Fishing License

Andy Green andy at warmcat.com
Tue May 9 08:22:43 UTC 2006


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.

  "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."

...''

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=111186

[1] Actually this is a sign of stagnation and lack of growth for MSFT 
that they have a programme to try to squeeze the pips.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: smime.p7s
Type: application/x-pkcs7-signature
Size: 4492 bytes
Desc: S/MIME Cryptographic Signature
URL: <http://listman.redhat.com/archives/fedora-list/attachments/20060509/d8e30dfa/attachment-0001.bin>


More information about the fedora-list mailing list