Software Audits: How High-Tech Software Vendors Play Hardball (infoworld.com)

snydeq writes: InfoWorld's Dan Tynan offers an inside look at how high-tech software vendors such as Adobe, Oracle, and IBM play hardball over software licensing, pushing customers to "true up" to the tune of billions of dollars per year -- and using the threat of audits as a sales tool to close lucrative deals. "When it comes to software audits, the code of omerta prevails," Tynan writes. "It's not a question of whether your organizations' software licenses will get audited. It's only a question of when, how often, and how painful the audits will be. The shakedown is such a sure thing that nearly every customer we contacted asked us to keep their names out of this story, lest it make their employers a target for future audits."

Comments

Re:After Microsoft forced us to buy...

[MightyDrunken]

In the Microsoft licensing scheme you have to pay both device CAL's and user CAL's. So for each device you buy a device CAL and per user you pay for a user CAL. Server's also have to pay per processor (which is a toss-up between physical processor, core and thread depending on product and vendor or a combination of them).

I'm glad that Microsoft simplified their licensing at last.