Fishing License
Guy Fraser
guy at incentre.net
Wed May 10 21:37:35 UTC 2006
On Tue, 2006-09-05 at 09:22 +0100, Andy Green wrote:
> Just something to point people at in your organization who did not see
> the benefits of a FOSS solution yet. Reliance on proprietary software
> opens up an ugly licensing liability problem and Microsoft are actively
> [1] using it to harass and shake down companies.
>
> '' ...
>
> AWC was contacted several weeks ago by Janet Lawless, a software asset
> management engagement manager at Microsoft, who claimed that "a
> preliminary review of [AWC's software licensing] information indicates
> that your company may not be licensed properly." Lawless urged AWC to
> "understand that the potential inconsistency in licensing is an urgent
> matter and needs immediate attention." She wanted to send a consultant
> to AWC to conduct an inventory of its installed software.
>
> Frantz was stunned. He says he always errs on the side of caution with
> respect to software licenses. He does regular audits and maintains
> extensive records of purchases, license keys and registration codes.
> Frantz had no doubt that he was 100% compliant. When he told Lawless
> that, she ratcheted up the threatening tone of her e-mail correspondence.
>
We only have 5 Windows machines, in our office all the rest are Macs
or Linux/Unix machines. When they called us, I demonstrated that we
had well over 10 licences for 5 windows machines, since all machines
come with a licence even if we don't run windows, so I asked if I
could get some rebates. I have never heard from them since then. ;^)
> "Simply commenting on your licensing environment does not address our
> concerns in a tangible, proven manner," she wrote. "We continue to
> believe that Auto Warehousing may not be licensed properly. Since this
> is a compliance issue, I am obligated to notify an officer of Auto
> Warehousing of the situation and the significant risk your organization
> may be subject to by not resolving this situation in a timely manner."
>
> At that point, Frantz got his corporate attorney involved. The
> attorney suggested that an olive branch be proffered to avoid legal
> action, so Frantz offered to send Lawless detailed records of all
> purchases of Microsoft software in the past five years. But Lawless blew
> that off as well. She seemed determined to get a consultant into the IT
> bowels of AWC.
>
> "Thank you for your offer to send your purchase records to me," she
> wrote, "however our Software Asset Management (SAM) program is the only
> unbiased way to create an accurate baseline and resolve this matter."
>
How are their consultants supposed to make money, if you track your
software licences yourself.
I would do and internal audit, make sure all systems are compliant
then, tell her to go pound sand.
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