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Rockin on Without Microsoft
posted by scubacuda on Tuesday September 02, @03:44PM
from the in-slightly-old-news... dept.
Open Source In 2000, the BSA conducted a raid and subsequent audit on guitar string maker Ernie Ball and found a few dozen unlicensed copies of MS programs. Sterling Ball (CEO and son of founder, Ernie Ball) settled for $65,000, plus $35,000 in legal fees. Humiliated by the fact that the BSA had put the company on the evening news and featured it in regional ads warning other businesses to monitor their software licenses, Ball jettisoned all MS products. In this News.com interview, Ball talks about his IT dept's transition to OSS.

Few Virus Creators Face Penalties | SCO Sends Invoices to Commercial Linux Users  >

 

 
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    Rockin on Without Microsoft | Login/Create an Account | Top | 2 comments | Search Discussion
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    The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
    Forced compliance without recourse? (Score:1)
    by TomWiles on Tuesday September 02, @08:38PM (#1113)
    User #396 Info
    If you read the article carefully,several points come to mind.

    1. He had no option with regard to defending against the claims against him. According to the law (as he presents it and I assume his account is acurate), he would have had to pay legal fees for both sides (win or loose). Basically this means that he had no choice (from a financial perspective) than to settle on their terms.

    2. The real question here is whether or not his company was in violation of the law.

    Under classic copyright law, the purchaser of the copyrighted item can protect his investment by making copies.

    These copies can reside at various places just so long as the item (book for instance) is not read, or used at two different locations at the same time.

    In the eighties and early nineties Universities bought the number of licenses that they predicted would be required at peak usage. The software resided on their servers, and students used the software on lab machines connected to the servers. There were many more lab machines than there were licenses, but as long as the number of copies currently in use was less than or equal to the total number of licenses owned by the school, the school was considered to be in compliance. Many companies operated under the same principle.

    The BSA and Microsoft have since taken the position that each potential machine requires a license whether or not the software is actually run on it.

    This would have been an interesting court case. If his lawyers assert that for every instance of the software actually running he had a legal license, the court might very concievably find him in compliance.

    My point is that there is no clear case that his company was in violation of the law. This comes under the heading of persicution not prosicution.

    Am I wrong?

    Tom
    Re:Forced compliance without recourse? (Score:0)
    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 03, @09:57AM (#1114)

    I can only offer my experience with BSA at the company I used to work for - a small (65 employees) services firm.

    The system administrator was recruited by a start-up rival. Prior to leaving, he loaded machines with copies of software, then he quit and turned in my employer to BSA. BSA's law firm sent a cease and desist/demand letter. Ultimately, despite providing affidavits from other employees that had been recruited and told of the "plan" to turn in my employer, etc., and other evidence, there was little negotiation with BSA. Even worse, BSA's law firm insisted that Microsoft Office Suites be treated as "individual" packages of Word, Excel, Access, etc. They clearly had no concept of licensing or even how software was provided. We had to fax the descriptions from the Microsoft Office web site to them before they could figure it out. We had to translate our invoices for Microsoft Office Professional and Premium into the components i.e. 3 Office Suites equals 3 copies of Word. There were a lot of other issues as well. I can't even tell you how many letters we sent that said we had 5 copies of Professional and 10 copies of Premium and they would say, that's great, but where's your license for 15 copies of Word. It was laughable.

    We also had documentation of PC purchases that included the Microsoft Office Suite software, however since the description didn't specifically say "Microsoft Office 2000 Professional" BSA said that was unacceptable as evidence. We couldn't get some of the vendors to send us clarifications of what "software" meant on their invoices, so we got stuck with that as well. Having the original packaging, licenses, etc., from the software itself was unacceptable as far as they were concerned.

    We also requested that Microsoft search their records for all registrations of software to the company and we were told it couldn't be done. Another company we requested info from (whose name escapes me) couldn't provide it either. Seems like they were using Digital River for payments, but switched to someone else and couldn't find/access records from prior purchases.

    Given the fact that Microsoft has billions and my employer had virtually nothing, they chose not to fight it and to pay the "fine."

    Just Another Anonymous Coward

    Humanity has the stars in its future, and that future is too important to be lost under the burden of juvenile folly and ignorant superstition. - Isaac Asimov

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