Virginia Beach Pays Microsoft $129,000

An unnamed correspondent writes: "As a follow-up to a story a few weeks ago about Microsoft's surprise audit of the city of Virginia Beach municipal government's office PCs, the results are in. This story in the local newspaper tells us that they just sent a check to Microsoft for $129,000. Apparently they couldn't find the paperwork for 800+ licenses (out of 6000+), so rather than spend more time trying to track down the invoices/receipts they just sent a check to try and settle. No word back from Microsoft yet as to whether this is sufficient to close the matter." Of course, that much money (just the money they're paying to take care of uncertain licenses) could probably also buy CD burners and enough blanks to create no-license-hassles copies of Linux or Free / Open / NetBSD for every computer the city owns.

Comments

Why Virginia, Why now?

[Veteran]

I think in the religious war over the quality of MS software there are a couple of points that everyone is missing.

The first thing to note is that the 'raids' are taking place in Virginia. I don't think this is accidental: Virginia is the first state to pass UCITA.

I suspect that what Microsoft is doing is attacking in the place where it has the best chance of winning, and then using the precedents (if anyone tries to counter in court) to bully governments and companies in the other states where UCITA is not the law.

Microsoft must be getting desperate for revenue growth sources. Somebody at the corporate offices probably realized that most people are not fastidious about keeping 'proof of purchase' certificates, and realized that recharging legitimate owners was a potential revenue stream.

Unscrupulous resellers, light-fingered staff

[LizardKing]

This reminds me of the FAST visit one of my former employers suffered. FAST (the Fedaration Against Software Theft if memory serves me well), sent a polite note to the head of IT offering an `instructive talk' about software licensing. This really constituted a fact finding mission from a FAST operative, as he carefully milked our IT people (including me) for our knowledge on licensing issues.

A few weeks later FAST `offered' to audit our license situation. This was a thinly veiled accusation that are licenses were not upto snuff.

It turned out that unscrupulous or unknowing resellers (including Compaq) had failed to sell us the required licenses. They knowingly sold us systems with NT installed on them that we couldn't legally connect together on a LAN (no client licenses). In Compaq's case, they had sold us the licenses, but conveniently forgotten to ship them with the computers.

Another problem was that too many staff had access to the software lockers, and many of our Windows 95 licenses had gone walkabout along with the CDs ...

The upshot of all this was that we had to buy several hundred licenses, many of which we had legally bought already. My boss also started to read those shrinkwrapped licenses *very* carefully. The client license problem was happily resolved by installing Linux on the NT file and print servers.


Chris

Is it MSs job to check out licensing?

[onion2k]

Microsoft is a private corporation. Do they actually have any right to check on whether the software you use is legal? I realise that the police/copyright theft department/whatever have legal rights to find out whether you're running licensed applications, but does the company that created them? Certainly they're not within their rights to come in uninvited. Could the city have simply asked Microsoft to go away?

Also, what effect will this have on the use of Microsoft software in the future within the city? I would imagine it'd have little affect, once the platform is chosen it tends to stay the same for a long time. On the other hand this sort of stuff causes much aggro. I say bring back site licenses.

The scene....

[wowbagger]

<scene location="some IS dept., some city">
<voice type="hoarse" accent="Italian">

It has come to our attention that some of the software you posess may not have proper licenses. This wounds us deeply, as it shows a lack of respect for us.

However, we will give you a chance to make ... amends. You may show us proper respect, in the proper amounts. In return, we shall ... overlook ... this unfortunate occurance.

It would be most unfortunate, if you fail to make amends. In this business, unfortunate, accidents, happen, accidents we could help, prevent.

I am sure you will do the right thing, for I know you respect me, Don Gates.

</scene>
</voice>
</music>

With apologies to any responsible businessmen or Italians out there.