Fishing License
Andy Green
andy at warmcat.com
Tue May 9 14:14:28 UTC 2006
Dave Ihnat wrote:
> However, this is a program for your benefit, not ours; and complying
> will necessarily require involvement from our staff. All AWC staffers
> who are required to assist you in any way will be billed at the rate
> of $250/hour. We require a prepayment retainer pool be paid in the
It's a good idea but they will probably agree to it. If you have, say,
100 users with laptops in your organization, you don't really know what
they have installed on them. Once you let these guys in they can just
sit there using automated tools looking for anything on any machine put
there for any reason by anyone and you'll be liable.
If those 100 laptops are on FOSS, it's likely the worst they'll find is
media players with no patent license, since FOSS boxes tend to just have
FOSS on it [1]. Attacking under Patent law for a handful of instances
is a whole other ballgame than the streamlined and cheap way of
attacking under Copyright law, it's not the shakedown game these guys
are in. They're looking for Office and a FOSS solution makes it much
more likely they'll just find Open Office and you giving them a GPL
suppository.
It's great when the MSFT masks slips and people can see the naked greasy
shakedown artist inside, it's the perfect reason for people to consider
a 'hassle budget' for a move to FOSS.
-Andy
[1] I have vmware and XP on this box, but that is the exception rather
than the rule. In particular the virtual XP filesystem has almost no
apps on it other than the technical app I am forced to have the whole
mess for.
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