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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.'"
I don't use ANY proprietary software at my company. I own a software development company in Argentina. If I get an auditor (Auditions here are done by ARBA, the state-wide equivalent of the IRS in Buenos Aires) I just won't even open the door. Sue me if you want. I use NO privative software, and no one has any right to log in into my servers or workstations (We have ~40 machines at our offices).
Fuck them in the ass.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Don't run Windows. "Software auditors" are just about unknown to users of any other platform.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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.
For those who forgot:
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082_3-5065859.htm
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.
B.S. Nobody wants Microsoft licensing to be that complex, except the SAM contractors and other licensing Nazis that Microsoft and a good chunk of the proprietary software world has let loose upon us all.
I had a SAM review last February and March, that started with a letter from a Microsoft "partner" (read: contracted henchman) that, once you got passed the bullshit about them being hear to help me, was clearly a software audit.
I was given 30 days (with an extension if I needed it) to put everything together. That part wasn't too bad. We had largely inherited the licenses from the firm that we had taken over, and it was a bit of a mess. Of our three copies of Server 2003, one was an inherited Small Business Server 2003 OEM edition that I had applied the Transition Pack to to turn into proper Server 2003, one was an OEM copy of Server 2003 R2 bought by us and one was a Server 2003 that we had inherited, purchased through Software Assurance. As well, there were about 15 Office Pro licenses, as well as 13 or 14 Office OEM copies sold with the Dells that we had inherited. On top of that, I had a backup server running Windows 2000 server, plus CALs both purchased by us and by the people we had bought everything from.
I first smelled trouble when they asked me to verify that 22 of our workstations (all running OEM copies of XP) were not running Office (they were running OpenOffice). I found the question more than a little accusatory. Then came the seeming inability for them to count CALs. At one point they had us in the red 15 CALs, despite the fact that I had invoices, both of my purchases and of the previous organization's, showing the CALs. This literally went back and forth for two weeks, until finally I had had enough, and sent off a very angry email to the contractor accusing him and his "team" of severe arithmetic disabilities, and explicitly using the phrase "you are harassing me".
Then, as if unwilling to declare defeat, they came back with a final number of -5 Server 2003 CALs, because, and get this, though I had enough CALs to cover everything, I hadn't bought this 5 CAL pack via Software Assurance, and wasn't permitted to use it as a User CAL on the Server 2003 machine installed via the single copy of Server 2003 bought via Software Assurance. I sent back a very angry letter, CCed to my manager, asking them if they seriously thought that I was going to pay $150 bucks again for CALs I already owned, because I bought them from a reseller as opposed to Software Assurance. I think at that point they got the hint that they weren't going to be getting any money out of us, and sent back a letter saying that as long as I agreed to change them into Device CALs, I'd be in the clear with them.
Now, I guess from one perspective one could say that we got off in the end, we were totally legit. But this probably consumed about $500 to $700 of my wages (my employer's money) on pointless back-and-forths as they tried to probe to find any way to make money off of us.
At this point, we are looking to abandoning Microsoft, and indeed proprietary software wherever we can. It won't be easy, and it won't always be pleasant (though it can't be any worse than the three weeks of hell that happened when we bought new Dell workstations with Vista). We're stuck with Exchange-Outlook for the medium term, but should have enough licenses to cover a small expansion that may be happening in a year. But all the new file servers are running Samba, we're set to expand OpenOffice installs, and while Office 2003 will be around for a while, there will be no upgrades to later versions, save as we replace workstations. The long-term plan is to roll more and more server operations on to open source solutions, with a set goal that when we hit 95% of our Exchange CALs, we will take the plunge and go with an open source groupware solution. I don't anticipate that we will ever be Microsoft free, but we can certainly reduce our footprint, and our exposure to the nonsensical and self-serving whims of Micro
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.