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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.
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
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UNIX - Not just for Vestal Virgins anymore
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
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
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"
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$0ft for the lost time/money in auditing, and is there a minimum amount of time Microsoft has to wait before it accuses the company again?
------ Curiosity killed the cat. {satisfaction brought it back | it didn't die ignorant | lack of it is killing mankind
If their record keeping tracks the number of (re)installs, every Win'95 machine owner must owe about a million bucks by now.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Why do these people comply with Micro$oft's requests for license audits?
Because licenses are binding contracts and they can be fined for breaking them.
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$oft to take their audit request and shove it.
This assumes that they only license stand alone operating systems and don't have any kind of applications or services requiring client access like SQL Server or Exchange.
So does anyone know what happens if a company refuses to audit?
You pray you can't be sued in a state that has passed UCITA. Maryland and Virginia, I think.
"The words of the prophets are written on the Slashdot walls."
A lot of posts on the forums here always point to "too bad we can't switch to Linux" or "We wouldn't have this problem with Linux". While I agree that Linux, or pretty much any version of Unix, is better than running M$ 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.
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.
Pardon me sir, Haywood Jablome here. I'm chief auditor for Microsoft, and I'm troubled by the figures you present in your analysis here. You mentioned "X copies installed and Y licenses", pointing to the fact that there is a DISCREPANCY between the number of copies installed and the number of licenses you have purchased. Please stay where you are; an auditing strike team will be arriving within 3 hours to verify that your values of X and Y are equal, or even better, that Y is greater than X.
Thank you for your time,
Heywood Jablome
Chief Auditor, Microsoft Corp.
"All your license are belong to us"
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...
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.
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."
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!
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
- Custom software: Maybe companies have at least a little custom software, usually written for Windows. Some have more. Where I work we have over 3.5 million lines of COBOL code written with Microfocus extensions for Windows. You can't run that on Linux now, there is no compiler and the file formats would change, it would literally be a nightmare to switch. Sure, there's VMWare or Wine, but do you want an emulator managing your mission critical data? I'm talking all the financials, AP/AR/GL, ordering, purchasing, history, EVERYTHING. Well I don't trust it. You don't get away from this until you get to upper-mid sized companies that are using terminal emulation and a single mainframe.
- Small businesses depend on Quick Books, Peach Tree, and other "Small Business" related management software. And no, GNU Cash does not replace it. It can't even generate invoices yet.
- There isn't any decent group ware application for Linux that's not web-based. That means people will be leaving behind their Outlook/NDS/ADS/Notes stuff behind unless they licence some kind of shared server for that. You get practically no savings.
- Most companies don't need to. Lots of companies still run Win95 through 98 or NT3 to NT4. They don't plan on upgrading their Windows licences. When they buy a new computer, it will come with Windows and a new licence anyway, and they're not the type to go off building their own computers and installing OS's. There is no cost since you already payed for it.
So basically you'd need to be a company that only used your computer for web/mail and office, then you might have a relatively smooth transition. Don't forget though, people use windows at home too, and they are familiar with it's tools. Just because Star Office looks similar to word doesn't mean it's the same. There will be things people can't figure out and there will be retraining.As far as your 10,000 user example, I wouldn't want to retraing 10,000 users for anything.
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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.
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"...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
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?
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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
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?
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.