M$ is desperately trying to milk the dying cash-cow by having salesmen push audits of M$’s users.
“Redmond’s compliance troops swooped on 51 per cent of enterprises and partners polled for the 2012 Software Pricing and Licensing Survey by IDC and sponsored by Flexera Software.”
see Microsoft licence cops kick in TWICE as many customers' doors as rivals • The Register.
If you want to be free of these parasites, use GNU/Linux. I recommend Debian GNU/Linux. It works for you, not against you.
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YUCK.
http://host.madison.com/wsj/business/landmark-services-to-pay-k-to-settle-software-licensing-lawsuit/article_73602ade-3e65-11e2-b7b3-0019bb2963f4.html
I’ve been asked about software audits before in the past a few times.
I always say if your running Linux, then send a formal letter explaining that you do not use any of the software products that they represent.
The BSA | Business Software Alliance, a global software industry trade association, whose members include Microsoft, Adobe, Symantec, and Autodesk, conducts copyright enforcement actions on behalf of its members.
If your using Windows, then use this methodology.
The burden of proof is on the BSA to prove that you in fact are using the software. Unless you have installed and used the software, you have not agreed to the license. Therefore, unless you are using the software, the BSA has no right to audit you. Now, unless the apps you run have a “phone home” feature or use some other online key verification, there are only three ways for the BSA to prove that you are using the software: you can admit to using the software, you can let them come into your place of business and they can observe it, or they can file a lawsuit against you and force you to disclose it during discovery.
If you neither confirm nor deny that you are using any particular piece of software and refuse to let them in, their only option for obtaining proof that they have the right to perform the audit in the first place is to go to court, file a suit, and perform discovery. Thus, unless their evidence is fairly strong, they’ll probably back down if the first thing that happens involves your lawyer telling their lawyer to bug off.
If they do not back down, that’s a sure sign that you have some serious compliance problems, and you need to get somebody in there to audit all of your systems ASAP. The folks at BSADefense.com [bsadefense.com] recommend that you have an attorney conduct the audit. This places the results of the audit under attorney-client privilege, meaning that they cannot be obtained by the BSA during discovery.
Get a lawyer and have him draft a letter requesting information on what they claimed was illegal. Then offer to show them the results of an internal audit, conducted by your lawyer and your own personnel.
Offer to submit to a third party audit that BSA would have to pay for to cross-reference and verify.
OR……Just use Linux and not worry about all that above garbage.
Hey, Douglas, how’s your snakeoil business going? Sucks to be you, doesn’t it? Jet-Computing … such a funny name. Reminds me of “Top Gun”. Are you gay?
http://pclinuxos2007.blogspot.com.br/2012/12/linux-is-free-and-it-shows.html