proven innocent.
This is about the freedom that RMS talks about. It's about protecting the freedoms you already had.
Search 2010 Gen Con events
Hey! You are scaring me!
(Mine happens to have some beauty in addition to being low, or so I like to think)
I should add to my sig: (most of the time)
Victor
good point, but of course the key distinction is the ease of replication - nobody worries about enforcing chair ownership because chairs are not infinitely reproduceable the way that software is.
Perhaps someday in the future office workers will have the ability to pull exact duplicates of the chairs they've been sitting on out of their butts, then perhaps the chair manufacturers will license their chairs instead of selling them.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
``It's the world we live in,'' Sullivan said. ``Microsoft has every right to ask us for the information.''
I hate to use such foul language, but this guy is a pussy! Not one ounce of "we have rights too against this big corporation." No backbone at all.
Is succumbing to big corporations the coming trend in American behavior, and is this what is electing Bush? The trend: "Oh yes, let's let the big corporations do whatever evil they want to do to anyone, while we demonize government and neuter its ability to go after these thugs."
Steve Magruder
Steve Magruder, Metro Foodist
Our University got caught redhanded by BSA for running unlicensed Microsoft software on some staff computers.
As a part of the settlement, they had to sign to an exclusive Microsoft campus license. This means that the University is in breach of the contract if non-Microsoft Operating Systems are run on any computer in the campus network.
Small scale "piracy" is good for their buisness. If a 14 year old who wants to be a sysadmin when he grows up has to pay $500 for NT, it's not going to happen - he'll find Linux and learn that. If he can "pirate" NT, then he'll learn NT, and Microsoft will have other NT admin on the market in a few years.
It's similar with MS Office. Normal home users aren't going to pay $600 for an office licence, but they'll happilly "pirate" it to be using the same thing the people they know are. This helps Microsoft by giving them another Office user.
Small scale "piracy" helps even more, if Microsoft is known to crack down on large scale "piracy". If a company's employies are all experianced in NT/Office, the company will be forced to buy licences for these products. And licences to the yearly upgrades to these products. And licences to other MS products, because only MS products work well with MS products.
If Joey the 14 year old sysadmin-to-be pirates NT, learns it, and doesn't find out about alternitives, (Or absorbs the MS-Propaganda at 14, and dismisses the alternitives) think how many potential licenses for Microsoft products he will cause to be purchased once he gets his MSCE and a job.
If Joey can't "pirate" NT, or even has trouble "pirating" it because of copy protection, Microsoft may well get NO licences.
Small scale "piracy" acceptance, and no copy protection, is an obvious win for Microsoft. Suing buisness that "pirate" Microsoft software just reinforces the win condition.
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
While I'm sure this is buried within the fine print of MIcrosoft's EULA, do you think it is actually enforcable?
I would imagine that this could be interpreted as an excessive burden on the government or company involved, and, in fact, may violate the privacy of the organization.
If my office bought a bunch of chairs, how silly would it be to allow the manufacturer to demand an inventory of what we're using, and where? Why is it any different in software? While software is obviously easier to copy, the principle is the same. It's simply none of their business. If we refuse, what then? Are they going to break down the door? Obtain a search warrant?
I'd love to see this challenged in court. From the article, it doesn't sound likely in this case; the city will just bend over for them...
How do you know? Sometimes I set my proxy server to fake being an Windows/IE combo. I figure it's good for security when visiting sites of dubious integrity...
well, there would be a productivity loss... but not for the reasons you listed. It would probably happen because of the lack of a decent office software package for linux. Where I work, we have a lot of people still using 24-32MB Pentium boxes. How do you plan on loading something like KDE2 + star office on this? At least M$ office is modular in that you can open winword without opening excel, thus cutting down on your memory usage.
oh, and winword loads in about 2 seconds. soffice loads in about 30. There is a huge difference in memory usage here that severly affects memory systems.
The reason there is no productivity loss due to users not being able to figure out the OS is that a good sysadmin will setup the box so that it works properly. The end user doesn't need to know any technical details about linux, just how to start the programs that they need. In addition to that, a good sysadmin will also run employees through training so that they DO know how to use linux.
No, they'll get a root floppy, mount their root partition and wipe it. Or they'll just get a Win98 boot disk and resize their partitions.
big deal.
The software at my Fortune 50 company gets audited every few years.
We get a few days warning to delete unregisterd software, the SA's come by to check things out, and it's back to normal.
In fact, when I install new software, I make sure I have the license, yes, even it's it's MS software.
George
From what I'm seeing they are doing a blanket check. They are hitting everyone they can find.
There is no reasonable suspicion, just a desire to get more $$$. Our company doesn't use pirated m$ software but they want to come search us. On what grounds?
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
I know that if the company I work for ever got audited, all hell would break loose. The licenses for each copy of NT Workstation 4.0 were left with the individual workstations, where they, uh, tend to disappear for some reason. And that doesn't even count Office, which every workstation has, but I've never seen a license for.
The question of the day is, would it cost more to pay M$ for the unaccounted-for pieces of software, or to switch to Linux? You can bet your a$$ that somebody in Virginia Beach is thinking hard about that very question right now.
And Virginia Beach is not all that far from Research Triangle Park...
---
How am I supposed to fit a pithy, relevant quote into 120 characters?
"MS To Virginia Beach: Prove You Own Your Software"
This has to be a misnomer, since all the EULAs that Microsoft employs are very careful to state that AT NO TIME DO YOU OWN THE SOFTWARE -- it's all licenced from MS, and they have the right to yank you licence, change terms, etc.
Illegal? Hell yes, but because people are stupid, they still accept signing away their rights for something they are utterly dependant on. I *like* being able to say I own my software.
--
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
"Truth is, Microsoft has every right to do such an audit."
Comments like this are exactly why I'm voting for Nader on Tuesday. MS has zero right to do an "audit" of a customer. Does Walmart have "every right" to ask you to show them receipts for all the items in your house (just in case you shoplifted some of them)?
--
An abstained vote is a vote for Bush and Gore.
Non-meta-modded "Overrated" mods are killing Slashdot
(Hey Ryan! Here's your proof!)
With most *nix software that cares about licenses, there is a central service that keeps tracks of the outstanding licenses and controls number of consecutive users, license expiration and even demo licenses. The idea of tying the license to a PC that will break, get reinstalled or replaced every couple of years just begs to be an license administration nightmare. The conspiracy theorists might suggest that it is intentional, hiding the true numbers of folks who use applications. For example what percentage of office users never use the spreadsheet or the presentation features?
Hypothetical situation: If the City did absolutely nothing, and did not respond, wouldn't it be up to Microsoft to prove that the City held unlicensed copies of the software? Rather than the city having to cease all day to day operations in order to audit and discover a handful of "illegal" copies of Word, or whatever? But I suppose that MS would chase it to the death, rather than give up. I hate EULAs doing this kind of thing.
This kind of thing makes me grumpy. All the worse, because:
``It's the world we live in,'' Sullivan said. ``Microsoft has every right to ask us for the information.''
Ugh.
--Remove SPAM from my address to mail me
If you're going to use warez, use them exclusivly (so the vendor has no contract allowing him to ask you) ...
Just out of curiosity, what are you still doing with Dos 6.22 and Win 3.1? I nuked my old computers long ago and put NetBSD and linux on them to act as servers/firewalls.
Maybe next time you will pay for your software.
What an idiotic thing to write. The poster could very well have been a student or faculty member who had nothing to do with the purchase ... er, "licensing" of software.
But while we're on the subject, perhaps you'd like to share with me what you think a good price would be for a product that can be duplicated infinitely and perfectly at near-zero cost.
I don't make the rules. I just make fun of them.
Me: I'll have some more informative conent on the front page please.
/.: Would you like some anti-Microsoft BIAS with that?
Me: No thanks. Just the content please.
-----
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Microsoft has enough money to go on some real witch-hunts. The Microsoft Gestapo would be a force to be reckoned with. This has to stop. JonKatz needs to write an article or something.
Reality has a liberal bias
Hey I submitted the same story, its also on The Register
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
well, as of this moment the office is dial up only.
:)
And we are not the only company to get this. This is why we want to check for other smaller companies in the area and see if we cannot gang up on them.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
and, according to the EULA, if you dont agree to the terms of the license agreement, you shall return the product for a full refund.
a little extra cash for the company?
Microsoft is a large company with some draconian business practices, yes. But with that said: Microsoft has every right to protect their pocketbook. Because you do not like them (because their pocketbook is larger than everyone elses? How Freudian of you!) does not mean they have less right to protect their property. I state: those of us who live in the USA live in a CAPITALIST society. Now badmouth all you want microsoft, IBM, or any other "evil-corporation-of-the-day", but they - and I - and most of us - are all in this to make money. While open source is nice in principal, in the real world, it will take a long time, if ever, for it to evolve to a point where free software is profitable for many companies. And without the incentive of money, your best programmers are going to learn other trades and program as a hobby. Free Software is the communism of the 21st century, though i suppose it has a better chance of surviving. I suppose that makes RMS kind of like Marx.. Though some would argue, im sure, closer to "jesus" or "stalin", depending on their level of fanaticism.
You can use whatever you like but when I get told somethings wrong with my computer becouse I use something else I should be angry.
WinWord? Word is a populare wordprocessor.. good choice.. I chouse GeoWrite... Somehow I've become a lesser person for not chousing a Microsoft product...
As far as marketting it's quite commen to attack a compeating company. Microsoft themselfs dose exactly what you now accuse the Linux community of doing "Definning yourself by a compeaditor". They have "defined" themselfs by Apple, IBM, Novel and Digital Research. Now they define themselfs by Linux. Microsoft clames features in Windows NT that do not in fact exist in that product but not directly. Instead of saying NT has it they say Linux dosn't.. Reality.. ehh Linux dosn't.. But it's very annoying and increasingly so when this feature IS in develupment for Linux but NOT in any Microsoft product.
If you feel picked on by Linux advocates maybe your justifyed maybe your not...
If you feel picked on when someone attacks Windows.. Haha sorry zero simpathy.. Windows advocates attack everything.. Linux advocates return the sentiment...
If you feel picked on becouse Linux advocates laugh at you for using Windows... ok thats wrong.. thats just wrong.. Ohh but there IS an exeption.. If you clame to be an expert and then clame to prefer Windows becouse it's "user friendly" I'll join the laughter...
Linux is easy to use. It has a learnning curve but anyone who is put off by the learnning curve of an operating system shouldn't be in the tech field. It's like a doctor who can not stand the sight of blood.
Microsoft attacks Linux for not having this feature or that and ok Linux dosn't have the feature but this isn't done to attack Linux so much as indirectly suggest Windows NT dose. The reality however is the feature on Linux is "in develupment" on NT is non-existent. The attack is invalid.
"Microsoft the innocent victiom" act is really the latest game.. before they just called Linux advocates "Zellots" as if being supportive of Linux makes you into some sort of religous fanatic.
Yet to suggest a Windows feature is at fault for something in Windows is quite litterally blaspamy to any Windows advocate.
So wrapped up in marketting tripe are Microsoft advocates that they in fact failled repeatedly to address a truely valid point in Windows...
Those e-mail viruses.. Well guess what... they ARE NOT VIRUSES AT ALL... Microsoft advocates would rather say it can happen to Linux than state the truth.. They are trojens.
Why is this point so vital?
Over the years Unix experts have said repeatedly that Unix is IMMUNE to viruses. This fact has proven itself true over the last 30 years.
Unix however has about as make trojens as Windows has viruses. Both are problems.
A virus spreads itself by infecting programs Unix provides no access to binarys on the system from the user level so such a program wouldn't work. Classicly a virus infects key programs so it allways runs. The kernel or the command line. Both are protected on Unix.
Trojens however use human engenearing to infect a system. Clamming to be one thing when they are in fact something else.
Linux CAN in fact be cought by this.. Linux is FAR from immune to this sort of thing. A small defect or an illconsidered feature is all it takes and Linux is infected. ZAP
Microsofts real mistake was to refuse to fix the feature. Mallisa is a gimme.. could have happened to anyone.. ILoveU was the SECOND time..
Fool me once shame on you.. fool me twice shame on me...
First time is a learnning experence.. second time is just plain stupidity...
Anyway Linux advocates are NOT allways right.. They do get carryed away...
Like clamming defects in Linux are in Windows..
oh wait.. I'm sorry.. It's Windows advocates who clame Windows defects can be found in Linux..
Nobodys perfiect.. but if you don't learn.. you burn...
I don't actually exist.
It's in the contract, a proper Information Officer knows it and with MS.... well, it's expected.
No big deal if their commercial software business based operation have done their job as they should.
And yes; I'm glad I use opensource software.
It voids most of these inconveniences seen with commercial software.
Commercial licenses only benefits the "Company".
That's the difference.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
Read the GPL. Users are not responisble for anything
Distributors need only provide access to the source BUT NOT A PROOF for that.
GPL is a REALY EASY licence compared to MS EULA.
I think alot of people who post here are a little crazy about this open-source movement. Yeah, open source is great for some things, but the fact is that MS puts out more functional products, at the price of us having to pay for them. These fools down in Virginia forgot about the second bit, and now they have to pay.
Its a shame that MS chose to attack the city, rather than some corporation (wouldn't it be grand if they got medieval on the RIAA?) where the burden will hit the taxpayer.
Moral of the story? Pay for your software.
Captain_Frisk
Don't you love when folks make it up as they go?
Please cite the UCITA provision that permits "softwar owners to prove they have licenses."
2 is my first choice. Get them off our backs for good. Because any further request could be veiwed as harrasment. We don't use your product so why are you bothering us again.
Although the thought of class action suit would be nice...get some of the massive $$$ M$ doesn't feel they are getting enough of.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
I have an issue with this. Microsoft can demand that someone (anyone) has paid for their software.
Fair enough. But can an Open Source developer demand to verify that Microsoft has/hasn't included GNU code into Windows? Fair is fair, right?
You need to figure out where MS got your company's name from. If you've ever registered any piece of billware, that's one thing. If you've never registered any piece of billware, have your lawyer draft a nice letter saying that your company uses exclusively open-source software, and that you do not have any licensing obligations to billsoft.
---
There was a recent story about how most companies end up buying more than one Windows license per computer. What happens when the audit reveals that they have 1,000 Windows licenses that they're not even using, and Microsoft still wants them to pay for the 20 copies of Office that they cannot find the documentation for.
Tactics like this could be very bad for Microsoft. When companies do these inventories, they end up with a much better understanding of how much Microsoft is costing them. Add this to the fact that the company is already feeling a bit put out, and you have a recipe for disaster.
As a Virginian, I am most curious about how this might affect state policies and the policies of other companies in our state. I am secretly hoping that this turns out to be a PR nightmare for Microsoft. (And then maybe they'll stop tyring to force Front Page 2000 down my throat.)
~Hammy
I wonder if they would accept simple receipts of the machines they purchased, if in fact those machines came preinstalled with the software they are currently using (Win98/NT/Office/etc).
:)
For example, I'm not sure where my Win98 license is, but it came preinstalled on my laptop, purchased from HP. Because you CAN'T buy this particular HP laptop WITHOUT Win98, shouldn't that be enough proof?
Obviously we don't know where this city bought their systems from - presumably if they got Dell systems with MS stuff preinstalled, that should prove enough licensing. I'm also pretty sure that presumption would be wrong.
MS just seems insidious to me regarding licensing in general. If they were REALLY concerned about piracy, wouldn't they invest in some form of copy protection? I can remember copy protection back in the days of the Apple II and C64 - (Mr Nibble, anyone?). Making unauthorized copies back then, you at least had to make *some* effort!
creation science book
Heaven forbid they actually keep track of the licenses they buy! I mean, why should anybody be able to question whether or not they have actually paid for their commercial software? Geez!
[sarcasm off]
At my company, all software purchases are strictly monitored, and we keep all the licenses in a locked vault. If Microsoft or anyone else ever comes knocking, we have no fears. We can produce the license for every single piece of software installed in our company. If they were too lazy to keep accurate records, that is their fault and no one else's.
-----
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
Actually I don't use open source. I use Winword, Excel, IE, etc.
Still, I'm sure you don't have all the licenses for Windows/Office and all the MS stuff you use. Be honest. Do you?
I don't think I know somebody who uses Windows and actually pay for the product and are fully legal. The last time I paid for a MS product was for the Win95 upgrade, and now I found a solution to the problem: use free OS/tools.
Even more, I prefer open source. And yes I'm glad to be fully functionnal/legal/independant/free/happy
--
Density Altitude Not Available
--
delete free(system.gc);
open source can still be proprietary software. After all the lecturing we get from Richard Stallman we still mix them up??
whether you like MS or not, there is such a thing as piracy. Since they don't play Open Source, and everybody knows it, why should we be surprised that they pop up and ask for receipts in particularly bad cases? Possibly some disgruntled employee (we should get some more gruntles for these folks) dropped a dime on 'em. Most companies I've worked for have been pretty serious about having licenses for everything, but a city government? Maybe not. As for it costing the public thousands, well, it would've cost money in the first place to buy the software, so that's a non-issue - they actually got use of the money in the meantime.
:-)
Personally I would find it more frightening if RMS descended on me and asked to prove no code on my possesion could ever have been under the GPL.
Ducking for cover...
The revolution will NOT be televised.
As the other poster said, Microsoft do not "support" the software. Sure you can compare a boxed redhat and a boxed Windows2000 when you buy a SINGLE BOX. But if you got 10,000 machines, Red Hat does not require you to buy 10,000 box set, does it?
Chances are, if you got MS OS on the machine, you also have MS Office on the same machine, plus a whole buncha other products. These adds up. BIG TIME.
10,000 machines runing Windows and MS Office.
10,000 machines running Linux with StarOffice.
the difference is six figures.
While im no big fan of microsoft, this does bring up a good point. Many companies and other enities buy proprietory software. That software is made by a company that sells it, and has rights to restrict licensing. Now, im not saying that i didnt install copies of MS office from one cd onto BOTH my computers at home, but this legal issue could be something to take seriously. (if anything, convince them to move to a non M$ OS). I think that by the time that this issue sees a judge, M$ will have already faced final ruling in its antitrust case (thank god for the ineffecient american legal system) so virginia beach will very likely be safe in the event that they cant dig up their licenses.
I am !amused.
I doubt that all the NT machines would have sent such info, and I doubt that all the copys of NT his company has are unregistered. Obviously the *registered* copys sent the info. Microsoft: have fun proving otherwise to the Jury.
(Objection, your honor. My client doesn't even run Windows.)
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
If you were slashdotted at the weekend I would say you have a valid point here. If you were slashdotted during the week at a time when most users are either at work or asleep then it's a different kettle of fish all together, as many workers don't have the option of what OS they run at work.
I think many will agree though, Mozilla (it's the weekend and I'm using it now) is not as good as IE5.5 (which I use at work) on a Windoze machine.
---
Some years ago, I saw the CEO of a medium sized corporation blanch when the contractor told him to write a check to M$HAFT for $120K+...200+ users, 8 NT servers (fairly loaded).
This was a upgrade after about three years of the previous M$ stuff, which had cost them $80K.
Now, imagine what happens when M$ moves forward with their goals of application rentals and the elimination of CDs (the elimination of CDs means only channel resellers have OS cds, you only get an OS with a complete system, and a replacement requires the return of the HD).
Many companies/government orgs are not willing (or legally able) to connect their machines to the internet just to have them boot or run apps. Nor are they willing/able to send used hard drives to anyone (sensitive data).
This gives these end users two options : buy a new machine when the hard drive fails (keeping a inventory of spares) or use free software. Note also that the license starts to apply to the physical box, not the bits of the harddrive. For the truly anal, who keep software in libraries, that's quite a bit of shelf space!
I've seen EULAs before that allow the software company itself to enter and audit the suspect workplace. Wonder what the CIA or NSA would think of that scenario, particularly if a lot of M$ stock or management ends up moving overseas.
What would take precedence? A court order for M$ to enter a secure/secret facility, possibly with a crew of H1B/foreign nationals, or the secret facilities' mission to protect data? Well, since most of those facilities are authorized to use deadly force, the answer is obvious...unless M$ forms a 'leet commando team or something.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Just an observation. Virginia passed the UCTIA back in Febuary. Looks like they're eating their own dogfood now.
--Bob
1^2=1; (-1)^2=1; 1^2=(-1)^2; 1=-1; 1=0.
Where does the State of Mississippi get off telling Virginia what to do?
Something that I've been thinking over the last while, was how much 'efficiency' can we be getting out of computer systems. And in a society so driven by economics as ours, how long can innefficiencies be allowed to last? That being said, isn't microsoft cutting off its own ear to spite its face?
Lets put this into perspective. Lets look a bit at the large scale, macroscopic level, not the microcosm of what seems to be the short term benefits of person a vs. person b. but the long term scale of movements and currents of society. Computers are supposed to give us more efficient means of managing our information, and so in turn they are supposed to yield greater efficiency and productivity in organizations. That's the theory, most of us never bother to question it, but its still just a theory. Microsoft achieved its power, wealth and success because little billy g once had the good insight to see something of the potential computers would have as a consumeable item. This being said, it would be in the best interests of any computer company to enhance the efficiency that computers bring, because this not only means a good product for the company in terms of short term goals, but a long term advantage that the "ecological niche" of that company - ie. the overall position of computers in society - benefits that company.
Now if microsoft is working to make computers less productive, less efficient to the users of those computers, aren't they just working to deteriorate their own market? These forces need not even be in the computers themselves, but all the implementation and administrative costs associated with using the computers. The more they make it inefficient to use their own products - the more they will scare away their own business.
Well, go to it, is all I can say, if that's the case, I love to see M$ digging its own grave.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
when i need a good laugh, or just waste time, i start searching for any microsoft eula's. they are just too fun to read to (and waste of time to search)
ound the message used repetitively over and over still nothing grows silen
Open a command prompt,
net server statistics
Counting idle time does not work, given load, and the possibility for the idle thread to represent the total across multiple cpu's.
matt
unfortunatelly *bsds and even linux don't work well on a 286. You have to choose between minix|coherent|xenix|other_odd_16bit_port for a almost-semi-usable un*x clone, ka9q|jnos for a small'n'strange router or win3.1 (together with w3.11 being the best versions of their windows product line in my oppinion) to do something useful (like editing with word 2 or word 6).
I do hate m$ but win3.1 and word2|6 make a good software for the price at which you can buy them now (like... 10bucks ?). And they do help make good use of old hardware.
--
1% APY, No fees, Online Bank https://captl1.co/2uIErYq Don't let your $$$ sit in a no-interest acct.
From the point of view of an accountant, I would say if it is an issue for the city to provide an accurate count of their M$ software licenses its their problem. Software is an asset just like anything else: tables, chairs, sheets of paper. If the city's accounting department doesn't keep accurate track of their assets it is damaging to public that has a right to know where are their taxes spent. Particularily because we are talking about ridiculously expensive Microsoft software.
So if the city says that they would need to shutdown all their operations to do this project, I'd say they are just stonewalling and trying to appeal to public to force Microsoft to bend under the pressure of people pissed that they can't get their building permit approved.
> I'm far more productive with NT4 + MS Office
;-)
Then you don't do large projects
Word, for one, sucks bigtime with large documents with lots of objects.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
Run tuxracer from the terminal, then you'll be able to see error messages.
You can use linux binaries too, they're called debs and rpms. just apt-get install tuxracer, or rpm -i tuxracer*.rpm.
Unix is user friendly, it's just very careful of who it chooses as friends.
Jordan Bettis
``Wherever you go, there's another stupid sigfile quote.''actually we have a legitamite copy of nt...and all the windows crap. there is no real basis for this desired search. Its a mass illegal software search at the expence of companies. I think that M$ should pay for all the time it is eating up that companies are going to have to pay for their it people dealing with them. If they are not pirating then let M$ bite the cost.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
Have you ever considered that this "myth" may have arisen because computers do, in fact, crash on people?
-- flossie
http telnet
flossie
Write now. Defend liberty
I thought one of the most disturbing features of the UCITA was they they could just do this remotely. They could just kill all their licences with a click of a button on their side. Saying that VA Beach was in a license violation, and pulling their licenses until they could validate everything.
The only thing VA Beach would get is a letter, and the fact that none of their computers would boot because Microsoft would have remotely pulled all their licenses in the wee hours of the morning.
Wait until all this really goes in to effect, and some local gov't is shut down by Microsoft. Or what about a university? or even one of Microsoft's competitors. Some company pissing Microsoft off? Teach them a lesson they won't forget by remotely pulling all their Windows liceneses. That kind of power honesly makes Bill Gates one of the most powerful people in the world? How many other companies could just go in and gind the US gov't to a halt on day-to-day operations?
The statistics are from the server log of 8ball.federated.com. Yes, some people deliberatly misrepresenting their browser or OS, but I suspect they are vastly in the minority.
Some posters have been saying "Big Deal, RMS would do this in a second if he could".
Uh, the GPL says you can make as many copies as you want, and share them with your friends, associates, whatevuh.
If it was just one post, I'd figure it was a troll, but with several, I figure it must be people who don't know better.
Remember, these are end users, not developers. They probably have no issues with non-release of mixed code.
Treatment, not tyranny. End the drug war and free our American POWs.
See my user info for links.
Maybe the situation is different with mega-huge sites that buy site licenses, but in my experience with smaller companies (less than 100 employees) I have never seen or heard of the company ever agreeing to a license. They just buy the software; no contracts with Microsoft are ever signed. I suspect that almost no (less than 1%) computer users have ever agreed to any type of software license at all, so no software publisher has any significant auditing rights. Heck, I don't think I've ever even redistributed a GPLed program, so I haven't even bound myself to the (very friendly) terms of the GPL.
No matter what gets written into EULAs, the powers granted to the licensor are completely illusory. (At least until something as draconian as UCITA becomes more widespread...) People just need to wake up to this fact, instead of blindly accepting the baseless assumption (spread by the software industry) that software (even commercial software) is licensed rather then purchased.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Who is ultimately stuck with the bill is employers, who have to foot the bill for those expensive tastes that their employees have acquired in school (or pay a lot of money for retraining). And if you are a consultant, you end up having to pay for all those expensive toys yourself.
Free software tools are just as functional as the Microsoft stuff. Even if they cost you a little more time to learn initially, you'll save plenty in the long run and will even have to invest less time in learning/training because free software tools don't change as much.
Be wise and be frugal and stay away from expensive, revenue-driven software like Microsoft's.
Why? Whats wrong with The Register? If Taco has a problem with them as a whole then hes censoring a valuable source of information, which would be really stupid, if this is true my estimation of not only him but the entire /. crew will fall like a stone. Please Mr. Taco tell me its not so..
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
If you're really legit, that's the time for the "go screw yourself" letter. If they come after you, perfect.
I don't believe this is constitutional at all. The police would require a search warrant for this kind of thing; no way in hell does some corporate legal department get to do it just cause they feel like it.
Ever read the licence agreement for the Map Editor that comes with Blizzard's StarCraft?
-- The act of censorship is always worse than whatever is being censored. Always.
Truth is, Microsoft has every right to do such an audit. Even MS is painfully aware how much their software is pirated every day, and especially larger companies or organizations are prone to buy, say, a 1000-station license when they really have over 5000 stations. Microsoft is a business, they are out to make money, and if something is denying them legitimately of their money, then power to them for enforcing their own licenses!
The only reason such a big fuss is being made is because it's Microsoft. If it were any other company, like Corel or a smaller developer, this would never had made any news. People are going to try and use this as fuel to attack Microsoft because they're the "big bad evil empire out to enslave us all." They're just a business, simply one that is highly effective.
--
- Chris
- http://nighthawk.livejournal.com
- Chris
- http://nighthawk.livejournal.com
"Aren't you glad you use Open Source?"
Well, I guess you forget the Corel GPL fiasco. The grass is the same color on both sides of the fence, don't think you're any better. Both sides wish to enforce their licensing methods. Microsoft simply has more financial backing to enforce theirs
Your reasoning implies that nothing is a dead issue until the Supreme Court hears it. From an absolute point of view, this may be correct, since a similar lawsuit could always pop up and continue up the hierarchy. However, that the 9th Circuit declined to hear an appeal signals that they agreed that the lower court judge ruled fairly and properly, and thus his decision is precedent for future cases. The 9th Circuit's refusal to hear an appeal can also be cited, giving it nearly the same weight in court as an actual opinion from the Appeals Court.
Do the companies want UCITA? Yes, they do. Do they want to test it? I suspect not, although I can think of a few hundred thousand regular people who would love to see a test case go before a judge. Why do the companies not want it tested? Because a court could rule against the law, striking it down, and although such a decision would almost certainly be appealed, future enforcement of the law would likely be blocked as the case made its way to a Circuit Court panel, then possibly back down to the original trial judge, then back to the panel, then on to the full court, then to the Supreme Court.
What is the danger? By passing these individual laws, states are in danger of violating the Constitution's provision of power to Congress to regulate interstate trade. Consumer protection laws are one thing; they usually apply solely to residents of the state which passed them. However, granting additional power to companies that do not reside within a state could leave a US Supreme Court very unimpressed, and a decision knocking down, say, Virginia or Maryland's UCITA laws would allow that decision to be used to very quickly knock down every other UCITA law in the country. The companies and lobbying groups have already spent a lot of money on this; they don't want it tested so soon as to make the money a complete waste.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
Well thats the beauty of piracy if your an individual user. Since you never registered your pirated version of Windows 2000 and Office 2000 (haha everyone has one) Microsoft has no record that you even use their product
It's 2000....$1-million is nothing....
Everything is but a number spoken by itself.
So not only does tax money got to buy the junk in the first place, now the state has to spend lots of time (= tax money) to protect M$ from pirate sales? This is an unfair advantage to M$ that their competitors don't have and it needs to be brought to the attention of every city atty in the country.
In addition, since when is Slashdot no longer "News for Nerds, Stuff that matters"? Slashdot is about posting news articles and letting the users make the inflamatory comments (such as this one) about them. The users provide the commentary, not the front-page posters.
The fact that the timothy was willing to overlook the objective details of the story in order to get in a jab at M$, bodes ill for /. It is well within Microsoft's rights to demand an audit. It is Virginia Beach's responsibility to keep track of their software. "We have no sense of where we're going to come out" Tough cookies for them. I'm glad that the city has learned its lesson and is now actually tracking what they buy.
Oh what a sad abuse of monopoly power when Microsoft can actually check to make sure their software is being paid for by groups!
It was a tuesday. The statistics are for a 24 hour period. There was a noticable shift from nighttime to daytime. That may be a home v. office shift or it may be a difference in the sort of people that read slashdot at 2am.
Mostly unrelated aside: 8% of the engineers in my company can be counted on to immediately answer mail sent at midnight. They are a very different group, from the whole, in terms of both productivity and geek factor.
I don't work at the office...I work at a client site. And well, I don't condone the mass use of illegal mp3's...if you saw my boss's cd collection its not like he hasn't provided a couple paychecks for the music industry people. He has more cd's than I do...and I have a good 400. the only mp3's I have that are not leagal is live versions of stuff. I have not seen a cd out that has the music, don't know where they came from but I would buy the cd if it was availble.
we still have a month to do something. I have a feeling I'll be spending a bit of time at the office soon.
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
That works if you are an all-Microsoft shop and have Office installed everywhere. What if half of your PCs run Linux or *BSD? Or if you have Office on only a fraction of them? To determine that you aren't "cheating", Microsoft would have to investigate your machines more thoroughly. And if your employees have installed Microsoft software at home, you're in even more trouble. P.O.'s or records won't see you out of that.
I've heard this kind of shakedown is a common Microsoft sales tactic... Quietly threaten to sue large corporation/university/government, then offer a multi-million dollar "site license" deal as the only way to ensure no future embarassing lawsuits from MS.
I believe this is behind the site licenses at many universities across the U.S. I think this sort of strong-arm sales tactic ought to be illegal (and I hope it gets taken care of in the final antitrust judgment).
"There's no such thing as a free lunch: Here's a tip: Be sure you have the licenses you need today. (Or you may pick up the bill for big penalties tomorrow)
FREE no-obligation consultation for Detroit high-tech businesses.
It goes on to discuss the Business Software Alliance (BSA) licensing investigations taking place nationwide, but offers a 20% discount on licensing of Microsoft products if ordered with the free fishing expedition *cough* I mean consultation.
the url is http://www.softchoice.com/compliance
Sounds like a threat to me....
Suffolk is the largest city in Virginia. =)
-Tork
I live here in va beach, and I gotta tell you the systems in place now just plain suck.. I just got pulled over the other night and the info the cop had on his computer was dead wrong when I told him so he said VA Beach computer systems were state of the art and infallible (hahaha). Shoulda known m$ was behind it. They deserve everything they get I say shoulda used freebsd. By the way I am an admin for the asp the paper is hosted with *thanks for testing our scalability* 200 suns waiting a long time for this moment ;)
-remember the alamo
Start->Programs->Common Administration Tools->License Manager
I'm not saying its good (It sucks), I'm just saying its there by default on any NT Server product installed
SMS does something of a better job at license management but I'd rather be tarred than have to use that again.
DB
Why? It comes with KDE 2.0, which comes with the whole KOffice suite, which makes StarOffice look primitive. Next, compare KSpread against Microsoft Excel - looks/works just as good! I'd say the KDE 2.0 GUI looks better than the Windows interface, and even has some added functionality! And the best thing - the scroll wheel on your mouse finally works!
As far as quick power-off, Mandrake 7.2 comes with ReiserFS as a partition option. ReiserFS is a journaling filesystem - power it off, and it come right back up - without having to do an FSCK! It works a lot like a transaction log on a database.
A recent company I was with was hit with an audit notice from the SPA. We knew exactly where they got their information, as the sys admin was fired several months earlier.
Our solution was simple and polite. We sent a letter back explaining that after our sys admin left the company, our new sys admin (me) conducted a software audit to verify software licensing compliancy, and at this time we are in compliance to the best of our knowledge.
We also asked them to specify the exact nature of the purported license issue so we could verify it. After all, it is awfully hard to defend yourself if you don't know what you are defending or to find something if you don't know what you are looking for.
As I recall, there was no response back and we did not have to perform another costly audit. My guess is that by placing the burden back on them to support their claim, the public record of the weak claim (i.e. disgruntled employee) was too much for them to go ahead with any further actions.
Anyone who gets an audit should contact their counsel, and then request a more detailed listing of any claims of non-compliance.
I rarely read replies, it's my opinion and if you thought about your opinion a little more, I'm OK with that.
The thing that scares me most about this is that if we let them come in, which at the moment is the last option on the list. what else will they see?
Auditing by the SPA or various software vendors happens on a regular basis. I am concerned that none of you guys have ever heard about it before. Auditing and then billing is how companies like Autodesk (who have a high amount of piracy) for one example makes a good portion of of their revenues. I am aware of one company around here who ended up having to shell out several million dollars for software that wasn't intentionally pirated, just that the IT department didn't get a good grip on making SURE it wasn't pirated. If you are working as an IT manager and you weren't aware of the consequences of poor management of your licenses, you should be looking for a new job--because you'll need one when someone comes and audits your company.
see if we can find more companies in the area and start a class action suit against them.
Again, this is not a new thing. If they want to come in an do an audit, they can. It is in your EULAs and if you have ever registered any software, they know that you have the software. YOu can try to do a class-action lawsuit, but you'll find that it will get thrown out immediately. This is an established system, like it or not.
SUre this is a major problem with proprietary software--one more reason to go opensource. But it is NOT a new problem, and you reap what you sow.
cheers,
-k
My own company bought Office 97 & 2000 licenses thru the Open License program about 2 years ago. After all, we wanted to be legal about things. Imagine our surprise when we got a letter just like the one Virginia Beach got. And the tone of the letter makes it sound like they're about to have SWAT teams busting down our doors. What infuriates me the most is that we decided to go with their MSOL program because we thought that would handle their questions about us. If we'd just bought individual CD's and never sent in the cards, we wouldn't be concerned about this. Now, it looks like we're headed toward spending time and money we don't have to perform an audit that's totally useless to us. Thanks a lot, MS. Bringing Linux on-line with our network is starting to look better all the time.
I use opensource software, Linux among others.
I urge people to respect the licenses that give us the freedom because... they give us the freedom.
Then it'd be double standards to tell MS users not to respect the EULA or whatever. That's why I respect the licenses and, thus, don't use MS style software.
If most software users respected the licenses, MS wouldn't be a problem for software as they are today and more users would be aware of what software freedom is all about.
More users would use open systems.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
By CATRICE FRANKLINE
© 2000, The Pilot-Episode
VIRGIN BEACH -- Jake Everett was sifting through mail one September day when he read a one-page letter that would disrupt every city department and give some 50 employees new marching orders.
The letter from the FSF was brief and to the point.
Basically, it demands that Virgin Beach, the state's most populous city, produce a list of all the Linux software it uses. The company also wants to see the city's software 'GNU/Linux' -- paperwork that proves the software is the GNU system running on the Linux kernel.
For an organization that's 99 percent reliant on GNU software, and has more than 5,900 employees and 3,500 computers, the letter was jolting.
Averett, a downloading agent in the city's information technology department, quickly handed off the letter to the appropriate people.
``We certainly weren't expecting that,'' said David D. Sulivan, the Beach's chief information officer.
Nick Psyho, a attorney for the FSF, said the foundation has found that government agencies sometimes inadvertently forgo the 'GNU/Linux' because they generally work with companies that are not the most 'GNU pure'. Psyho said the FS periodically asks all of its customers, private companies and government agencies, to inventory their computer products with 'GNU/Linux'.
``If there is an issue, we try to narrow the field,'' he said. ``Maybe it's limited to one distribution or one vendor. But in the end, the responsibility for keeping records and correct names rests with the customer directly.''
The FSF, like most software foundations, includes contracts with its merchandise explaining that the company reserves the right to ask consumers at any time for source of program. The rule applies not only to governments and privately owned companies but to individuals.
If the city can't verify that it GNU/ all the Linux software in its inventory, it might have to pay for any GNU/'s that aren't accounted for. That could cost thousands of public cents.
City leaders say they have gathered substantial documentation, but are uncertain of the final outcome.
``We have no sense of where we're going to come out,'' Sulivan said.
The city has until Nov. 27 to meet the FSF's request, after getting a 30-day extension. Meanwhile, departments in need of new computers have had to cool their heels.
Sullvan said it is the first time the FSF has asked the Beach to account for its software. In the past year, the FSF has targeted Linux in its software inquiries. Last year, the company lectured two Linux User Groups in Northern Virginia and two more in West Virginia for lack of GNU/s.
The foundation settled a lawsuit in April with Comput-Link Inc., a Virgin Beach-based computer retailer, for redistributing 594,000 closed copies of inexpensive Free peer-to-peer software. Details of the settlement were not disclosed.
To fulfill the FSF's request, the Beach has pulled five members, or 25 percent, of its core technical staff away from their regular duties to focus on the pending deadline. As a result, staffers in line for new computers or replacement computers must now wait three to four weeks to receive them, said Gwen Coward, director of communications and information technology.
City leaders said their first priority has been to inventory their GNU software. Coward said the city is finishing that project now, double checking to make sure nothing was missed.
Technical staffers have also asked all city departments to provide receipts for any software they downloaded. Sulivan said this has proven to be the most difficult task. And it's not just the city's computer experts who must assist.
Employees such as Caren Havecost, an administrative assistant in the technology division, are dedicating their time to inputting the inventory and GNU/s into a computer.
Sulivan said he's sure the city will get the work done in time. He also said that companies should be ready for the FSF to ask them for the same data. The city has implemented new policies so that by next June, it will be easier to meet a similar request from any software foundation, he said.
For example, any staffer wanting to write a new program must first get permission from the information technology division. That'll make it easier for the city to keep track of the software that departments use, as well as proof that the programs were coded.
``It's the world we live in,'' Sulivan said. ``The FSF has every right to ask us for the GNU/''
Reach Catrice Franklie at 555-1701 or poorjoke@goodbyekarma.net
>> Then you don't do large projects ;-)
>
> Yeah i do. I agree that it's not too good with large docs, but it's still much better than any open source alternative i've seen/used.
I still tend to say that it depends on your criteria.
Best regards,
Steen Suder
Best regards,
Steen Suder
-- for email: send to
Conclusions:
Linux users are overrepresented by about 200-600%.
Netscape users are overrepresented by about 200%.
NT (v4,v5) users are overrepresented by about 450-900%
When I hear the word 'innovation', I reach for my pistol.
I am a Mormon. Just an F.Y.I., bigamy is not currently part of mormon doctrine, and is only practiced by fringe groups that the official church governing body classifies as 'wackos'. When the church was first formed in the mid to late 1800's it was practiced, but when it was outlawed we decided not to push the issue, and it phased out.
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms should be the name of a store, not a government agency.
If all of you are truly concerned about fsck on boot, then why not give ReiserFS a try.
Seriously Linux will soon have it's choice of Journaling file systems (and ReiserFS is already being used in production systems). If being able to safely turn off your Linux box is truly the only thing keeping it from the desktop Microsoft is doomed.
So let's all talk about the "real" problems with Linux on the desktop. The fsck on startup issue is essentially dead.
... there's an oxymoron.
I don't use Excel because I write my own programs to balance my books and anything else I'd use a spreadsheet for.
I don't use Access or any other database because I write my own (perl usually makes it real easy).
I don't use Word because plain ASCII and HTML are the only interplatform text formats and I wrote my own HTML formatters to make embedded tagging easier.
all of these are a lot more productive for me than those "productivity applications" would be, even if they had no bugs or undesired features.
I was going to provide links to Excel, Word and Access but Microsoft's pages all come up totally blank with a JavaScript error. Could it be because I use Netscape 4.7 and Linux? Naaahhhh...
- Robert
Lawyers: The Other White Trash.
Now, now, little boy, I don't think the Second Amendment has anything to with copyright laws.
Microsoft can use this kind of "audit" not only to figure out something about their licenses, they can also use it to find competitive information (how many Novell machines are there? how many Linux machines?), and they can use it to harrass companies that are switching to Linux. If we opened up our legal system to fishing expeditions, all our liberties would be at grave risk.
Of course, their license agreement may have a provision to allow such an audit. Which is only one more reason not to do business with Microsoft. Microsoft is a bad deal for their customers and consumers.
Nothing is ever a dead issue. If the courts decide something, the lawmakers can create similar new laws. Or the Executive Branch can alter how much they enforce the laws. Or the King can declare you part of the family and exempt from the laws. Or the software maker can alter their software to run differently with your products and systems.
Sounds a lot like "Innocent until proven guilty."
C++ programmers do it with class.
Perl hackers do it quick and dirty.
C++ programmers do it with class.
Perl hackers do it quick and dirty.
I've gotta learn perl.
For those of you that don't know, the BSA is a lot like the RIAA or MPAA but for software. They represent a lot of large companies like Microsoft and Adobe, and usually do the harassment for these companies so it doesn't directly come out that Microsoft ordered an audit of this city. I guess the only relevance is that now with the UCITA enacted perhaps M$ can do it directly? I don't know really but this sort of thing has been going on for years. I wish software was treated better, as well as most other intangible products. Once I buy something, I want to own it, and I don't want to have to deal with the company that made it every again, other than for warranty situations.
Mas vale cholo, que mal acompañado.
Beyond that, you might want to find out what the audit actually involves according to them.
Also, consider installing Linux and running Windows under VMware. It's more stable anyways, and might get the auditors off your back quickly, whether you are running Windows somewhere or not.
In the future, however, I would expect Windows software to just contact Microsoft directly over the Internet, perhaps for getting a temporary key to allow it to start up. Then, Microsoft will know. But then, perhaps, we can also pay only for Windows to the degree that we actually use it, which, in my case, is less and less.
I WOULD LOVE to know what site this is! Not because I disgaree (which I dont), but would be interesting fodder...Maybe even server logs would be nice.
--matt Cowger
I think it very heavily may depend on the topic of the article. For example, if Slashdot runs an article saying, "A new version of K-Meleon, a Windows browser, is out. Get it here." Then I would expect that almost all of the hits would be from the subset of Slashdot's readership that runs Windows.
Also, keep in mind that the user-agent sent by a browser, often does not match what the user-agent really is. There are web pages out there, created by incompetent (or agenda-carrying) webmasters, that check the user-agent and serve different information depending on the user-agent, or sometime don't even serve the info at all. (e.g. "You need MSIE or Netscape in order to access this site.") A user just has to hit this situation once or twice, before they go into their browser's preferences and tell it to send a false user-agent. For months afterwards, that user looks (to servers) like he is using different software than what he really runs.
Server stats are fiction. Nobody knows what the population is really running. Thank incompetent webmasters for creating this situation.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Sounds like something the Borg would say.
We are Microsoft. You will be audited. Your licenses will be reviewed and illegal copies will be discovered. You must comply.
And here is the Borg^H^H^H^HMicrosoft King.
I have a 486 in my bedroom with abovementioned OSes. I use it for schoolwork, nethack, programming (C/C++, QB, VB, perl, python, etc.), and all the old games i find. I'm actually trying to hunt down an old High-Densit 5_1/2" drive to install the orginal Wing Commander(!) with.
;)
I was plannign to make it dual-booting or soemthing, but it's low on hard drive space. I just got an old Pentium which I am considering installing Linux on, however. Distribution suggestions(I'm a bit of a newbie)? i'm thinking mandrake.
So. that's what i'm still doing with DOS 6.22 and Win 3.1.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
It is on my linux boxes tho :) A good way to see uptime on Win2k boxes is to look at the properties of the network interface, it will tell you how long the interface has been up.
Enigma
Enigma
That would be true if this were a linux users' site.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
Then, someone, somewhere, decided our documentation people should use Word.
That decision lasted all of three weeks.
We're back to FrameMaker. Word was just far, far too inadequate for our needs. And we're a *small* software company.
- A.P.
--
* CmdrTaco is an idiot.
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
As I said - free download
/ management/uptime/default.asp
http://www.microsoft.com/ntserver/nts/downloads
If I buy a pirate copy of a M$ product, under good faith that I was obtaining a legit copy, I'm under no legal obligation to M$ to prove it. Its M$ that has to prove its an illegal copy and then they have to go after the supplier. Once they find the supplier then it becomes an issue where the justice system has obligations.
I seriously hope that Florida State doesn't do that. However, with school like FSU doing other stupid stuff, like blocking webpages you will never know
Brian Rubright
The problem here is that plaintiffs in Copyright cases have a lot of clout to demand something more than a fair settlement, particularly in clear-cut cases -- the plaintiff invariably is entitled to an award of attorney fees.
:-)
I wonder if it is ever useful or interesting to comply with these off-the-wall demands for audits. Microsoft/BSA is simply attempting to obtain non-trade-secret free discovery, which they will use before or during any litigation to follow. At the end of the day, even those companies that comply seem to get no better treatment than those that opt to defend. Indeed, they have given up quite a bit. It is much, much easier for a plaintiff to make litigation decisions when he knows the value of the case before even beginning discovery.
On the other hand, let's get this straight. If you are using ersatz software without permission, you are, and in my view should be, liable. It is a good idea to audit your own software use, and to stay compliant. Period. The best defense is no infringement at all. Let me say that again.
The best defense is not to infringe.
If you do infringe, you should expect to pay the price. The question is, at the end of the day, what price should be paid? Microsoft/BSA lawyers love to throw their weight around in clear infringement/unauthorized use cases, demanding more than a reasonable fee for the infringement, claiming that it will cost the defendant so much to get a "reasonable verdict" that they might as well pay the extortion fee. This is because a prevailing plaintiff in a Copyright action is often awarded not only the damages, but also the cost of attorney fees.
There is an answer, however. An Eleventh Circuit case not too long ago, Jordan v. Time, Inc. held that because of a technicality in the Copyright Act, a defendant who makes a timely, formal "offer of judgment" under the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure can turn the attorney-fee tables when the plaintiff does not collect an award greater than the offer.
Making an offer in this fashion shifts the risk to the Plaintiff, since going to trial may result in a net award of attorney fees to the Defendant! One strategy to consider (the circumstances are different in EVERY case -- make these decisions only with advice of counsel) is to do your own due diligence with a lawyer, make an offer in writing, without agreeing to the audit. If it is rejected with a threat to sue, file your own declaratory judgment action with an offer of judgment attached. Now, they get to decide whether to risk paying YOUR legal fees prior to discovery.
Now, do not try this at home. A Copyright case is a tremendously complex cause of action, and zillions of subtle facts can swing results entirely. You should rely on the advice of counsel you have retained before taking any action in any case -- including a decision whether or not to comply with a demand for an audit.
But do make sure your lawyer knows about (and how to effectively use) the Jordan case to good advantage.
One of the constant battlecries coming out of Redmond is that the total cost of ownership (TCO) for Microsoft products is lower than with *nix. This little stunt by Microsoft really helps drive this point home. 5 tech staffers a full month to do all the basic research, plus new computer requests being delayed. All because Microsoft *THINKS* there *MIGHT* be an invalid license somewhere in the chain? Does this sound like lower TCO to you???? If Microsoft can demand you produce documentation to support your claim of proper licensing, it sounds like they are raising the TCO intentionally.
Ron Gage - Westland, MI
They do this all the time. It's not news. I've been at medium-sized companies that have been audited and large universities. They do it quite frequently. The fact that it's a largish government organization doesn't make it any different.
-Chris
...More Powerful than Otto Preminger...
Most of the time when I read /., it's from work. For the last couple of years, I've had to put up with NT on the desktop. At my current employer, they talk about moving us all over to Win2000. (I think I'll find out just how much they want me to work there by telling them, ``If you make me use Win 2000, I'll quit.")
Last place, the corporate standard was Netscape on NT; this one is IE on NT. Next place will be anything that is not Windows. Unless I leave because they insisted on ``upgrading" me.
Geoff
I think I see a trend here. Maybe for them it really would be easier to muzzle the entire internet than to produce p
Fuck you, I don't have to prove I paid for it, you have to prove I didn't, or I'll take a billion from you in my libel suit.
(written up in about 500 words, of course.)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Are you saying i'm not a Nerd?
Shouldn't they spend time fixing their crappy software first before trying to squeeze money out of it?
Yeah. I put turds in them and send them to people like you.
Lately there have been commercials on TV encouraging that people verify their software is legal, especially in businesses. In large environments its a lot easier to distribute software.
If your company uses images, you should be keeping track of what is on each system. When it comes time to upgrade machines, its important to know what exists in a heterogenous environment.
IMHO M$ isn't concerned with one or two copies, but rather large organizations.
RMS is kooky, and a bit of a hippy, but this is where his ideas really shine.
A telling quote from the story:
"It's the world we live in," Sullivan said. "Microsoft has every right to ask us for the information."
When Mr. IT-guy says we, he means "we" Microsoft users.
They do have the right, because they were GIVEN the right by the users of the software.
It is clearly up to the individual to defend his own rights. And we can! Thanks in large part to all those who license their software under Free licences in general, and the FSF in particular.
Go Free Software!!!
I'm printing this article and giving copies to all of my clients.
-Peter
The difference is this: in the FSF/Corel case, Corel was using software that belongs to the people to create something they were trying to claim as their own. In this case, Corel was raiding the public larder, trying to make money off a social movement it didn't understand. Corel had *proven* they broke the license agreement; the evidence was there for all to see.
In Microsoft's case, MS is merely using draconian measures to raid a place simply because it wants to. The *police* can't even do that, for Christ's sake. Microsoft is *assuming* guilt, and demanding the customer prove innocence.
That's the difference, and it is so large I don't see how you missed it.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
Actually, I'm a research scientist and I really like my job.
The reason why I've gone MS is that I don't have time to do any CS admin stuff or learn some cryptic command line interface. I need tools for writing articles, processing data and creating figures as well as creating seminar/conference presentations.
Ok... I don't understand the need for Word/Excel to work seamlessly together. At my job I use excel or word usually to look at reports, or publish a report. If we dropped Word and went to Ami Pro or word perfect or text files, it wouldn't affect me much at all, and I don't utilize anything in either s/w package that would require "seamlessness".
I'd wager most people would fit in the same boat; the only things stopping people from switching apps are "look & feel", the lack of a real need to do so, and being used to a specific set of keystrokes to perform a task. And 1/2 of the time, instead of using Word, I use wordpad.
If they can prove you are distributing binaries without source they could probably do something, but if you are just distributing within your organisation they can't - even if you are making modifications. Remember the GPL covers distribution not use.
--
enterfornone - logging in for a change
And that's an outstanding point...but isn't that why they chose to do this in Virginia, whose legislature passed UCITA, thereby sidestepping the federal 11th amendment issue?
This is called argumentum ad hominem and it means that your argument is too weak to stand on its own.
T ime project.
Sorry, but no, it really doesn't. Just because one makes an ad hominem attack doesn't mean his argument is too weak to stand on its own; it simply means he felt like attacking you personally. It really says nothing directly about his argument. You can perhaps infer from the attack that the argument is weak, but you cannot take this to "mean" so. Example:
You: The sky is purple during the day. I saw it myself.
Me: Well, virtually the entire scientific community has determined that, in fact, the sky is blue during the day. Furthermore, you're a grade A moron for advancing something so patently ridiculous. You must be the descendant of baboons.
See? My argument is just as valid, even if I did cast a wholly uncalled for aspersion on your ancestry--assuming, of course, your reply was not the happily coincidental product of the Monkeys-At-Typewriters-For-An-Infinite-Amount-Of-
And Sun's web site does not indicate that SO is free of licensing requirements.
Indeed, if you read the Terms of Use of the Sun website, you find that You must not modify, decompile, or reverse engineer any software Sun discloses to you which seems rather antithetical to the notion of being able to modify StarOffice; the overall Terms of Use suggest that that is expressly forbidden.
Believe whatever you like about the "freeness" of StarOffice.
The context relevant here is that of there being "freedom" from the need to track that the software is being deployed in compliance with the license. Which is in no way diminished by the fact that Sun allows people to download SO "for free" from their web site.
The only Linux distribution that has been really "hardheaded" about hammering on the importance of verifying the terms of licenses is Debian; its (reasonably clear) separation of "free" from "nonfree" probably provides the minimal vulnerability that is out there to the risks of having software in use contrary to licensing terms.
Other distributions tend to meld in "non-redistributably-licensed" software without as clear disclosure. (Thinking back a few years, Caldera Network Desktop was probably the worst offender in the other direction; quite a bit of non-free stuff merged in...)
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
It's nice to see private industry harassing government over some stupid paperwork for a change. If Bush gets elected next Tuesday, maybe Janet Reno can come work for Bill Gates.
So, how do you like it, government? Now you know how we feel when you get on our backs for earning money that we thought was ours, but it turned out you had a claim on it just because we couldn't present you with some stupid paperwork.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
What ever happened to the article about limiting the usage of a single proprietary operating system in government agencys?
--
--
I do not believe in coincidence.
0x0000
"The Internet is made of cats."
Can a vendor enforce any provision it feels like throwing into a software license? ("Vendor reserves the right to copy for its own use every document and file produced with its software.") Surely there must be some limit beyond which a court would say, "no, that's nuts."
Even without me doing that, you wouldn't guess my OS correctly... Linux Netscape runs fine on FreeBSD.
Boss of nothin. Big deal.
Son, go get daddy's hard plastic eyes.
Expanding a vast wasteland since 1996.
What do you think the chances of the software reporting back to MS are? Better have your firewall block everything to them.
Exactly where would you find the right to perform the audit? Certainly not in the license agreement (which might create a massive migration to competitors!). Certainly not in the Copyright Act. Nowhere.
Audit rights is an illusion initially created by the SPA, and perpetuated by the BSA and companies such as Microsoft. It doesn't exist.
As a practical matter, however, the threat of a claim for infringement when you are a blow-over, drop-dead loser is quite a threat. And a demand for audit is a TACTIC by which a prospective plaintiff suggests the possibility of a relatively gentle settlement if you cooperate. It remains to be seen if acceeding to such a request actually gives any benefit in practice.
I am absolutely agreed that a plaintiff should be able to slam-dunk the slam-dunkable. And, of course, during a lawsuit, discovery will provide substantially the same information.
But audit and the impliedly promised "reasonable settlement" is simply forgoing the trial and proceeding directly to the payout. It may make sense in some cases, but in others it may not. Whatever may happen, I'm not sure from where any "right" to an audit would arise.
To be really productive, I need a way to insert pictures in my documents. However, I never manage to insert pictures in MS-Word documents exactly where I want them. Is there any way to stick a picture exactly where one wants? I mean, without it being automagically moved over the page header whenever you insert or delete one letter in the text above or below the picture?
Personally I think Open Source software should be mandatory for all offices of the government, unless they can 1) show that a licensed software title has no open source equivalent and 2) it would cost less to license it than it would to hire a programmer to write the software (Releasing it as open source when it's done.)
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
It has come to our attention that Slashdot has not registered licenses for any Microsoft products. We will be conducting an audit during December of your premises and equipment. No preparation is necessary, we will begin by reinstalling Windows 2000 on desktop machines and Windows NT on servers to ensure proper functioning of our audit tools.
Ah, the City, unlike we mere mortals, may well be immune from this claim. In a fascinating (to IP lawyers, anyway) case last year, the Supreme Court held that the Congress does not have the power to create a cause of action for patent-holders against the States (and their agencies), notwithstanding the provisions of Article I, Section 8.
States get to claim sovereign immunity. Since the Copyright Act is rooted in the same clause as the PAtent Act, perhaps the city can likewise claim sovereign immunity?
The price of such things is one of the many hidden costs of M$ software. Even if everything is above board and legal, the price you pay to have a staff member keep a constant catalog of liccenses as folks come and go in any organization is non trivial. The loaded cost of an individual is roughly 2x to 3x their salary. The cost of an audit is on top of such a person. I really wish more folks have read the Aesop's fable of the man the horse and the wolf. They might realize what M$ is about. Diddiap dobbin...
Maybe I'm just purely ignorant in the matters of these new laws, but since when can a business "order" some other business to waste resources to produce these tacky reports merely to please the plaintiff ? You don't see me threatening my neighbor and calling the cops just to make sure he's paid for his cable TV. Last time I checked, donating to the police department was reserved for crime lords.. hmm.. well I guess Microsoft are in their own class of criminality.. nevermind!
-Billco, Fnarg.com
They're not doing the audit. They're requiring the City to do the audit, at taxpayers' expense, and with no stated probable cause. If that's not illegal, it should be on principle. Unfortunately, you are right in the sense that Virginia Beach agreed to the EULA. There's no better argument for using Free Software.
Even MS is painfully aware how much their software is pirated every day, and especially larger companies or organizations are prone to buy, say, a 1000-station license when they really have over 5000 stations.
What's being contested here is the audit, not the hypothetical licensing infraction.
Microsoft is a business, they are out to make money, and if something is denying them legitimately of their money, then power to them for enforcing their own licenses!
Therein lies the problem: that amorphous "something." Did they have reason to believe that VB was fudging copies of MS sofware on their workstations, or was it a random test? If it was a random test, then I would argue that Microsoft is denying Virginia Beach taxpayers legitimately of their money (not to mention services). If there was probable cause, MS should have taken their evidence to the FTC or (gasp!) the DOJ -- oh, but then VB would be innocent until proven guilty. Further evidence that corporations are more powerful than governments.
The only reason such a big fuss is being made is because it's Microsoft. If it were any other company, like Corel or a smaller developer, this would never had made any news.
More's the pity. Judging from some of the comments I've read in these threads from IT professionals, audits like these aren't unheard of. So if this kind of activity has been under the radar, I'm glad Microsoft's notoriety brought the practice to public consciousness.
People are going to try and use this as fuel to attack Microsoft because they're the "big bad evil empire out to enslave us all." They're just a business, simply one that is highly effective.
I enjoy MS bashing as much as the next guy, but I do try to limit myself to valid criticisms. And frankly, this software audit has "evil empire" written all over it. That said, they do occasionally do something worthwhile. For instance, I love my IntelliMouse.
"This copy of MS-DOS 6.22 cost me $150 when I bought it. But I don't agree with this license! Gimmie my money back!"
In all seriousness, I doubt this would stand up in any US court of law (though weirder things have occured) but I wonder how it would be worked around.
-- "I am disrespectful to dirt. Can you not see that I am serious!"
Especially at election time, local officials are looking for ways to save money.
Tell your mayor (etc...) about Microsofts heavy hand and the cost to taxpayers just for the inevitable audit.
Then, show them Linux!
Chris
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
The quickest way to make a software package not work and produce service calls is to impliment dongleware. Device drivers for printers and other things conflict with the dongleware access to the port. Not all hardware has the proper ports, dongles get stolen ETC which is a major IT headache. Consumer revolt has killed dongle use except in some very specialised fields where the 100 or so clients can deal with the dongles on single purpose machines.
The truth shall set you free!
This is bullshit... Basically Microsft is accusing Virginia Beach of thievery. Ok Micosft has the right to accuse someone of stealing from them, that's cool, but there seems to be no way for Virginia Beach to recoop any of their losses if they're innocent.
:)
Let's say I call the cops and tell them the guy next door stole my lawn mower... they have to get a court order in order to look in his shed. If my mower is there he's busted and I'm assuming I'll get my mower back and he'll get in trouble. But what if I accuse my neighbor, go through the whole process and the discover my lawn mower is just burried in my own messy garage? You can bet my neighbor is going to sue me for something. I couldn't even get that court order without some serious evidence in the first place. My word against his isn't going to cut it.
Virgina Beach hasn't been given that option and looks guilty by just being accused. In fact I'm so upset with those theiving city employees I'm not going to move there and pay all those taxes
I must agree with you entirely. Anytime I have to use part of M$ office suite it takes me a long time to find it on my machine. Its there and its liscensed, but I rarely use it. This machine is my Photoshop setup for still graphics, a web server, and one of 2 gateways to my intranet.. My other mac next to me is my nle video setup. The several wintel machines are for dvd processing and creation of other stuff for other wintel platforms. My 2 linux servers in the celler and the mac down there are backup.. Between one thing or another, they are a bunch of serious machines (something over a terabyte of storage, etc., 100baset network, routers, etc. etc.) , but Office is very very much in the background. The presumption that an office suite is required to be productive is really quite untrue. Actually, it is sometimes counter-productive. Office 98 is so frustrating to my wife that she writes papers in html using bbedit rather than spend time wrestling with the paperclip that ate the world.
Ask your lawyer directly. This is too complex a question to look for advices on a listserv. I have posted my general takes on these questions, and they lie somewhere between the extreme positions you propose. On the other hand, I don't know your facts.
Changing the software (partiularly since their demand letter almost certainly asked you to make no changes to any evidence of infringement) might be an extraordinarily bad idea.
So, run -- do not walk -- to a solid, experienced computer lawyer; preferably one who has dealt with these --long-routine-- demand letters. A little attention to detail and sound advice in advance may well save thousands, perhaps tens or hundreds of thousands, down the road.
Ah, but newish Microsoft products will stop working if you don't register. Presumably this falls under the rubric of "self-help", which, under the Uniform Commercial Information Transations Act allows computer companies, in the event of a dispute, to disable software remotely.
If microsoft had a way to stop all piracy -- you would see a mass exodus to Linux and Bsd. I personally have not touched a M$ product in 4 years (except at work)...But too all of the people I work with that say "Linux is not quite there yet", I counter with -- "Yea, but if you actually had to pay the sticker price for Windows NT or 2000 with a 20+ client pack -- your definition of there yet, would change..." I think this goes for a lot of home computer users.
I bet half of the people on the net that flame Linux, did not "dig deep" in their pockets for anything more than the price of a box of CDR's when it came time to outfit those killer Window machines..
Repeat after me...Piracy Sucks.
(+1 Funny) only if I laugh out loud.
In preparation, please convert all your documents in proprietary formats to openly defined standards. Conversion of remaining propietary documents for examination will be billed at our standard rates.
Um wouldn't that draw more fire?
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Well, the M$ hit squad has already sent my company a letter wanting to come in and check our computers. This letter was followed by a letter from microsoft. I work for a small consulting company and all the programming, almost always, is done at the client site. So out of the couple machines and the laptop my boss uses there are not that many machines.
/. since I'm very curious about what others people here think about it and what ideas you have. Maybe someone has some better leagal info on what can be done.
The thing that scares me most about this is that if we let them come in, which at the moment is the last option on the list. what else will they see? As far as windows goes the machines there were preloaded with winblows and are completely leagal, but what if they see the large mass of mp3's on the machines? Or what type of other info will they be looking for while they are there. I suspect they would look for employee and client information to make sure they don't miss anyone.
I guess all the leagal battles with the govt has cause bill to feel his profits are not as high as he wants and figures he can rake more money in this way.
Our options at this moment are:
1) have our lawyer send a "go screw yourself" letter to M$'s hit squad.
2) put linux on all the machines, and let them come in (this is my favorite)
3) see if we can find more companies in the area and start a class action suit against them.
I'm glad this hit
If ignorance is bliss, the world is full of blissful people
Given that they have run this story, I doubt that /. will run a story that I submitted at about the same time. The University of Maryland at Diamondback is going to try and tax every student to have access to M$ products and updates. Read about it here This is an effort to make sure that there is compliance with M$ liscensing. No matter if you don't even have a computer, you are presumed guilty of infringement and must pay up. Linux or not, you gotta send money to unka Bill... Somehow I think that this is beyond the pale...
Microsoft and other organizations do this whenever
they find a lot of people registering with the
same ID number etc from a corporate, govt, etc location.
-- SJS smooge at smoogespace dot com
In retaliation to the law suit, wouldn't it be funny if MS forced all government employees to prove that they're using legit software?
Actually, all MS products used the same authentication scheme up until Win98. The rule is that the second set of digits must add up to a multiple of 7.
Of course, this will probably get me slapped with DMCA lawsuit...
I work for the City of Chesapeake, which is Virginia Beach's neighbor. Our I.T. department just announced that we will be upgrading to Windows 2000 and Office 2000 next year inn our weekly staff meeting. I objected to this and asked why. Nobody could give me an answer other than "we don't want to fall behind with Microsoft."
I provided information on Star Office, but I think it fell on deaf ears.
Not always, but usually. By sticking to standards and avoiding "Netscapisms" (applies to "IEisms" as well), it is trivial to make a non-dynamic site that looks 100% perfect with all browsers made since about 1996 or so, even the really buggy ones.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Several years ago, I sent contract offers to several companies, including Microsoft. I sent their product registration cards with a two-letter code on my address and a bold red note that said they could use the code to indicate agreement to the enclosed contract. The contract stated that I agreed to give some consideration to any advertising they sent me, and they agreed to limit the amount of advertising and keep my information private.
The contract also stated that they agreed any of their software I purchased was covered by copyright law but not by licenses. Most of the companies I sent the registration cards and contracts to used the codes on my address. Microsoft was one of them.
Few people know that you can actually be recruited to work at Bill Gate's house as a servant, a towel boy for instance.
maybe linux, and star office would be a good recomendation now...
"I have no special gift, I am only passionately curious." - Albert Einstein
We tried having the NT-SysAdmins enter that somehow valid license key "010-0123456", but they just got confused and frustrated and wound up running away from the servers at this step into a dark corner where they'd typically be found scarfing down bananas at an unbelievable rate.
Since we switched to using 111-1111111 (which also works just as well), the NT admins have been much happier, need less counseling, and the cages need to be cleaned less often.
but buying that antiquated software for "like... 10bucks" is illegal, because it gives no money back to M$.... read the license. only for sale once. just wait til they start chasing down individuals.
if windows was $9.95, there would be no piracy.
I doubt MS cares if you have MP3's or porn on your systems. They're going to be looking for unlicensed copies of Office and Windows and such. Hell, I remember a story on here I believe a few days back about someone's machines being confiscated by the FBI for allegedly being involved in the yankees.com hack. Apparently the FBI didn't even care about the mp3's, why should microsoft?
Please cite where in the DMCA it says you can't reverse engineer?
It in fact provides room for RE which frankly every artist every engineer and every other professional practitioner uses to get through the day.
We call it hacking, they call it improvising.
You con't fix a car without removing parts. You don't paint by having all the right colors available. YOu mix colors. And you don't start operating on someone with out first getting them into state where it's safe to operate. There's no step by step way of doing that. What if the patient is allergic to the usual anaesthetic.
Yet despite these provisions for reverse engineering companies get away with snuffing consumer reports (CPHack), get away with suing people for creating products which these companies didn't even make (CueCat Linux Driver), and almost get away with shutting down products that work like what they made but the actual work was done by the producer of the project (Emulators).
The fact is that this is a test of UCITA regardless what UCITA says. As long as it says something about rights and licenses, companies will try to stretch it beyond the limits of reason. You know why they get away with it?
Name 1 40hr a week working TV addicted 2.3 kids having middle age crisis suffering individual who can even tell you what the acronym UCITA stands for.
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
The site is 8ball.federated.com. I checked the browser logs for one of the images on the front page. Should be a fairly neutral site across OS and browser.
Last I tried with Mozilla they didn't work. (No support for the multipart mime type) Visitors would still have loaded the graphic, they would just be disappointed a few seconds later.
Look at how MS is attempting to force Universities to pay for licences for all students regardless of whether they use the software or not, check -
M$ charges students who don't use its software
Software deal a hard sell
Any sufficiently advanced man is indistinguishable from God
Shouldn't VA Beach just have to give them copies of site licenses, reciept, or whatever else. I don't recall the licensing saying anything about you must actually turn on your system. Just "Tell us you own our stuff, and prove it" MS has no right to audit the audit do they?
If GNU suspected someone was using GPL'd code without releasing the source, they would want an audit as well. This is not a shocker. Isn't this how Objective C was obtained?
Now the fines imposed by Microsoft would be a shocker. I think reasonable charges as opposed to the $100,000 I saw mentioned elsewhere in the responses.
Right on! I was about to post the same thing. I find that comment in the story kind of off-putting. No, I'm not glad I use open source, because I don't! (except for nethack and gcc... ;)
I use Win98 SE, Win95, DOS6.22 and Win3.1 on assorted machnes (though I use Linux at school) and I really don't care that they aren't open source. Assuming that we all do is just a wee bit rude. I'm not deeply offended or anything, but it's slightly annoying. As if I'm not part of the "open source in-crowd" or something.
Bah.
-J
Karma: T-rexcellent.
It was a tuesday. The statistics are for a 24 hour period. There was a noticable shift from nighttime to daytime. That may be a home v. office shift or it may be a difference in the sort of people that read slashdot at 2am.
Or for that matter a geographicshift.