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from the how-to-drive-away-your-customers dept.
El Reg reports (on 27 Mar)
Software providers such as Microsoft and Oracle are aggressively targeting public sector customers with licence "audit reviews" in a bid to plug falling subscription revenue, according to research. Over one-third of the 436 councils surveyed across the UK have been subject to at least one software licence review in the last 20 months, according to a report from software licensing costs advice company Cerno. Of those, 60 per cent were found to be "under-licensed" and hit with a penalty of up to £50,000.
Out of 132 universities, one quarter have been subject to at least one software licence audit in the last 20 months, it said. "This survey confirms considerable activity in licence reviews by the major software vendors - principally Oracle and Microsoft - and, critically, the high incidence of penalty demands following the review," said Robin Fry, co-founder of Cerno.
gewg_ notes that the solution adopted last century by Dave Richards of the City of Largo, Florida and by Ernie Ball, Inc. keep looking better and better. (It cost the California company $100,000 before they saw the light.)
(Score: 4, Interesting) by anubi on Tuesday April 07 2015, @03:45AM
Politicians are the ones who voted all this copyright crap into law.
Now, its going to come back to get them.
Just as it is gets the rest of us.
Paralyzing us with compliance to whatever someone else demands.
No different than the back doors mandated into operating systems can be used by anybody that knows how to access them.
Politicians empowered the greedy, and this is how they get thanked.
Now, if we could only hold politicians responsible to a budget, where crap like this comes out of each politician's personal pocket. Just as we have to budget our resources and compliance expenses come out of our personal pocket. If we did this, we may get some intelligent law passed, instead of this crony capitalism we have masquerading as a free market.
Politicians do not seem to mind placing another tax on us, but say its not a tax, its a "responsibility fee". I would love to see each politician also assessed a "responsibility fee" for misuse of the trust the public places in them... such as blithely "vote to increase the debt ceiling", which only commits us to pay bankers "interest" on "notes" they pull out of thin air. All they are doing is robbing the people to pay "usury" to an elite that did absolutely nothing to earn that largess, no, all they had to do is have some Congressmen go for it, using the powers the public entrusted in him to legally cement an obligation to remit things of value in exchange for that the elite create from thin air... banker's notes.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 07 2015, @05:50AM
Just as it is gets the rest of us.
Nope! Not getting to me! Micro$oft free since 1995, never could afford anything Apple, so it's been free software all the way for me, even in a hostile environment, for a long, long time now. No copyright, no "open-source" crap to appeal to PHBs with the MBAs courted by BFP. (If you need help on that last acronym, the first word is, "Bruce", and he's not a shark, so far as I know.) And, wait for it! I block ads. There, I said it! I deny the economic engine of the internet! And I don't allow javascript! Or cookies! or Beacons! The Dark Side has cookies. So there. Also, universities. They have been taken over by the parasites that they let in when they considered "business" to be an academic area. Business? You mean, how to make money? What does that tell us about the nature of the universe? Use Linux. It will replace Solaris. There is no reason for actual scientists to use a toy operating system, or its associated file systems and proprietary lock ins of data that yearns to be free.
[short version: Microsoft and Oracle are dead. Do not use. Do not touch. Quarantine Level Six, stat!]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 07 2015, @11:16AM
Not getting you? If you live in one of said councils, where do you think the money is coming from? It's not like English villages have their own Federal Reserves to print more worthless paper when they need it.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday April 07 2015, @02:27PM
"Microsoft free"? As in, pirated? Yeah, all but two of my MS OS's were "free". I actually paid for a copy of Win ME for the kids, and the wife paid for a copy of XP when she built one of her computers. Oh - make that three. The wife recently built another computer, and paid for the Win7 disk to install WIndows.
Chalk her up as a lost Linux user. She was happy with Ubuntu for several years, then Ubuntu started playing games with Unity, blah, blah blah. She wasn't willing to experiment with other distros, so she bought Windows again.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by davester666 on Tuesday April 07 2015, @06:04AM
"come back to get them"? how? it's not like they have to pay for the software and/or fines out of their own pocket. and you aren't going to vote them out of office for bungling this.
instead, everyone in the UK will have to pay an additional pound so Microsoft and Oracle can make their numbers for this quarter.
(Score: 3, Informative) by TheRaven on Tuesday April 07 2015, @10:22AM
sudo mod me up