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How the BSA Squeezes the Little Guys
netbuzz writes "Actually, 90% of the Business Software Alliance's revenue is squeezed from small businesses accused of using unlicensed software. A lawyer who represents some of them says his clients often suspect that it was the IT guy who just left — and was responsible for maintaining the licenses — who ratted them out for a big BSA reward."
They can't force you to have an audit (unless you signed a contract). They can submit the case to the police and the have them investigate. They can then raid the office and check your licensing. If you are 100% linux, then the case gets dropped. The BSA is just a proxy to sue people, so in case you sue back, you can't hurt the ones that are actually trying to extort you. Same as RIAA, MIAA, etc. Can they knock on your door and say "we want to audit you" ... Yes, but you can refuse.
please excuse my apathy
Shareware was made by programmers when the terms "open source" or "free/libre software" were unknown. There was no such thing as the Internet, or e-mail. Programmers coded for a living, and sold programs for a living. I remember the times where all PC computers were 386, ran MS-DOS, had 32MBytes of RAM. Programming was mostly considered a hobby except for large enterprises (i.e. Lotus, Borland, Microsoft, and such). Most hobbyists didn't pay for programming languages - they were pirated because they were too expensive.
You logged into BBS's whose phone numbers you found on specialized magazines. Meetings were held with the 5 or 10 people in your area, and paid-for software was seen as a valuable treasure. Owners of that software would share it with their friends, and the original discs were treated as some kind of ancient artifact which belonged in a museum.
That's how you learned to program back then. You pirated the language, and eventually you began producing stuff worth selling. Then you bought your first legitimate copy of the language.
That's how things were done those days. It was rough, primitive, but fun at the same time. It was the way of the Old West.
In the files sections, you downloaded all these utility programs (hard disk optimizers, text editors, quit-smoking organizers and such) that expired in around 30 days, and you could register them for 5 or 20 bucks. It was cheap, and reasonable.
These small-scale programmers were defenseless against crackers and pirates, who didn't retribute them for their effort. So they turned to the BSA to help them punish the thieves who just stole their software.
It was how business was done back then. Getting organized at a national level to make good software for free was unthinkable. You had to charge for your code, and it was OK. To program, you had to actually buy software. I remember how expensive was to purchase a copy of Borland/C++ or Turbo Pascal (with Turbo Vision!) so you could make decent programs. It may sound like heresy in the G++ times of today, but that's how it was.
It was rough, primitive, but fun at the same time. It was the way of the Old West.
But times have changed.
We have GNU and the Free Software/Open Source licenses now - and software is being developed by teams of independent programmers working for a common goal: Freedom (I'm relatively new to GNU/Linux, and I was awed at the amount of Free/Libre Open Source Software for Linux). I compare my GNU/Linux box to my close friends' windows boxes - often filled with "freeware" and paid-for/cracked shareware developed in Visual Basic most of the time, and I can't even start to describe the difference. It's all chaotic and primitive in the Windows world.
When I go to a webpage and see a Windows app for say, transferring your ipod files to your computer, or ripping/burning a CD, I see the price tag and think: "Are they kidding me? They charge for THIS STUFF?"
The BSA and old software business models (just like the RIAA and MPAA's) are going the way of the dodo bird. They have no place in the open world of today.
That OEM copy of Office that came with your Dell? Well, you can't put that on another system if you get rid of that old Dell. That's not exactly common knowledge, nor is it out in the open; it's buried in the EULA.
This is a problem that's fairly widely known among charitable organizations. People often offer to donate computers to them, thinking that it's a valuable donation. But if it's a Microsoft system, such a donation only covers the hardware. You can't legally donate the software. If the charitable organization doesn't purchase their own copy of the software, wipe the disk, and reinstall their legal copy, they are in volation and can be victimized by the BSA or the software companies. And they'd better save all the receipts, because otherwise any software found on their disks will be assumed illegal.
I know of a number of organizations that have a policy of wiping contributed disks and installing linux (usually Red Hat, but Ubuntu is getting popular). But many don't, and are using the software that came with the hardware. If you're involved with a charitable organization, you might check into this, and try to explain to them the dangers of using software from Microsoft or other such corporations. The best approach might be to ask them if they can show you their receipts for every proprietary program on their disks. If not, they're risking being hauled into court and fined a lot of money.
Has anyone here been involved with a charitable organization that has dealt with this? It might be interesting to hear your story.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
I had a customer a few years back, which was a non profit organisation. The director just rang up Microsoft and they sent her a big box containing 5x Windows XP Pro, 5x Office Professional, Windows 2000 SBS and various other goodies. No charge. YMMV, but it appears that Microsoft has a no cost licencing program for non profit organisations and charities. All that is required is for the organisation to ask.
Don't tailgate - the end is near!