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Microsoft Piracy Plan Means Concerns for IT
coondoggie writes to mention an article on Information Week about possible unintended consequences of the Microsoft Software Protection Plan (SPP) discussed on Slashdot on Wednesday. The new initiative is intended to protect consumers from pirated software, but may cause major headaches for IT shops. From the article: "Microsoft will support SPP in current and future reporting and asset management tools such as System Center Operations Manager. 'On paper it might sound pretty good, but we have to see how it works,' says Jeff Allred, manager of network services for the Duke University Cancer Center. One of his concerns is that a reduced functionality mode kicks in three days after changing out a motherboard in a server if the software is not revalidated. 'That really jumped out at me. We change out motherboards in our servers all the time,' he says. The provision only covers a swap with a non-OEM motherboard, which Allred admits doesn't happen often."
Do you guys do that crazy thing where you, you know, verify the links in a story before clicking the Post button?
Protect consumers from pirated software??? What if I don't want to be protected???
You can't underestimate the lowest rank of society, but I think a large portion of the general population would understand the issue a lot more if the mainstream press were to rephrase all those headlines by one word:
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Yes. You've obviously never worked in corporate IT. When a server is down, the last thing you're worried about is contacting the frickin' vendor to get the OS activated. Servers in the corporate datacenter aren't likely to have Internet access. So to getting it activated is going to likely require a phone call. Every minute that server is down, it's costing the company $$$ in lost productivity. And what if someone forgets to do it? Ouch.
My blog
...from pirated software"
Yes, Microsoft designed and built that to protect us hmmhmmm.
the mods may say you posted flamebait, but to me it's a flame that warms my heart. rock on, brother! --chebucto
Well, the article is Slashdotted, but I don't need any expert opinion or research to tell me what it means for IT. I'm the head of an IT department, and it means that I'll be avoiding updates to any Microsoft technology with any "Piracy Prevention", and when I do need an upgrade, I'll be looking for Microsoft alternatives. I have friends who head IT departments, and I'm getting the same sentiment from them.
Not because we pirate. We're too afraid of the BSA sniffing around to do that. The problem is, these things cause problems, artificially created by Microsoft, for no reason. To stop piracy? If I pirated software, then I'd know where to find cracks for these things. Microsoft's "protection" wouldn't stop me.
But I've made a general policy in my department that we've stopped purchasing or installing software that requires "activation" or any other kind of phoning-home. I've run into too many problems where an otherwise working computer breaks itself by the developers own purposeful code because I've done a normal, legal repair job. In a large organization, an instance of the IT dept. replacing some hardware or imaging a disk shouldn't trigger a flag as "suspicious activity".
In my organization, I think we're likely to have more Macintosh purchases. Users like them, they're easy to fix, disk imaging is INCREDIBLY easy, they're reliable, and they work great with our Windows and Linux servers. And we'll see more Linux servers. If Microsoft wants my business back, they can stop trying to limit their OS to do less for me, and start working on how they can improve it to do more for me.
The problem is Microsoft operating systems are full of security holes. So if you don't upgrade then eventually you end up on their "naughty" list and they stop providing you upgrades to the broken operating system they sold you. The solution is to switch to something else if you can.
If the average motherboard lasts 3 years (we've probably seen less, due to bad/leaking capacitors on certain makes/models of motherboard) and you admin 150 servers in some datacenter, that'll average 1 motherboard/week.
More data, damnit!
I agree that if it takes you 3 days to get a server up and running, then your disaster plans suck.
However, consider the following:
- Server crashes due to hardware failure
- Techs follow the existing standard procedure to restore (i.e. replace motherboard)
- Service is restored on time according to SLAs.
- The server continues to happily serve out data and requests.
- Three days pass and suddenly the server is offline *AGAIN* because it wasn't activated and is now refusing requests.
- Spend more time on the phone with Microsoft than it took to replace the motherboard.
Suddenly, that hardware failure had a MUCH larger impact than it had to.
I guess we never learned anything from the mid 80s.
Software copy protection and DRM don't work. You annoy legitimate users who have a corner case (usually enough for them to buy a competitor's product) and the h4x0rz work around it. The few pennies you save are more than made up for with bad publicity.
I've had to call Microsoft about WinXP activation a few times ... and we lease all our machines from HP. The activation code is on a sticker on the machine. There should not be ANY problems with our activation. Particularly with me because we have two other people who do desktop support. And we have just over 100 desktops.
But between key generators and lazy co-workers who use the wrong codes on the wrong machines, I've had to call Microsoft to straighten this out a few times.
And I'm in a small company.
Microsoft's stated plan depends too much (entirely) upon the honesty/skill of my co-workers and the failure of key generators.
No fucking way, dude. Why should I waste MY time (emphasis on the fact that it is MY fucking time) because Microsoft is too lazy/stupid to figure out a better way of doing this?
Novell, way back when, used to link their licenses to specific companies and you could call them and they would tell you every license you had registered with them. If you lost a license disk, they would replace it.
Microsoft refuses to do the same. Even with the improved technology that we have today. They would rather put the burden on ME to:
a. Make sure that nothing does go wrong.
and
b. Call them when something does go wrong.
Eh? What's that? You don't have an exit strategy? My God man, have you been paying no attention at all for the last four years? You've slept through all the warnings? You didn't think through XP Registration and where it was headed? You slept right through WGA? Maybe you should panic. Best get cracking on a plan. The rest of you slow down, take your time BUT GET THE HELL OFF THIS SHIP BECAUSE YOU DON'T WANT TO STILL BE HERE IN FIVE YEARS
You can't see ANYTHING from a car, You've got to get out of the goddamned contraption and walk...Edward Abbey