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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.""
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.
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Play Six Pack Man. I
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"
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
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.
It's not like these companies are saying, "We signed a contract saying we would pay you $500 per license, but now we're only going to pay you $100". These companies are being forced into things that they do not believe they agreed to.
.net stuff. We'll jump off that bridge when we come to it.
The biggest problem is that no two people at MS give you the same answer to the same question. I have spent many hours on the phone with MS sales people and they are in general, smart, competent folks. But one guy interprets the contract-speak one way, another sales guy interprets it another way, and I read it a completely different way. When nobody is on the same page, things get screwed up. What I'm really afriad of is how they're going to license the new
-B
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."
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!