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Recession Turning Software Auditors Into Greedy Traffic Cops
judgecorp writes "As the recession bites, software auditors are cracking down, and some are simply exploiting loopholes and technicalities to meet their targets, according to analyst Forrester. They may be within their rights, but they aren't endearing themselves to users; Steve Ballmer faced weary customers in London last year, and admitted Windows licenses have deliberate 'gotchas.'"
They may be within their rights,
What right would that be, exactly? If they're not law enforcement, and they don't have a court order, they have zero "rights." Yes, even if they show up wearing fancy raid jackets to try and look like law enforcement.
I've posted this several times before. If the BSA or any of these other vultures come knocking, they have ABSOLUTELY NO RIGHT TO DO ANYTHING, SEE ANYTHING, TALK TO ANYONE, etc WITHOUT A COURT ORDER. If they have one, that means you're already in the process of being sued, and the first person you should call is your lawyer, and you should ONLY do EXACTLY what the court order requires you to.
Here's the Superbanana Super Guide To BSA Bullshit Shutdown.
If they don't have a court order, don't let them see anything, touch anything, install anything, connect anything. Don't answer any questions. The only information you should give them is your attorney's phone number.
Please help metamoderate.
I don't use ANY proprietary software at my company.
This is great for anyone who can get free software to do their bidding. For everyone else, this really pushes free software into the limelight in a good way (e.g. - we'll use it until we see the value and THEN we'll pay for the "enterprise" support).
Adobe products apparently "phone home". My former employer was just approached by Adobe about some unlicensed copies on the network (the users have full admin rights, per most Windows environments). They settled out of court for $2 million (USD) but immediately dropped Adobe from the suite in favor of free software.
Kudos to Adobe for screwing themselves so bad.
4. REPORTING AND AUDIT. If Customer wishes to increase the number of Installed System, then Customer will purchase from Red Hat additional Services for each additional Installed System. During the term of this Agreement and for one (1) year thereafter, Customer expressly grants to Red Hat the right to audit Customer's facilities and records from time to time in order to verify Customer's compliance with the terms and conditions of this Agreement. Any such audit shall only take place during Customer's normal business hours and upon no less than ten (10) days prior written notice from Red Hat. Red Hat shall conduct no more than one such audit in any twelve-month period except for the express purpose of assuring compliance by Customer where non-compliance has been established in a prior audit. Red Hat shall give Customer written notice of any non-compliance, and if a payment deficiency exists, then Customer shall have fifteen (15) days from the date of such notice to make payment to Red Hat for any payment deficiency. The amount of the payment deficiency will be determined by multiplying the number of underreported Installed Systems or Services by the annual fee for such item. If Customer is found to have underreported the number of Installed Systems or amount of Services by more than five percent (5%), Customer shall, in addition to the annual fee for such item, pay a penalty equal to twenty percent (20%) of the underreported fees.
Shame you got modded troll. This is pretty insightful, though it should say "Outsource your work to a country which has lax tax laws."
One of the most unintentionally hilarious points in TFA is Steve Ballmer's comment;
Users such as the Government of the Isle of Man are already saving up to £120 per year using the beta version of Windows 7
The Isle of Man is largely an offshore tax haven with around 1,350 desktop computers for the entire government. If all of the promised "£100 per desktop per year" savings materialise, the IoM government will have saved a grand total of £135,000 by using beta software. So why would Ballmer be so interested in such a small deployment?
Accounts for Microsoft Ireland Research, an Irish subsidiary of the global software giant, show that the company paid just €460,000 in tax, on profits of more than €1.2 billion last year.
http://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/category/microsoft/
That's 0.04% tax.
Still wondering why Microsoft is heavily involved in an offshore tax haven?
Even funnier, the IoM Government was an early supporter of Windows Vista, and claimed savings switching to that OS. Though only completing their rollout in October 2009, they were just in time to save even more money changing to Windows 7. If they keep making savings upgrading like that, pretty soon Microsoft'll be paying them for installing Windows.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Here's a nice old story about a Microsoft software user that got audited, sued, fined and dragged through the press. Apparently they sell guitars. Of course a loss for somebody is naturally a win for somebody else.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
No, I don't think you understand HIPAA very well. It DOES allow for a number of disclosures without patient consent:
To law enforcement
To treating physicians and other clinicians, for public health activities, for health oversight purposes, to protect against personal and material harm
Even for marketing
And a raft of others.
This is not the bogeyman you are looking for.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
I'm posting AC because I do IT work for IOM gov. Your post is full of misinformation.
First of all it's disingenuous to represent the Isle of Man as a "tax haven". It's one of the few offshore jurisdictions that aren't on the US blacklist of tax havens and has tax information sharing agreements with anyone that matters. We don't have "lax tax laws". We're one of the only 3 jurisdictions whitelisted by the UK to conduct online gambling precisely because we have good regulation and anti-money laundering protection. And the overall level of tax burned on the IOM is about the same as the US.
Second. There are about 5000 desktop and laptop computers. Now you might not think such small numbers don't matter, but it's not the numbers, it's where they are. The IOM has everything you'd find in your average government, from the executive offices right down to sewage treatment, water utilities, power generation, hospitals, schools, roads, etc, etc. Only it's much smaller. So why does MS care? Because they can deploy their products across an entire and extremely varied organisation, and capture that in only 5000 machines.
As for the Vista/Windows 7 thing. The software is licenced through microsoft's rental scheme, so whether they stay on Windows XP or Windows 7 doesn't matter, they pay the same. The claimed savings were down to lower maintenance costs etc. Also after the deployment of Vista, the upgrade to Windows 7 (like all their application deployments) is through a system called SMS. It's deployed over the network, overnight and is completed with one reboot. No user settings are lost as they're all on network profiles.
I don't like MS as much as the next slashdotter, but you're talking about things you don't know. Stop.