Re: Fishing License

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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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