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BSA's Tactics and Motives Questioned
_Hellfire_ sends us over to Baseline Magazine for a longish article entitled After 20 Years, Critics Question the BSA's Real Motives, which paints the Business Software Alliance in the same colors as the RIAA. "A recent Associated Press story highlighted the fact that 90 percent of the $13 million collected by the BSA in 2006 came from small businesses. Since 1993 the group has collected an estimated $89 million in damages from businesses on behalf of its members, every penny of which it keeps. 'I don't know of a business where you can get away with raiding a customer with armed marshals and expect them to continue to do business with you...' said [Sterling] Ball, who shifted his company to open source software after the raid."
I have to say, I read the headline and really wondered why slashdot was interested in the Boy Scouts of America.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
It's the same situation in the UK, the little guys get screwed over software licenses that for example, may have expired and nobody keeping an eye on things, whilst the big companies have big lawyers to get away with it.
Should make Linux a bit more of an interesting proposition.
Take Nobody's Word For It.
Perhaps a more accurate title would be "After Eight Years, We've Found a Second Person to Put In a Story With Sterling Ball"?
Admittedly, the new guy, who seems to have been knowingly using unlicensed software, isn't the most sympathetic figure, but at least it's a break from extrapolating Sterling Ball to the entire business world.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
...then you probably weren't actually a customer, so I doubt the software company would be very depressed to lose your business.
Not that I condone the BSA....
How about: After 20 Minutes
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
We got "anonymously tipped" a week after I took over the job of an incompetent admin, who was in charge of all the licensing, and kept telling everyone it was fine to install this and that, when it wasn't. The fun thing was that even if/when you pay the fine, you have to get back into compliance. I remember calling around to MS about some licensing issues for SQL server. Talked to 3 different people, got 3 totally different answers about how many licenses we would need. I read the info from a script, to make sure I was keeping it the same. If the company that SELLS the damn software can't understand their own licensing, how can they expect us to? We ended up having our lawyers and the BSA lawyers figure it out.
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Is it only in the technology world where it seems that vendors and their customers are more like adversaries? Is there any other realm where the manufacturer demonizes the very people that buy the products that pay the rent? I'm sure the fact that 0s and 1s are easy to replicate makes this standoff easy to achieve but it's to point where a valid business model would include giving something away and then suing everyone to pay the bills. Of course, it already is a business model, I suppose. When it comes to patent trolls, the music and movie industry, and software producers it just seems like they are able to get away with treating their customers like dirt more than anywhere else.
What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
The real culprits here are the legislators who make the laws that cause such a market to exist.
A) much of the time they get their authority to raid you from the agreements you signed when you became a customer; not being a customer makes you much safer
B) most of the people they get actually had licenses but have no clue how to fulfill the strict audit requirements. No the stickers on the back of your machine are not enough. You must have a purchase agreement for _everything_
C) most of the time the they threaten jail sentences (for the IT managers and staff) and accept money.
People just don't bother to fight because it's not worth it unless you are whiter than white, which is almost impossible in any company actually working and not spending it's entire time preparing for a BSA audit.
In other words, the best way to avoid the BSA is to stop being a Microsoft customer and switch over entirely to free software like Linux. Even if you claim the proprietary stuff is better (which it isn't) is it really worth destroying your life for a few bucks more of your employer's time?
BSA isn't a law enforcement agency, how on earth do they swing armed marshals for their shakedowns?
"I use a Mac because I'm just better than you are."
By the US Constitution, Congress has the right to set the limits to anything they damn well please. The only restriction is that they must be limited (i.e. a set time, any time will do even if it's 1 million years). While the initial terms were 12-13 years for both, nothing in the Constitution said they had to stay that way. The Supreme Court also indicated that the whole thing was dumb in Eldred v. Ashcroft, but basicly came to the conclusion there was nothing in the Constitution that prevents Congress from doing dumb things.
'I don't know of a business where you can get away with raiding a customer with armed marshals and expect them to continue to do business with you...
If the BSA ever shows up at your door, unless they have a court order, tell them to get lost. If they refuse, slam the door in their face and call the police. Write down every license plate number you can see.
For extra giggles, when you call the police, complain that the people who won't leave are dressed like police officers (the BSA guys wear those black nylon rain jackets with big yellow letters to try and look like government agents), and if they're armed, make sure to mention that too. Cops don't take kindly to people pretending to be them.
Please help metamoderate.
The GPL is the only license you need. Everything you're paying $150 to $150,000 for software to do can be done by free (libre) software.
What's that you say? You've got requirement X, and no free software exists to do it? Get together with your competitors, pool your money, and hire a software company to make the GPL software you need.
There's no excuse for proprietary software anymore; it's an inefficient waste of money. You hire a plumber to install a toilet so you can use it whenever nature calls. Would you hire a plumber to install a pay toilet in your house? Then why do you hire a programmer to install the equivalent in your computer?
Why did they even let the BSA auditors into their company in the first place?
AFAIK in the UK, the BSA doesn't have any legal powers to enforce such an audit to take place. Microsoft/Adobe/Foo are all businesses and so is the organisation I work for. What gives software companies special privileges to demand an inspection of someone else's business?
If I sell chairs, am I allowed to go to Microsoft HQ and make sure that Ballmer isn't throwing them around, breaking the licence agreement printed on the underside? If a finger can agree to a supposedly legally binding contract, why can't the derrière?
I don't really see what you have to question. The BSA has been pretty blatant that they're *all* about collecting money via any means possible from any one that they can basically extort it from.
Quite frankly, a quick look at their business model shows them to be what they are - the new corporate raiders.
2 cents,
QueenB.
HDGary secures my bank
I was told this heartwarming story a few years ago by someone involved in creating the system described below. A very large, well known organisation (call them B) was threatened by a visit from either the BSA or FAST (can't remember which), on the grounds that yet another large software house (call them A) thought that B was using far more copies than they were paying for. B was a very large customer of A's software - they literally couldn't run their business without it, and A certainly knew it.
They had the usual problems of any large organisation - software would get installed and not removed, people would move desks, jobs, etc. They weren't knowingly in violation, but they couldn't really honestly say how many licenses were in use or where everything was installed.
They decided to write a system that would track all the licenses and software in use across the organisation, and allow it to be fully managed - installed and removed on demand. It could handle many different kinds of licensing for many different bits of software. There was nothing commercially available at the time that could do what they needed.
Anyway, after doing this, they found out that not only had they had been over-buying company A's software licenses, the flexibility of the new management system allowed them to have far fewer licenses anyway. Effectively, they had been buying enough to cover installs in all the remote offices, for their more mobile staff, of which there were a lot. Apparently, it was a very pleasant moment when they told A they didn't need any more licenses for the next year or two.
I've never used microsoft (or any BSA stuff for that matter) stuff so it has not impacted me at all. Maybe finally the "suits" will have a reason to switch to linux.
What, are these guys above taxes as well as the law?
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
Or, if you read the article, you could see that he was 92% in compliance. And this doesn't necessarily mean that the other 8% were pirated, just that they weren't properly documented. Maybe they installed Office on one too many computers. Maybe they lost a receipt or two. But they were most definitely customers.
We were in the same situation once. They sent us letters then showed up. The guys head was swinging from side to side looking at peoples monitors. Occasionally he would do a double take because someones shit looked Windowsy. There is a huge bucket in the corner of our build room with Windows95-XP and Windows Server bundles still in wrappers dribbling over the top and two boxes of crap like office, photoshop, AV software, intuit... ad nausium. My boss walked him in front of the heap and asked, "which license do you want? we usually throw shit away but since your an important person help yourself". The guy actually asked if we had any of it documented. I almost fell over. Every desktop he looked at had Solaris, Linux, or OS/X running on it. My boss looked at him all confused. He tried to explain to the guy, again with no luck, that we don't use windows or windows software.
The guy had to be acting ignorant or something. I think they make money off people being to confused, busy, or scared. It sucks you cant ignore them either because they supposedly act with some kind of government authority. I got stuck listing 200+ licenses for a shop that has under 50 employees.
Having to work for a living is the root of all evil.
Fuck the BSA.
I wouldn't, if I were you. You don't know where they've been.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Now add in US sales tax and property taxes, and the difference becomes minor. Now add in the increased level of services they get in Europe, including health care. Sorry, the EU wins. And I say that as an American.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
It sucks you cant ignore them either because they supposedly act with some kind of government authority.
They have the same "authority" as the RIAA. They lie to the courts and law enforcement and get the cops to do their dirty work.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Twins. Both named 'Blue'.
either pay for the software that you use or use open source. Sorry no-one gets my support in this type of issue.
A lot of those BSA audits fine people who have legitimately purchased and licensed software.
I know of a company that got nailed because they'd been with a product a long time and gradually growing. So each time a new version come out they bought x upgrade licenses plus y new licenses. After a decade or so and some 7 or 8 upgrades, their last of which was like 150 upgrades and 20 new licenses they got nailed...
They couldn't properly show that every single license had a proper upgrade trail going all the way back to version 1 some 15 years ago. Some one had long since thrown away the floppies and receipts showing that those had been purchased.
Of course the vendor had changed names and been bought out at some point, and they certainly didn't have any records going back that far either.
So some 50 of their 150 upgrades had been ruled in 'non-compliance' simply because they were upgrades of upgrades of upgrades that could only be traced back 4 or 5 versions, but not back to an original purchase in the early 90's.
So, even if you pay for the software that's not enough. You have to cover your own ass so carefully its absurd.
Even the government doesn't require you to keep records that far back.
The BSA's tactics would be roughly akin to the RIAA showing up in your home, grabbing your ipod full of 5000 songs you ripped from your CD collection and demanding you prove you own it all.
So you confidently walk over to your CD's and start handing them over...but you've only got maybe 100 on hand... you put the rest in storage in your basement and attic. Now its a royal hassle... but you start digging through your boxes of stuff and passing those CDs over too.
And when its all done you've found the original CD for some 4900 songs... but you just can't locate the last 8 CDs. Maybe they were in your previous cars glove box when you sold it? Maybe you lent them to your brother? Maybe you stepped on them, broke them, and tossed them? Who knows... they're gone.
Too bad for you: Only 98% compliance... prepare to be fined big time for the balance...
And that's when they look at the stack of 494 CDs you spent the last several hours digging out when they say, "Now what about these? Do you have receipts?"
This in an interesting piece of communication. The author has recently taken an interest in the BSA, including this recent article that promotes their Fear Uncertainty and Doubt message.
Quoted in the fine article are a director of enforcement for the BSA and as counterpoint noted analyst Laura DiDio. Ms. DiDio was originally famous for her role promoting the Amityville Horror hoax. These days she is perhaps better known for her astonishing (and curiously persistent) analysis of the SCO debacle in which she promoted SCO's position in front of the press and wound up a creditor in their bankruptcy(pdf) for her trouble. Her employer is alternately given as Yankee Group and G2 Computer Intelligence.
One can only wonder whether Erika Chikowski bothered to check her sources or if this is a case of envelope journalism.
I read all the way through the article. I want my five minutes back.
If you're going to trudge through it at least skip the ads and vote it down.
And this would be a worthwhile part of the article if she hadn't omitted the final "Word document".
However, the argument he should have made is that these long terms in no way "promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts", which is pretty unarguably true (especially retroactive copyright extension; how exactly the hell is extending the copyright on something a dead person wrote going to encourage that person to write more?). There is no evidence of any kind to demonstrate that Progress is better served by 150-year copyright terms than by 20-year copyright terms.
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
I was a few years ago but I remember someone was threatening school districts across the country with some kind of audit which would have cost at the low end 10's of thousands of dollars and 100's of thousands for larger districts. Something about the Microsoft EULA or the BSA comes to mind but the real story was how the LTSP( Linux Terminal Server Project ) came to the rescue and stopped it. The timing of the threats was poor because there was some national conference around the time and the LTSP group met with many of those threatened. Some jumped onboard with LTSP and off Windows ASAP and others told Microsoft they were going too. Microsoft sent out apology letters and tried to make it look like a big mistake but the end result was that a handful of districts switched to Linux and the others did not but were left alone.
I'm surprised this hasn't been brought up since if it wasn't the BSA directly, it was Microsoft and those two are tied at the hip with how they do 'business'. IMO
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
I worked for a company. With an... unstable boss.
I was basically told to install everything from the one copy of things we had.
Fast fwd a couple years and i get sick of this place and quit.
The unstable boss refuses to pay what i am legally owed upto the day i quit. (no contract or other issues involved)
After a round with the labor board i ended up getting 90% of what i was owed.
So i decided that other 10% was worth my time to cause trouble and report them to the bsa.
called the bsa. told them my story.
They showed up at the business with 2 federal marshalls and inspected EVERYTHING. And ended up fineing them almost $200 thousand dollars.
The company went broke a year later.
Since i reported them. The bsa sent me a nice fat check for around $5000 and change. Took several months all total... Well worth the few hundred i got fucked out of that started it all off.
As an employer... the bsa is an evil money grubbing org with no soul.
As an employee... the bsa is one big fucking hammer you can use to get back at your ex employer.
If you pirate your business software. You should REALLY treat your employees better. But the types of businesses that have license problems. are also pretty shitty to their employees.
So in the end. the bsa = good. (for me)
Keeping certificates is not enough. I worked for a company that got audited once. It was a small business, but run by a pair of lawyers who were sticklers for details. They shredded old paperwork after some number of years, and they got nailed because they had the certificates that came with NT 4.0, but not the receipts.
I honestly believe you could do everything by the book, and they'd still find something to nail you for... Not to mention that the audit costs your business in both time and money.
How many computers do you keep around for 20 years? Same with servers, a 3 year lease leaves you paying for 80% of the value of the product and you get refreshed with new hardware after the term is up. As a result you always have hardware under warranty and you get to take advantage of increased processing ability. Of course not every business grows as fast as the one I'm responsible for. We just started leasing hardware as we're finding it to be far simpler all around. Don't have to worry about Windows or Office licensing, it's all built-in.
Leasing makes a lot of sense, especially when you consider that you're not forced to run the new software on the new hardware. You always have the ability to use an older version. That is the reason a Vista license is valid for XP with a simple phone call if you're a single sap at home or through the VL site if you're a business customer.
Of course you do pay for the convenience but it's quite worth while. That NT4 license from the 90s isn't all the useful to me now. Same with Netware 3, of course I do get a number of servers without an OS and use Debian for my workhorse servers. Then I don't have to worry about expiring licensing and all I have to do is remap the LUN when I get the new server to replace it.
Looking in my server rack, there's nothing there less than eight years old and one machine which is twelve years old (and that one is still serving the same system it served twelve years ago, which says something for stability). All of them except the old one run Debian. The thing is, except for big databases, few server-side tasks are actually that demanding - they're all bandwidth limited, not processor limited (even big database systems are more likely to be IO-bound than mill-bound). I agree a twenty year old machine is still a rarity, but there's really no need to upgrade machines on a three year cycle - unless they aren't doing the job you need them to do.
I'm old enough to remember when discussions on Slashdot were well informed.
As someone who has gone through a rather extensive BSA audit, I cant agree with your comment - all we did to show compliance was produce the license certificates or electronic licenses (via Eopen or similar), no receipts were shown or asked for, and we had no problems with that at all. The audit took a week, they left accepting we were in compliance, and we had no fine to pay. All in all, while no audit is a pleasant experience, this was better than some others I have been through as they went out of their way to not get in our way.
Now, knowing the Slashdot populace, its almost certain that this post will be labeled either as a troll or a paid shill, but its neither - just a different point of view and a different experience.
I'm curious as to when your audit was. The one I describe was in 1999. They may have changed practices since... Or you might have gotten lucky... Or somebody higher up on the chain from you might have greased some palms...
And it's not a matter of "agreeing." It happened exactly as I described.
For the conspiracy theorists out there, I'd like to add that the servers at said company ran Linux, even though the workstations were NT.