Slashdot Mirror
Ernie Ball - Model For Open-Source Transition?
fr0z writes "
Ernie Ball is a company that makes guitar strings. After being raided by the BSA in 2000 without warning and fined $100,000 for a few unlicensed copies of software, CEO Sterling Ball vowed not to give another cent to Microsoft and within 6 months, according to CNET News, had the whole company switched to Red Hat Linux, OpenOffice.org, Mozilla, and other free software."
If instead of sending in the cops to raid him they had send him a polite letter explaining where there might be a problem it probably would have been very different. But they make the licences so crazy that you almost can't help violate them in one way or another if you have a lot of computers.
From the interview it sounds like they were trying to play by the rules, ok maybe their audits where not as good as they should be, but lets be honest most folks have better things to do then audit software once a month.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
Definitely. If everybody got to experience the downside of restrictive licensing personally, then open source would really shine. Selective enforcement is keeping an excessive copyright system alive.
Just to get the story _really_ straight:
He wasn't objecting to being nonconformant, license-wise. He is objecting to the manner in which he was treated as a customer. He objected to the very heavy-handed way they treated it, and to the way they decided to hang him out publicly as an example. He also objects to the steep fines imposed (without any court sanction), and the way the law in practice makes it impossible for smaller businesses to contest the BSA assertions in court.
Trust the Computer. The Computer is your friend.
i don't agree with M$/BSA methods. but legally, they have the right, and there's not a real excuse to not follow the terms and conditions of a license if you are running a professional business.
That's absolutely correct.
I have a business myself and I tell all my staff "don't use unlicenced software" and they do exactly as I say. And I say, "If you buy software, remember to put the licence and CD-ROM in the software cupboard", and that's what everyone does. And I say "if you buy a computer or recieve a second hand computer, make sure you have all the licences". And do you know, all my staff do that too. Dealing with staff is easy. You just tell them what to do, and they always do it, to the letter, and never forget, and everything is always neat and tidy and wonderfully efficient.
[/end of sarcasm]
I trust you don't actually run your own business with lots of staff?
Most businesses being small businesses or starting out as small businesses' aren't that savvy about IP law. Or the DCMA. In the end the market will react either by the software vendors backing off, the law changing, or people doing what this guy did and choosing alternatives.
Show me proof of ownership for your toilet. Bet you can't!
"God fights on the side with the best artillery." - Napoleon, Marshal of France - speaking truth to power
He got caught because in the process of running a business, he decided not to devote absolutely ridiculuous amounts of time to wiping the harddrives of unused PCs.
And before you accuse the guy of whining, note that he paid his fine, in addition to the presumably hundreds of thousands of legitimate licensing fees that he'd already paid to BSA members.
Now he's doing precisely what a smart businessman should do: recognize that the cost of policing for such tiny violations (and the potential fines that can result) is much higher than the software is worth. He's taking his business elsewhere. And good for him.
Listen to him guys, he's a CEO.
Now I'm going to take those Fenders off, thay don't twang like they used to, and get me some Ernie Balls.
No but, yeah but, no but...
Heh... so he likes the fact that they can't download stuff to use on their machines. Sounds kind of draconian in the end.
Last time we measured, 70% of the downtime on our network was related to the employees installing other software, or downloading stupid crap, like viruses. It is a work computer, your boss doesn't owe you the ability to scan ebay while you are being paid to do work. By doing so, you cost the company money. Obviously, this doesn't bother you, but then again, you don't own the company.
I take every station that doesn't need internet access OFF, so they won't browse the net for the same reason. Its not my job to provide intertainment for you while you are on your break. If you worked in construction, would you expect the foreman to provide a computer on the internet so you could browse Ebay while you were on break? Then why would you expect this from an office job?
The problem is you expect your boss to entertain you for 7 hours a day, so you can get your 1 hour of work done. Please don't apply for a job where I work.
Tequila: It's not just for breakfast anymore!
I wouldn't be surprised if we started seeing more switches from proprietary to oss in the future.
Even if in the IT biz we've accustomed to accepting very very ugly tactics if they're even remotely legally justifiable, it doesn't mean all businesses will want to have anything to do with corporations that employ such if there are alternatives.
Sometimes I wonder when stuff like 'the customer is always right' and such disappeared from the software industry. Well, not all of it. Shops doing custom stuff usually still treat their clients with some respect, at least way better than the large ones with a forcefed product portfolio do. But overall the software biz is starting to resemble some sort of drug pushing operation:
"you know you need our product",
"oh, that was yesterdays price, it's just doubled",
"should you consider not conforming, you can expect a visit from a couple of our friends".
The end reasons for the swith:
- It's so funny--in three and half years, we went from being these idiots that were thinking emotionally rather than businesslike...to now we're smart and talking to tech guys.
- I know I saved $80,000 right away by going to open source, and each time something like (Windows) XP comes along, I save even more money because I don't have to buy new equipment to run the software. One of the great things is that we're able to run a poor man's thin client by using old computers we weren't using before because it couldn't handle Windows 2000. They work fine with the software we have now.
- One of the analysts said it costs $1,250 per person to change over to open source. It wasn't anywhere near that for us. I'm reluctant to give actual numbers. I can give any number I want to support my position, and so can the other guy. But I'll tell you, I'm not paying any per-seat license. I'm not buying any new computers. When we need something, we have white box systems we put together ourselves. It doesn't need to be much of a system for most of what we do.
- What about the cost of dealing with a virus? We don't have 'em.
- How about when we do have a problem, you don't have to send some guy to a corner of the building to find out what's going on--he never leaves his desk, because everything's server-based.
- If all you need is word processing, that's all you're going to have on your desktop, a word processor. It's not going to have Paint or PowerPoint. I tell you what, our hits to eBay went down greatly when not everybody had a Web browser. For somebody whose job is filling out forms all day, invoicing and exporting, why do they need a Web browser? The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that's crazy. It just creates distractions.
- Look, when you've got Windows 98 not being supported, NT not being supported, OS/2 not being supported--if you're a decision maker in the IT field, you need to be able to look at Linux as something that's going to continue to be supported. It's a major consideration when you're making those decisions.
- Microsoft and some analysts will tell you about all the support calls and service problems. That's hysterical. Have they worked in my office? I can find out how many calls my guys have made to Red Hat, but I'm pretty sure the answer is none or close to it...It just doesn't crash as much as Windows. And I don't have to buy new computers every time they come out with a new release and abandon the old one.
- I'm definitely money ahead now and I'm definitely just as productive, and I don't have any problems communicating with my customers. So thank you, Microsoft.
He's using a thin client setup, limiting his employees applications to increase productivity, lowering his downtime, and decreasing his support and hardware budgets. I'd say those are good enough reasons.Put identity in the browser.
where are you posting from?
Well, the problem is that it costs time (and therefore money) to perform the audit in the first place, even if you are in 100% compliance. Even if I wanted to let them go through every one of my computers unsupervised (which I wouldn't), it would cause a disruption in my work flow which would result in lost productivity. Add in the efforts to supervise their audits to make sure my computers don't get hosed in the process and it costs quite a bit to prove my innocence.
:) ) and you really don't have much say in the matter at that point. From what I understand they actually involve marshalls to come in and require you to allow an audit.
Nope, unfortunately avoiding software piracy doesn't really help to avoid the BSA, especially given they can audit you at the request of a disgruntled employee (avoid gruntling your employees!
Ugh...anyway, if my facts are wrong, let me know, but that is how I understand things to go.