Slashdot Mirror
Microsoft Turning Screws on Customers
Mitch Wagner submitted his own story about Microsoft cracking down on big customers who it thinks aren't playing fair on their licenses. "These days, the only thing that Microsoft is interested in discussing with its customers is licensing issues," said John Luludis, CIO of Danzas AEI, an international shipping company with about 10,000 Windows desktops. "We spend a lot of time and resources constantly proving license compliance, while we try to plan an optimum configuration to deal with the rising cost of ownership related to Microsoft's products.""
Why should this be a surprise?
If the companies in question signed an agreement with Microsoft, surely they can't complain when the other party actually wants what is due to them.
It's high time everyone learned what making deals with the devil actually means. Eventually he will collect, in blood...
Will the real Bruce Perens Please Stand Up
Sounds like Microsoft has a long term plan to help linux out....Screw its biggest customers and make them look for alternatives.
I guess the outlook for alternative OSs and office suites is VERY good.
We spend a lot of time and resources constantly proving license compliance, while we try to plan an optimum configuration to deal with the rising cost of ownership related to Microsoft's products.
Linux? BSD?
With companies like Burlington Coat Factory and large parts of the Mexican government leading the way, perhaps we'll see corporations deploy Linux to the desktop as a way to minimize TCO and eliminate licensing issues and the consequent legal costs.
--
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day.
Scientists restrict study to entire physical universe; creationist
For them to dig their own grave with. Looks like M$ is intent on making things as difficult as possible for companies which use M$ products. With enemies like that, LINUX doesn't need friends =).
Anyone who has read the news about Virginia Beach Gov't should not find this surprising at all. A company wants to ensure it's licenses are being upheld.
Now, I could get into the idea that MS waited until there was ample evidence that some governments were dependant on it's products before starting this, but that would sound like a Linux zelot.
Still begs the issue, why now? Why did they not start on day one and come down on pirates? Why have there been posts on MS bulletin boards saying that they don't care if you take the OS you use at work home with you to use. Unless they knew this day would come and only now the boom is lowering.
Does this really surprise anyone? Ensure everyone is dependant on it, saturate the market, then suddenly decide to play hardball with licenses. Gee, sounds like a decent business practice, but only works if you're a monopoly.
DanH
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
Cav Pilot's Reference Page
UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
Why do these people comply with Micro$oft's requests for license audits? Is there actually a lay that forces them to do so? It seems to me that if a company owns the hardware, and knows that they at least got an OEM license for Windows with the machine, they should be able to tell Micro$oft to take their audit request and shove it.
So does anyone know what happens if a company refuses to audit?
Microsoft Corporation are actually murderers.
New York, N.Y. March 30th,2001
In an independent study conducted this month by staff at AntiOffline.com, and MacroShaft.org, it was revelead that Microsoft is killing people on a daily basis, with the evidence verified by statisticians at New York University's Mike Hunt.
"Based on these estimated projections, it seems the Justice Department needs to begin a prompt investigation into this matter." states Mike.
Judging on data gathered on a one month term this is the output:
Windows users crash an estimated two times a day which requires an estimated 3 minutes to reboot. Result?
(Rough estimates)
100 million Windows users x 120 seconds == 507 years lost. 6 deaths a day are attributed to this product. This alone does not include any estimates from those users who have to reboot upon installing programs. Nor does this include time spent configuring TCP/IP reboots.
With an estimated dollar amount of about 22 million dollars lost weekly (this is a generous amount) due to these reboots, its strange that no company has gone bankrupt.
"If anyone would care to break these figures down into dramatic fashion, their would probably be global catastrophes." states Sil of AntiOffline
The difference between life and death on the workplace is no longer restricted to psychotic Postal workers, but rather a more chilling enemy known as the Blue Screen of Death.
We've yet attempted to solidly document that *actual* numbers out of fears our calculator could not reach the given amount, so we actually have given Microsoft what could be an actual death toll of 20-30 people daily.
Staff at Microsoft declined to return our e-mails repeatedly but we will continue to pursue the numbers as time goes by.
President George W. Bush today also intervened on Microsoft's behalf stating, AntiOffline's numbers are fuzzy math. Sil could not be contacted for comment.
"Windows -- When do you want to reboot today?"
who'd a thought
360 degrees of Karma
MS has every right to expect everyone who uses their software to have a license and conform to it (under proper fair use laws). Everyone who uses Linux is supposed to conform to the GPL and just because MS is charging huge amounts of money for their OS and has tighter restrictions doesn't change a thing. If a large company doesn't want to pay MS for all 10 000 copies of Windows 2000, they should use another OS, not break the license.
The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
The problem i see with this is that doing an software licence audit has a high direct cost (time spent doing it, xeroxing of papers, etc...), and also disrups normal operation of the company.
If a software company wants to, they could audit your licence compliance monthy and put you out of business _EVEN IF YOU DON'T USE A SINGLE PIRATED PROGRAM_. The fact that they are taking a week out of every one of your months will probably kill you.
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
...while we try to plan an optimum configuration to deal with the rising cost of ownership related to Microsoft's products.
I know this has been beaten like a dead horse but, Linux. One copy, one license, 10,000 desktops, it does th office productivity and internetworking that the windows machines do just fine, A good desktop (Gnome, KDE) is intutive enough that retraining would be minimal, not to mention the costs that could be saved. On the flip side, it would take more on the technician end, but I think dropping the cost of 10,000 M$ Windows licenses would more than make up for it.
You say you want a revolution....
Legally licensed and Operated...The Linux Pimp
--It's Pimptastic!--
Some of it is our fault because we trusted the wrong folks internally to keep track (long story and trust me, you don't care to hear it) but there is a lesson to be learned in making sure someone keeps track of these things. Preferably someone involved with computers...
Of course I'm having a very hard time biting my tongue about how we could avoid this problem in the future. (*cough* linux *cough*)
Our company recently recieved an intersting little letter from MS. The gist of it was "We know licensing is very important to our customers. Please let us know what we can do to help you maintain compliance."
Uh-huh. Talk about a thinly veiled threat. We had just done a software audit a couple weeks beforehand, so we were cool. But still, the damn thing read like some Mafia protection letter.
Dirk
I keep trying to pick fights, but I can't shake this Excellent karma.
Use to be, you heard everybody talk about the 'Blind Eye' at Microsoft, i.e.: the attitude that yes, there is going to be some OS piracy, and no we're never going to get rid of it all, but that's okay, because it means that more people are using Microsoft than Mac0S or Linux.
I guess with a company that is as large as the one mentioned, with as many Win32 desktops, Microsoft values extracting as many dollars as they can through extortion tacticts rather than turning the other cheek and increasing their good karma with 'Microsoft Shops'.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
You ought to make that sentence more clear to people like me that have trouble reading things.
I first read it as:
"Turning Microsoft On Screws Customers"
So please CmdrTaco, please don't do the knee jerk response and post EVERYTHING that goes against MS, we already KNOW how full of shit Gate and co are...and anyways, after a certain point it just makes you look like a troll.
Burn Hollywood Burn
BTW, about a year ago i interviewed for the "Anti Piracy" group at MS. They we're very interested in encyption, and my JavaScript skills (which i had none of). Bunch of weird scary looking guys, not the normal breed of geek you find at MS. They didn't seem to bright either (hey they made me an offer). They also wanted a second interview to see what kind of "person" i was.. i think because i would be the only guy there who was under 40 and didn't live with there mother.
but anyway.
-Jon
Streamripper
this is my sig.
(Sigh!)
No, you can't be surprised at that. However, one point raised in the article is (if I may be allowed to paraphrase) is that trying to understand the terms of the MS license for your software is somewhat akin to trying to derive a sommon sense meaning from a Scientology manual.
(Sigh, sigh!)
Just because something is legal, doesn't mean that is moral - or practical - or good business sense - or reasonable!
Yes, they do.
By scaring people now, corporations will buy licenses. They will continue buying MS to stay legal. This will force home users to also buy the latest software, as the corporations are distributing everything using MS Word 2004 Shiney Professional with Sprinkle Power.
The question will become, how fast will people be able crack the activation scheme?
--------------------------
If Microsoft accuses a company, and claims the company owns X number of licenses while the company claims it has Y number of licenses. If Microsoft forces them to an audit, and in the end, it is show that the company only owns Y number of copies with the license required, can the company sue Micro$0ft for the lost time/money in auditing, and is there a minimum amount of time Microsoft has to wait before it accuses the company again?
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
If their record keeping tracks the number of (re)installs, every Win'95 machine owner must owe about a million bucks by now.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
A lot of posts on the forums here always point to "too bad we can't switch to Linux" or "We wouldn't have this problem with Linux". While I agree that Linux, or pretty much any version of Unix, is better than running M$ products, Linux is NOT ALWAYS the answer. In your case, your answer is to keep better records of your Windows licenses. I find it odd that if you're such a big company, that you don't have a site license for your workstations.
Picture putting Linux on one of your sales force's desk. They wouldn't know what to do with it. Linux (or in my case FreeBSD) is the answer for people like US. All of the techies, kernel hackers, coders and network admins that understand how to use Unix. You would spend more money retraining your people, and higher support costs running around answering questions, than you would spending to make your company M$ license compliant.
Get a site license and don't worry about it. You'll sleep better tonight.
Brad
--
Unselfish actions pay back better
Microsoft has been able to keep it's stock price stratospheric for years by posting record earnings. However, with slumping hardware sales, a slowing economy, lethargic adoption of Windows 2000 and Office 2000 and a emergence of a real threat on the low end server from Linux and BSD Microsoft can no longer afford to look the other way when it comes to licensing issues. Microsoft needs the revenues, and it needs them now. After all, employee options are a huge part of the average Microsoftie's employment package. If their stock doesn't go up (or worse, if it goes down), then working at Microsoft is not really that nifty a job.
In the past Microsoft realized that casual sharing of their software actually served as a very effective free advertising campaign. It helped maintain their position by making sure that their software was ubiquitous. Now that they have the market tied up, they are looking to reel in all the freeloaders.
Microsoft's plan will backfire, especially if they continue pestering companies that are honestly trying to comply.
Of course we are all thinking, good now they'll switch to Linux. It sure would be nice if they did, but you have to remember something. Businesses are run by businessmen. The words computer and Windows are interchangeable in their minds. They aren't going to change to linux, because they know NOTHING about computers. NOTHING.
It's sad to say, but this is why Microsoft is so successful. Bill Gates is both a computer guy AND a businessman. He probably knows, but wont admit, that windows is unstable as hell and that the things he does are evil. But he doesn't care, because it gets him more money.
A company isn't going to switch from windows to something like linux because microsoft harrasses them about licenses. It's just a way for microsoft to squeeze money out of its customers who can't or wont use another product. That's why it's called a MONOPOLY.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Microsoft is very dependant on steadily growing profits. That's what keeps Wall Street happy, and is necessary for their stock prices to go up (although clearly not sufficient as recent prices prove.) Since they have largely saturated their primary market, they have two options. One is to expand into new markets (ala X-Box) to increase profits. The other is to extract ever-increasing amounts of money from current customers. That's why the screws are being tightened now. In the past, the OS market was growing fast enough that they could let quite a bit of stuff slip and keep the train rolling. Now, they are losing steam profit-wise, and need generate more pressure. This also explains why they want to move to a subscription-based model. Guaranteed revenue. No more of these slackers (like me) running Win98 and Office97, denying M$ it's "rightful" profit from Win2K and Office2K. When they need more money, they will just up the monthly fee, and instant cash. Any suckers still trapped in their clutches is going to really start feeling the pain then.
Microsoft starts auditing to enforce it's licenses and Slashdot runs around expounding on how evil they are and how we must all turn to the light to stop the coming of Satan.
The FSF starts a GPL crackdown and the person that broke the license is the bad guy, not the FSF.
Perhaps you people need to know that people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones?
Fear: When you see B8 00 4C CD 21 and know what it means
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
Just when I was starting to think that /. wasn't being biased against Microsoft, and was actually engaging in fair reporting, CmdrTaco comes in and ensures that this is not the case. Thanks again!
:)
Seriously though, why should we be feeling sorry for these people? So they didn't bother to document how many licenses they have and how many desktops they have running which software.... how exactly is that some sort of Microsoft problem?
It would appear that CmdrTaco is attempting to scare people by giving the impression that Microsoft runs around with a club trying to beat people over the head for more money (that may or may not be the case.)
I know that we keep exact records of how many licenses we have for each piece of software, and how many of those licenses are currently in use. Microsoft could walk in tomorrow and we can present the proof that we have x copies installed and we own y licenses, end of story. Any IT/PC support department worth their salt would be doing the same.
Cost is another issue entirely. Sure, the initial price for a Linux system is little to nothing, but when you factor in other issues that corporations face every day, the Linux value isn't quite the deal it once appeared to be.
First of all, there is no MS Access equivalent. That would mean we'd have to switch over all these little programs that have maybe 10 users to another system. There really isn't any RAD programming system for Linux (Klyx ain't there yet.), so that means a lot of time and effort for something pretty small.
There is also the cost of retraining all of our users and staff. We would have to try and track down and support lots of Linux apps for various tasks, if they even exist. If not, we'd have to write and support our own from scratch. I would also say anywhere from 20% to 50% of the peripherals and components in the systems we have out there don't have any Linux support whatsoever, which means replacing a lot of hardware.
The lack of any standard Directory Services client also hurts. The only real options without spending an insane amount of money are NDS and AD, neither of which have Linux clients.
Oh, and any time any person on the company wants a software application, we would have to go scour the net to try and find a Linux-compatible one, or try and write out own.
When you compare all that to the cost of Windows 2000 (less than $10,000 for 7 copies of server and 1000 user CALs under our select contract), and it really doesn't make sense to switch.
-------
-- russ
"You want people to think logically? ACK! Turn in your UID, you traitor!"
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
"We spend a lot of time and resources constantly proving license compliance"
Maybe a better investment would be, to train the staff to use another operating system, instead of always trying to figure out how to make the best of Microsoft licensing terms, only to have it in pieces again, when Microsoft decides to change their licensing again. At least retraining has to be done only once. Also they may expect that with the event of XP (which means eXPerience as we all now learned) they're in for a totally new (but not better) licensing eXPerience.
"By the way if anyone here is in advertising or marketing... kill yourself." -- Bill Hicks
Microsoft's licensing scheme would have killed us. We would have to buy a client license for every client machine, a server license for every connection to the server, and a Citrix license on top of all this. We would have paid these, but even without charging for our application and services we would have been unable to compete on price. There must be another way.
[Enter stage left: Linux.]
We were already a Unix shop. Some of our programmers were playing with RedHat 5.x. Then, it hit us: no client license fees for Linux. Would Linux prove robust enough for mission critical applications? Yep.
This is a compelling business reason for choosing Linux (or other OS/FS alternative). Yes, we had technical reasons, too (having the source is terrific), but the business realities sealed the deal.
Microsoft may have changed its technologies to focus on the Internet, but its pricing strategies are stuck in a 1983 standalone time warp.
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
Hey man, copies of Win2K just blew across the road and sprouted on my desktop
Were you ever a marketing director for a failed .com media company? This sounds a bit too much like "mindshare is our biggest asset" for me to be comfortable with.
_____________
I don't want free as in beer. I just want free beer.
A licensing disagreement with Microsoft forced Alaska Airlines to scrap a plan to give pilots browser access to a mainframe work-scheduling application, said CIO Robert Reeder. The initial plan was to run terminal emulation software on Windows NT, letting pilots access the app from their home PCs and airport kiosks.
;)
When Microsoft heard about the application, it demanded that the airline pay for a full-time license for every computer that would access the app, Reeder said. "I told them that was ridiculous," he said. "I can't license every computer in the world."
This is pretty damn funny, but am I missing something here? Why should the airline be responsible for licensing remote users? Is this "mainframe work-scheduling application" a Microsoft app that has to be licensed (which I can almost understand), or are they saying that any computer simply accessing a remote NT box has to be licensed to do so?
Somehow, I can't help but think of the Star Wars quote, "The more you tighten your grip, the more systems will slip though your fingers". And yes all you quote geeks, I realize that probably isn't exact
I'm for using alternate OSes, even better ones, and do where I can. The problem with the idea of switching over to Linux is the lack of apps. Sure there are office suites, but there are thousands of specialty apps built ONLY for MS OSes, with no comparable 'free' alternative. The big hurdle I see is the lack of a standard, and lack of development tools built on this standard to start replacing these MS only apps. For us geeks, it's loads of fun to have a non-MS OS, but end-users don't care, they need the apps that they've struggled to learn.
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
If your ISP used NT servers as terminal servers (as opposed to Portmasters, MAX's, Cisco, etc.), then they *would* have to pay for a client license for every line that would be in use at max capacity. If they're just running NT as a Radius server, then they only have to pay for client licenses for each of the terminal servers that connect to them. An ISP using NT would normally have to pay fairly hefty client license fees. Figure out how many users will be checking their mail, how many web pages are being viewed and how many radius clients are connecting simultaniously at maximum capacity, and pay client licenses for all of them.
In the Alaska Airlines situation you describe, the clients in question are connecting directly to the NT servers and using their resources. According to MS, that means they have to pay for client licenses.
The small company I work for was recently audited by Microsoft. In the audit notification email, that I saw just briefly, was the fact that what triggered the audit was the fact - according to MS - that 'a company of you size cannot be run on the amount of license we have on record for you.' This is as best as I remember the quote. Anyway, apparently MS is looking for reasons to audit companies. Apparently what MS did was to look at publicly available data about our company and then looked at what we had licensed with them and decided to force us to buy more product because they need to make a quota for sales. Their problem was that they looked at the entire company for the public data and looked only at one division (half of the company) for the registered product. The point being is that MS decides how much of their product that a company must buy to do business. This clearly is morally wrong of Microsoft, at least in my viewpoint. Yet we are making plans to upgrade to MS 2000 even though we have a drive on to lower TCO. I've proposed a GNU/Linux solution to management before but nothing ever gets approved.
zenray
So, what do you think?
... what if there was a way for me to pay for and use my software online -- it wouldn't even be stored on my computer! Then I'd have no worries about licensing!
Gosh, these licenses sure are hard to keep track of!
Oh I know
If only Microsoft had some kind of product for me...
There are a great number of software packages out there to track licenses..... for example, Tally Systems has an inventory solution that will tell how how many copies of each piece of software are installed on your network.
Novell's ZENWorks is supposed to do that, but the inventory functions are pure S***.
Microsoft's SMS will do it as well, among the many things it also does.
If you need Remote Control, Software distribution, Inventory, etc... and you are on a Windows network, go with SMS.
If you just need Inventory, go with Tally Systems.
Hope this helps those out there in the IT world that cannot afford to use Open Source software for everything, and still need to keep track of licenses.
-------
-- russ
"You want people to think logically? ACK! Turn in your UID, you traitor!"
Natural != (nontoxic || beneficial)
I think lots of people are sticking with WIN 98 and Office 97. They can't justify it to the bean counters. New versions can't be uninstalled off one machine and reinstalled on it's replacement hardware without MS blessing. I have never upgraded and don't plan to because of that very reason. I tinker with the hardware and upgrade bit by bit. Replacing the 2 gig drive with a 45 Gig drive should not prevent the software from installing. (Office 2K breaks if not registered) It's hard to get it registered as it is already registered on another hard drive. This is the big reason not to use it. I don't want to trigger an audit because I upgraded the hardware. We can't afford it.
The truth shall set you free!
Our company is one of the many who received registered mail requesting a list of all our Microsoft software, license information, and a list of any equipment that may be running said software. Our head of purchasing has flipped out and is running around like an idiot and scaring management into thinking we're under attack.
When my girlfriend was in a car accident, the idiot who caused it hired a lawyer. The weasel lawyer sent out official-looking, registered mail stating that he needed her immediate written responses to the contained survey and questions. Her insurance company said to forward it to them and forget about it, as the lawyer had no right to any of that information. A similar tactic was used when my mother was rear-ended at a stoplight.
Simple fact is that we aren't required to give Microsoft diddly. They are not a federal agency, they don't have authority to demand the info, and we aren't going to give it to them.
Simple solution is to quietly make sure, should the occassion arise that we need to give the proper authority proof, we are up-to-date on our licensing. Sending the information places you in a much more dangerous situation, because Microsoft knows you're scared and ready to cooperate with them.
Incidentally, we were contacted very shortly after by a Microsoft employee who congratulated us on our recent growth (no, I don't know how he knew) and asked if we needed any more licenses to keep us legal. Coincidence... I think not.
The GPL, unlike certain other licenses, does not require that all changes be redistributed. You are perfectly free to keep altered source code to yourself, AS LONG AS YOU DON'T DISTRIBUTE THE BINARY. Anyone who's given the binary must also be given availablility to the source code.
The only "intuitive" interface is the nipple. After that, it's all learned.
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
I work for a small city govt in southeast Texas near the Houston area, posting A/C naturally. Microsoft has accused us and about 250 other city govts in Texas of software piracy and demanded not only audits but proof of purchase for all our licenses. We are 100% compliant and even have more licenses than we have installed MS software but it is a real pain to have to drop all our present projects on hold to comply with this b.s. request. We are seriously considering treating this audit request as a request for public records under the Texas Open Records law, which states that we can charge a "fair" fee for time and materials expended in searching for and producing copies of these public records. I certainly hope that my superiors agree to go ahead and do this, it will be poetic justice in a way. On a more upbeat note, I recently heard that the City of Midland TX's city manager has told MS to go fly a kite and is refusing to comply. I think that this targeting of small, weak government organizations by MS is revenge for the US DOJ's lawsuit and breakup order.
Does Microsoft inform you in their EULA about these audits?
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
"unless Bill G's been moderating again"
/. stays running despite losing money on every post? (They don't make it up in volume.) It's all secretly funded by M$ ("Andover"? Pfft! As if that's a real company.)
/.'ers don't die, they just 'learn' the joy of windows.
Well, now that I understand true subversive tactics from "1984", it's clear to me that CmdrTaco == Bill Gates.
Identify deviants, recruit them, gain their trust, then burn and 're-educate' them. How do you think
Old
(evil grin)
-----
D. Fischer
ShoutingMan.com
I agree, this is a legitimate business practice, but that doesn't make it wise.
First of all, Microsoft's licensing terms and conditions are unbelievably vague, and not just for the operating system licenses, but for the applications and client access licenses as well.
Try developing a custom application using Exchange 2000, Conferencing Server, and SQL Server 2000 to be accessed by internal users, business partners, and transient consultants. Now imagine the project has a dedicated MS salesperson, and a squad of MS consultants who all have completely differing opinions on what requires a license and what does not. Now take it one step further, and imagine that someone at Microsoft thinks you're missing some licenses and demands a license audit. You spend the next two days trying to piece together what you have, what MS thinks you need, and what you really do need. It happened to my previous company, and after a week of arguing with MS were ultimately vindicated, when the know nothing in licensing was proved wrong.
Now I'm not saying that it isn't within MS's right to do so, but you should seriously consider the impact such a position will have on your customers. That situation so infuriated our CTO, that are next big _similar_ project used Domino and Sametime.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Microsoft is screwing themselves right out of business. Here's why:
Picture two little companies, competing against each other, one uses Windows, the other uses Linux. Microsoft has to do everything it can to milk as much cash as possible out of the first one, and cost of production for that company will inevitalbly be higher than for the other company. (Even accounting for the fact that the Linux-using company might need to hire a guru as its IT manager.
Its pure Darwin folks. The smarter comapnies will use the free OS, the dumber ones will stick with Bill & Co, and run themselves right out of business.
During the boom, this wasn't a problem because everyone was raking in the cash, but as soon as the coming Depression get really bad, people will be looking for ways to cut costs, and getting rid of the MS in a company is the best way to do that. Microsoft is doomed, but they are far too arrogant to realize it, and they might not until its too late.
Reality has a liberal bias
Oh Jesus Fuck, I didn't proof my last post. Holy Fuck on a city bus when will Commander Taco get a fucking spell checker. Please disregard my last post, this is what I meant to say:
I didn't mispell it. I left a 'b' out to symbolize all the pain and suffering my people have had to endure. So fuck off you smarmy little retard
Peace be with you
Except when Microsoft say you must pay client licenses for each unique user who may possibly connect, as happened with Alaska in the story.
Is it just me, or does it sound to anyone else like microsoft is finally dying? Dying may be a bit harsh. I'm certain that they'll always be around in one form or another. Even Novell is still with us. But there really seems to be serious issues with nearly every one of their products.
Does anyone know anybody who likes the idea of renting their software? It sounds to me like .NET will be the last nail in the coffin for MS. I can see entire companies leaving microsoft in droves over this one. Which is good for me. I'm a consultant who specializes in MS/Unix interoperability and porting from one to the other.
And what about becomming a license nazi? MS has already been caught collecting info from users machines and sending it back to MS. I read a newsgroup post saying that even some of their games were doing this. They're going after corporate customers now, when will they send a bomb to private users? Maybe it's not a coinsidence that this outlook/activex bug won't seem to die.
And has anyone actually looked at OS X? I played with it at compusa the other day. For the first time ever, I'm actually considering buying a macintosh. I'm telling you, it's unix, I was shocked. I opened a tcsh shell and looked around. With the MACH kernel and the aqua interface, it's everything that linux should be.
And they're taking a beating on the server front as we all know, especially with IIS. If I were doing a new web development project, I would certainly hesitate to go the IIS/ASP route. And is anyone really using C#?
All we need now is a champion for Star Office so that it's as polished as Office, yet still free/open-source.
It looks to me like they've dug their own grave, and now it's time for us to dance on it.
Disconnect your television. Do your own research. Draw your own conclusions. They're probably lying. Don't be a sheep.
My brother, who works as a SysAdmin at a hospital, says they used to pay for 200 licences of Word, covering the number of copies of Word being served by their Citrix servers at any one time. Microsoft recently changed the license agreement (which it can do), and now they have to buy over 1000 licences, to cover each terminal that might run Word. Furthermore, Microsoft has informed the hospital that in a few years the license will change again: they will need a license for every employee that might use Word on a terminal.
(I submitted this InternetWeek story yesterday morning and it was rejected. How come it's accepted a day late?)
When I die, please cast my ashes upon Bill Gates -- for once, make him clean up after me!
Moreover, the BSA (not the Boy Scouts) encourage employees to report their employers for non-compliance. Sounds innocent enough, until you have to deal with BSA representatives at your door because your ex-employee was ticked and told them you have pirated Windows installations. You could be completely legit, but you'll waste time and money proving it whenever some software company decides to ask.
Wow, I think I've slipped into rant mode, so I'll wrap up. I think illegal copying of software is wrong, but I have issues with companies that want to own me because I use their software.
now that'd be cool....
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Microsoft software is arguably a single point-of-failure. Desktops preferentially all run one version of MS-Windows, mailservers all run another, and fileservers are similarly uniform. Technically, this is very dangerous because an entire category of service could be lost to a bug/virus.
Now MS playing hardball is adding a legal failure mechanism. One or all MS software may become unrunnable due to legal issues. In negotiations with MS, a CEO needs alternatives if he is to have any power at all. ERP should give him some so he doesn't have to "bend over ..."
I should have mentioned that Microsoft obviously favors #1, and will make #2 difficult for you.
It should be a cost/benefit analysis -- if you can't afford the lawyers and the accountants, don't select option #2. Businesses make these decisions all the time, chosing to pay out one large sum of money for low risk in favor of many small sums of money with unknown risk.
One of the worst mistakes is to put the techies in charge of licence compliance (because they usually have a totally lax attitude towards such things, and they are not exactly organizational geniuses).
I lived through a MS audit a few years ago with the kinder, gentler Microsoft. We had our shit in order and had bought certain selective site licences (such as for Office), so it was no problem.
There really isn't any RAD programming system for Linux (Klyx ain't there yet.), so that means a lot of time and effort for something pretty small.
Au Contrairy!!! Check out RadBuilder 3.0 from Emediat Solutions Inc.. I really like this RAD platform and have written a couple of client applications. Excellent string manipulations, a complete widget set (with the ability to extend), an integrated IDE, cross-platform with Windows, and, most importantly, comprehensive HTML documentation. Sorry if I sound like too much of a booster, but its sad to see good products fall by the wayside due to a lack of exposure.
On the down side, I've heard that they are going to go Open Source but they are not currently... though it is pretty inexpensive (~ $100 for linux I think)
They have a support site at www.radbuilder.org
Waltz, nymph, for quick jigs vex Bud.
Could it be that Microsoft is trying to annoy people and companies to the point where they demand that software can only run, if it licensed? Microsofts current plan is to one day require online-authentication every time a PC boots. That would annoy the heck out of people, unless the people see it as "better" to the alternative auditing system...
Microsoft I think believes, "If we want to do something annoying and to take away the privacy of people, do something legal that is worse so that our "new alternative" looks better and is accepted.".
--Brandon
With proper document management and a little foresight, this wouldn't be an issue. Keep triplicate copies of everything, keep licenses, contracts, and SLA agreements on file, yadda yadda.
Could Microsoft audit IBM? Sure! Would it bankrupt them? I doubt it highly, knowing how the shop is run there.
Microsoft is now resorting to harassing customers with lawyers to extract profit growths. This is good. It means they're putting themselves increasingly into a very unpopular position with large corporations and governments, which may prompt some of the "victims" to lobby (throw money at) lawmakers.
It's bad for customers, but that's par for the course. Microsoft has never been good for the consumer, I don't expect them to change now.
Remember that what's inside of you doesn't matter because nobody can see it.
I thought there was an M$ license with every computer sold? I can' buy a computer without it....
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
~afniv
"Man könnte froh sein, wenn die Luft so rein wäre wie das Bier"
Richard von Weizs
I have yet to see any practical advantage of
winblows over Linux.
You mean other than application support? Yeah, it's pretty easy to miss that.
We have a couple WinME machines where I work and its an accomplishment if they don't crash once or twice during a workday ... but *I* would be the bad guy if I grabbed a NT WKS disk and downgraded to a stable os?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
A couple years ago the company that I worked for started getting theats from microsoft. They wanted to audit our licenses. The threatened to sue us a bunch of times, and in the end we just handed over $250 000 to make them go away. They said the money was for CALS and Office. I think it was just protection money. Kind of like giving the bullys at school your lunch money.
Anyway, if you want to avoid this situation, just pirate everything. In our case, we were trying to do the right thing. We called to get estimates on some exchange licenses. The sales lady asked a bunch of questions... how many clients... do they all need it... how many servers. All the questions seemed innocent enough. In the end, they took our answers, looked at the number of licenses they knew we had, and they decided we needed to buy more.
Need a website host? Try out http://WebQualityHost.net
These companies don't think they're pirating software, Microsoft does. This is all about intrepretation and Microsofts interpretation is that you can't transfer liscenses (if you upgrade to a newer machine or in some cases just newer hardware). There are issues with seat licences with their server OSes too. When originally released NT was never, ever going to have per user client licences (Novell did that and that was evil, Microsoft told us). Then they created Windows NT 4.0 with, guess what, per seat licences, lying bastards.
.NET components check your licenses with the Microsoft home office, and that after you have upgraded your hardware and/or your whole PC you will be conviently asked for your credit card #.
Microsoft is moving to per seat licences for almost all their new software. This is harder than hell to keep up with, espically if the licencses aren't transferrable.
Don't be suprised if the first
"...even if this means paying for certain copies of Windows twice. At least you know you are legit."
...just to make sure it's there ?
Is that like installing it twice ?
__________________________________
Free your mind - Flush your toilet
I seriously doubt they are counting lost time to audits in those calculations. Just a thought.
I totally agree, especially after seeing them at work. Their answer to everything, and I mean everything, was, "Oh, you need to do X, well that's easy, just write a COM object." And when you asked them how they would do X with a COM object they would say, "Oh, well I'll have to get back to you, I did something like that a couple of months ago, I'll look at the code and get back to you." They never would.
Unfortunately, our client at the time was a non technical bunch (.COMers)and believed that MS was the only way. We were about 45% of a big integration project. Licensing drove the cost of their app up to $750,000 US. They planned on selling it for a cool Mil. To my knowledge (no longer w/ the company) they still haven't sold it to anyone.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Like your free IE? Expect to start paying for it within two years. With their browser market share, they can start extending what they've embraced, if they haven't already. Like the free MS Reader? Once they own the e-book market, look for that to cost too. The only reason MS Word readers are free is that there's so little demand for them. Everyone has Word (or something that will read .doc files until they change the format again.)
If everyone is using MS, then it's easier for someone to pay more to keep using MS than it is to use something non-MS. With their huge market share, MS is the standard. Don't like their propritary format? Tough. Don't like the content-protection? Live with it. Don't want your personal information transmitted to marketers? Conspiracy nut. Complain? NO WINDOWS FOR YOU! What are you going to do? Use EMACS? You'll be the highest-tech Luddite. All the multimedia content out on the Internet (built on non-MS systems even) will be useless to you because you hold to your principle.
This is why MS is dangerous, this is why their monoploy is wrong. For all the Libertarian out there who said that while MS was wrong, the DOJ was more wrong, let me make this clear. MS will take away your options and your rights in the new high-tech world. Imagine the complaints about the Sorenson codec applied to everything from .mpg to .html (oops, .htm).
-sk
these are the reasons I think EULA's are not legal:
They're not avaliable prior to purchase.
No retailer allows the return of software if you don't like the license.
If a retailer *DID* allow the return, MS should bare the cost of that return (restocking fees, shipping etc), but they don't.
A contract is an agreement between two parties ... usually both parties recieve some benifit from the contract ... in the EULA, theres no agreement its "take it or leave it." And the Eula provides no benifit (IE waranty, fitness of purpose) and seeks only to benifit the software company.
Last but not least, a legally enforcable contract has to have a minimum of 3 signatures, the notary and the two parties ... The notary serves several purposes -- she authenticates both parties, can be called upon in a legal dispute, and establishes that both parties are aware of the contents of the contract, which I believe is called [IANAL] "communication." It is my belief that "press f8 to continue" [NT4 installer] is not a sufficent "notary". Can you prove I read and understood the entire agreement then pressed f8 ?
What if I gave someone 5 bucks to install a MS os on my machine ... would I be then bound by the EULA ? I didn't agree to it, someone else did ... is this situation is analgous to purchasing a computer with preinstalled software?
Free Techno/Jazz/DNB/MI Music by guys obsessed with monkeys!
There's little doubt that if M$ had been so aggressive about enforcing it's licenses long ago, M$ would not have the market share it has today. Now, their market has more or less reached a saturation point. Acceptance of new products like Win2k and WinME has been underwhelming. They are resorting to hardball tactics to make up for profit shortfalls. I'm sure many customers did not go with Microsoft with the expectation that M$ would later impose onerous audit requirements on them. Thus, the perceived terms of ownership have been switched from the ones these companies were baited in with.
Wansu, th' chinese sailor
There can be only one kind of a force that can confront Microsoft and make it lose. This force is Microsoft itself.
Linux won't be able to achieve a victory over Microsoft alone. Microsoft's got much more audience, more money, and it can draft along lots of programmers to shorten the development cycles immensly. However Microsoft's corporate attitudes can cross out all the resources they've gathered up until now.
It's all quite simple: at the moment corporate officials understand that the Microsoft way is too expensive to follow, they will start looking for ways to detach themselves from Microsoft. Not immediately, not completely, hovewer Linux enterprises should gradually become less of a remote possibility, and more of obvious reality.
The only condition for such a favourable development is the creation of viable desktop environments for Linux. They are as necessary to corporate adoption of Linux as oxygen is for breathing. If this condition is met, it is probable that we will yet witness our foe's destruction of itself.
Lets assume you are a new startup, little funding, and a few good techie friends. You want to make a solid productive and efficient company. You could buy M$ products, deal with licensing problems and the extra overhead of fixxing their buggy OS. But this would allow you to hire cheap M$ users that don't need to know anything about how computers work. They'll still break their computers as usual, because they don't know how they work. But these people don't usually cost a lot, depending on their job.
;)
Or you could decide from the get go to be a linux shop, hire people with the requirement that they either know linux or are willing to learn. Tell your users what OSs work, what tools work for their needs. And if they don't exist that's what a tools department is for. Build the tools you need and build them on open standards using xml/html web frontends to databases using perl as the glue, etc. There are very easy and efficient means of solving almost any problem with unix and the right people. The hard part is finding the right people so you will need to be a bit more picky and go through a longer interrogation process.
In the end you won't have to worry about licenses, but you will face a higher cost at educating your people. The benefit is you will have smarter, more competent people. A more tightly integrated software package built on open software that you KNOW you can fix any problems that arrise. Problems will happen less often relieving IT stress and time (maybe your IT staff could be part time tools developers as well). And maybe you will save money when you find out your only costs are your employees and hardware. Then if are you a caring manager/CEO and really want to make a difference, what about paying everyone a little above market value with generous raises and cut your own salery down to theirs, so everyone gets a nice slice of the pie they build.
But please don't listen to me if you're a manager or already know what you're doing. I will do this when I start my company, but I don't want a lot of competition.
So you're telling me that MS, a big business company is trying to get money out of other big business companies who often have questionable practices and think that they can get software for free. I have nothing against that action, why should we be be the only ones who get screwed? At least most of those big companies deserved it.
That a company that sues its own customers is headed for the end.
We can only hope...
Instead, go download Sybase 11.0.3.3 for Linux or FreeBSD. It works just the same, and it is free for almost all commercial use.
MS SQL server and Sybase were once the same product. MS ODBC drivers work with Sybase, and the SQL syntax is pretty much identical.
If you need support, just upgrade. No, you aren't buying a product with the spectacular benchmarks of SQL Server 2000, but then again, you aren't buying anything at all, so why complain?
Ever used Exchange 2000 and Exchange 2000 Conferencing Server?
Trust me Domino and Sametime was a big step up. E2K was so badly rushed to market that when it came out last fall, it was hardly any better than beta. We didn't have to rebuild our Domino server at least once every other week and Sametime certainly scaled up a lot better than E2K Conf. MS designed the E2K to scale, but only by adding machines and tweaking the topology for front-end and back-end servers. We were able to achieve comparable results with half the machines using Domino and Sametime.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
Traditionally, these kinds of applications on UNIX and mainframes are written to hide the operating system completely; the sales force would get a product that's highly customized and specific to their applications, something that's easy to administer, and requires virtually no training. They'd get something on their desk (often an X terminal) that requires no maintenance or upgrades, doesn't crash, and is up all the time.
Windows has lowered expectations. On Windows, people get a Windows desktop with Excel and some poorly written custom VisualBasic program. With Windows, your sales force has to deal with all sorts of computer machinery, moving files around, defragmenting their disk, upgrading, etc., that has nothing to do with the task at hand. To be sure, the Windows solution is lower cost in terms of purchase price, but in terms of usability, support, maintenance, or training, it is worse in pretty much every respect.
The GPL is a bit different from other licenses.
Red Hat might refuse to answer your questions, but there's no way they could make you take the software off you machines. Not the same thing at all.
Caution: Now approaching the (technological) singularity.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
I usually post this rant anonmyous to protect my karma, but I'm willing to suffer if it will get this point across. Anyone who uses the phrase "it's a proven fact" (or "science has shown", or any of their variants) without providing a damn reputable URL to back it up should be modded down immediately.
Here:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/18002.html
Scary stuff about thier IM license agreement.. just another reason why I dont use IM's anymore (the main reason it is really cuts into your time when everyone you ever meet is IMing you..)
----- The internet has given everyone the ability to have their voice heard equally as loud.. even if they shouldn't be
2) throwing all of your Microsoft holograms in one file cabinet with a sheet of paper attached to each that shows the PC's manufacturer and serial number
And keeping the install disks locked away with the key held by the most anal person in the company. And searching employees on their way in to make sure they don't bring software from home to install, make sure that all software purchases be handled exclusively through the above anal person (no more running to Office Depot with petty cash), having your legal staff study the licenses carefully in a vain attempt to come up with the same interpretation that MS will use, and finally: get audited and screwed anyway. It seems that even if you buy an unlimited site license, MS will argue about what constitutes 'your site'.
On the other hand, Linux and the BSDs all effectively have an unlimited universe wide no questions asked site license.
Your post summed up the precise reason why it is that Microsoft should play nice. Currently they are able to trick nearly every business in the United States into mass deploying their OS and their expensive office suite.
If pressed hard enough these businesses will undoubtedly find out that for very little expense they can quickly and easily migrate their Microsoft Office data to Star Office (which is free).
Sure, Star Office isn't quite MS Office, but it is much closer than most people think, and it is a heck of a lot cheaper.
So, buy a XBox, and help Microsoft go under!
This only works if you don't buy their software. Obviously, they intend to make money on XBox -- by licensing software or developers who make software. So it only helps them go under if you don't buy their software.
Ideally, there an open-source way to make software will appear. Then we can all buy subsidized XBox's, courtesy of MS.
I'll see your senator, and I'll raise you two judges.
In most offices I visit, eveyone down to the lowliest receptionist has the latest-greatest Winbox, decked out with the latest version of Office. This is overkill if I've ever seen it. They upgrade it as soon as the upgrades come out, and have people on staff to keep it all from crashing. It's really ridiculous. How many secretaries really *need* Excel, or Word for that matter? Most businesses could get by just fine without this stuff. Recently, a friend started working for an internet startup as a technical expert and author. What they gave her to work with made sense: a cheap Emachines with a copy of MS Works to do her writing with. Even Notepad would have been fine, though most companies would have made sure she had Word. Everyone else got pretty much the same deal, using the included software wherever possible. Instead of Outlook, they used Outlook Express and Windows Address Book, or the free Calendar services on the Netscape website. The only ones with expensive software were some 3D artists. If a little more functionality is needed, there's nothing wrong with Staroffice. The fact is, computers with fancy, overkill software are just a job perk, a luxury thing like a fancy office. Very few companies really need all that to get their work done. And the ones who do are usually better off with superior, non-MS products, such as Framemaker, Autocad, Photoshop, Act, Dreamweaver, and Quark. Excel is Microsoft's only really good office app, but most people never even scratch the surface of what it can do. Most companies *would* be just fine with Staroffice, or the KDE/Gnome stuff. The only trouble is having to do business with others who have bought into the MS way.
The easy answer here is: Consider Linux
r2~In more detail: The Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) includes cost to train staff, cost to maintain the machines, cost of licenses, technical support, etc. The TCO of Windows can vary greatly depending on what the workstation is being used for, as would any system, really.
While Linux obviously has the licensing costs beaten, the larger concern is that Linux takes skilled people to operate and maintain. While this is true, for the same cost as an NT admin, you could probably have an admin that understands Linux and can set up end user workstations to require less maintenance as well as increase productivity.
The numbers are subjective, but in reality, many non-techie workstations are used to perform simple tasks. Many companies also, in their drive to come up to date, have intranets and web interfaces to their information systems. There's no reason to continue running Windows on such systems if all work functions can be performed through a web browser, and additionally, the admin can lock these systems down so that the end user can't screw them up. The fact that they can't be screwed up means that they're lower maintenance, and the fact that they'll probably crash less means that they result in less productivity losses.
There are many cases where Windows can be completely removed. Companies should invest the effort in determining just how much of their infrastructure is really Windows dependent rather than just going "All 500 workstations run Windows, we need to stay with Windows". Companies such as mine would be glad to perform such jobs. :)
Obviously, this won't work in every scenario. Some platforms just require Windows, and it's a necessary and maybe even desired cost. Given the proper conditions, which are not uncommon conditions, Linux can in fact lower the TCO.
(Some people wince at the idea of locking a machine down tightly because it won't allow them to run games, but plenty of games are web oriented nowadays. Yahoo Games make any boring computer task tolerable, for what it's worth)
Look at it this way. What exactly do (litigation) lawyers contribute to society? They charge you an arm and a leg to protect you from or launch viscious attacks against ... other lawyers! It's kind of like the tech industry : the bigger it gets, the more techies per capita you need. The difference is that people can then use their computers and various widgets, while a lawyer, as the joke goes, keeps screwing you after you're dead.
--
Dyolf Knip
If one says "proven" without providing an axiomatic base, a reasonable method of inference, and a consistant argument, I don't think you should believe them. But then, that's I'm studying mathematics. ;-)
-Paul Komarek
Most large corporations have at least one full time employee (more likey several) in charge of license compliance. Even then any one of your employees can bring a CD-ROM into your office and break your compliance. Let's say your company shelled out a million or two for the MS office, sql server, NT server and NT workstation licenses and someone brings Access to work from home then what happens? How do all your holograms or the site licence help? IT doesn't help at all. Your IT staff has to shell out another million dollars for SMS so they can do periodic inventory on your hard drive to make sure nobody brought expedia, works, or BOB from their home machine. And then IT has to dedicate some time to combing through the thousands of inventory reports to try and locate the rouge luser.
No matter how you slice it it sucks and it costs a bunch of money. Even if you did eveything right it still won't stop MS from coming and demanding an account which means every single one of your employees has to take a break from doing what they are paid to and do the bidding of MS.
A smart manager would simply tell MS "if you choose to go ahead with this action I will have no choice but to switch to Solaris servers running oracle and I will mandate star office on the desktop as a first step to migrating to linux". Ms will at that point apologize and give you three thousand free licenses.
War is necrophilia.
Umm, MCS is a profit center for Microsoft.
Just read any of their quarterly reports.
I've had dealings with MCS and have never encountered this type of attitude. Although we never told them to go design a program for us, but rather bounced ideas off them for potentional solutions to problems we were having.
Linux and BSD meets your requirements? I've yet to hear a test case of a Linux distribution giving "excellent support" to a large customer. THey're not even fucking responsible for most of the shit theyp ack onto a CD. It isn't like Redhat or SuSE maintains most of the programs in their distributions, they leave it up to the original programmers. Try to sell a Linux distro to an IT director by telling him he'll have to wait for a feature or two until the program developer has some free time after finals.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Not now, but if UCITA passes in many states, they may have that right, the alternative being the right to disable the disputed software. (Of course, if the IEEE and other groups succeed in getting Linux and other OSS freed from the restructive warrentee portions of UCITA where it passes, then there is every reason not to use Microsoft and every reason to use Linux/BSD, etc.)
Now, Microsoft has also been cracking down on the average consumer as well, by requiring registration of some versions of Office 2000. However, Microsoft, I believe, is making a terrible mistake. In cracking down on piracy, they run the risk of alienating their customers and allowing competitors and opening that they otherwise would not have, even with inferior products.
Please bear in mind that I am not advocating piracy because I want to see open source succede (I see Piracy as THE major threat to OSS in terps of brainshare).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I can only say you ought to have looked at the licensing more carefully when you bought the systems. Commercial software sometimes has a very high cost and some companies are real cock gobblers about it. Microsoft has two goals in this case, they want to pester the company into upgrading and they'd also like to make sure they don't have 15,000 computers running Windows and only 5,000 licenses registered to the company. If you made fat bucks from corporate licensing you'd so the same fucking thing. The GPL and Linux wouldn't solve shit. If they can run mission critical stuff on the new system and upgrade all of their hardware with no problem thats great. That however is rarely the case. Open sourced software has its financial disadvantages just like anything from Microsoft. If you're a large company you need software when business demands it not when some kid has time to add features when his school schedule permits. It comes down to either paying for software or pay a full time programming department to work with the open code to give you the features its closed counterpart has already had for years. Open source only causes different problems.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
You over-exaggerate the problem. A site license is the way to go for a large corporation (even for small ones). You only need to keep a few install CDs, plus you get a piece of paper that says you are allowed to installed it on x number of workstations. This is not rocket science and easy to track.
Until someone decides that since install approval takes too long, they'll do the company a 'favor' and just install a copy from home. Or legal and MS can't come to an agreement when you want to export an app to an employees only website. Is that one seat for the server, one seat per employee, or one seat for each computer an employee could concievably use to access the app?
I agree, it is NOT rocet science. In order to be a science, the process would have to be repeatable and consistant. According to the article, ask 3 different MS reps and get 3 different answers.
And the problem with Linux & BSD is that there are few mainstream apps.
That is a real issue. However, if enough big customers start to phase Linux in, and produce enough demand, the apps will start showing up. Perhaps they could take some of the money they save on licensing and compliance and develop the needed apps. If they are really forward thinking, they will talk amongst themselves, and share the apps under GPL to minimize the development burden on any one company. As expensive as it was for MS to develop Office, end users taken together still spent many times that much licensing it. After all, MS has is quite profitable.
How many people do you know who've actually read all of their software licenses and attachments/explantions?
It sounds like part of the problem, too, is that Microsoft is enforcing aspects of a contract that aren't necessarily written down when people sign the contract.
I know it says up to 35 simultaneous users, but our internal documents (trade secret, you know) indicate that this means up to 35 UNIQUE simultaneous users. If you have 45 users -- any two of which could be using the system simultaneously, then you have to pay for 45 users.
--
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
We just replaced a fried VCR and the new one's warranty registration form has more (and more intrusive) questions than a census form. How long until you have to answer questions like these in order to register your new software in order to get it to work?
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
The funny thing is that the above is only true if you agree to a license. Once you sign the dotted line, you're fucked forever.
But if you don't get a site license, and if you don't ever agree to any of the EULAs, then there is no contract for them to enforce. It's all just copyright law, then.
Copyright law sure doesn't say anything about auditing, or copies getting "revoked" or anything like that. Getting a site license might look cheaper at first, but it might actually be the most expensive mistake you can make.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Umm, I was mistaken thinking it was well known, like the moon affects tides (also no link) but a quick search on google turned up this; http://www.cala.com/cala12.htm I have seen lots of products that are no longer avaliable or very high priced because of missuse and lawsuits. Many people make career decisions to stay out of the laywers sights, instead of where they can provide the most benifit. I for one am in that group. I chose to work on electronics instead of medicine because of the risk of lawsuits. I could have made lots more as a skilled doctor. Many electronics techs are not the best paid because much stuff is cheaper to replace than pay the hourly to get it fixed. People don't have that option for their medical care. The article covers a few of the areas that have been eliminated or very high priced due to the shortage of people taking on the responsibility and risk.
The truth shall set you free!
"Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse" is not exactly what I'd call a reliable and accurate news source. But much more importantly, they don't provide links or footnotes to any of the frivolous lawsuits they mention in their article. Most US courts now have extensive online documentation. Perhaps CALA is making that stuff up to score points.
The great power of the web is that you don't need trust -- you can prove your case by hyperlinking any major claims. Just do it!
Hey Troll, did you know that GNP is also a function of population? Yes, it's an amazing factoid that even someone like you might understand if your head wasn't crammed so far up your ass. Per capita GNP is, perhaps, just a slightly better way of measuring this. Tell me, is ours the highest of the industrialized nations? It isn't? Well that's a surprise...
--
Dyolf Knip