'Close to one in three - sorry, one in eight - SMEs are software pirates' More than one in ten of Blighty's small biz owners admit to being shameless software pirates, the Business Software Alliance reckons. The industry organ arrived at this stat by extrapolating research from Vanson Bourne covering just 250 SMEs, finding that 12 per cent admitted to side-stepping licensing rules. It found that 18 …
Unless they've got some solid statistical backing for that info which they're willing to make public (in suitably anonymised form) then their numbers will be treated with suspicion because the BSA's agenda derives entirely from the continued problem of piracy. They're hardly likely to come out and say "Turns out hardly anyone pirates anything any more, and there's really no reason for us to continue to exist", are they?
I'm not surprised, given that you need to be a lawyer with a few hours spare to wade through, comprehend and understand the implications of all the shrink-wrap licesnses.
My previous employer did just that (they have a specific IP legal team), and found out that the license that came with a certain piece of MS software gave MS the copyright in anything produced using the software. Funnily enough, the director of IP & patents was not impressed and actually managed to get the standard license changed. Does that count as side-stepping?
Michala Wardell, UK committee chair at the BSA - who doubles up as anti-piracy manager at Microsoft - branded the findings "shocking",
Mmmm, I would brand the findings understandable considering that many software licencing fees... Especially those dreamt up by Microsoft are a piss take.
UK committee chair at BSA and anti-piracy manager at Microsoft. Who would have thought. The next thing I will be hearing is that MP's are chairmen/chairwomen or on the board of directors of large corporations.
So those who buy a MS Surface and get "Office included" with it are then pirates by the BSA's measure if they dare to use it at anytime for for work?
Funny that, your legality can depend on some not obvious restriction in the small print.
As an AC I can use an icon, but you can probably guess which one it is.
That's an interesting point. Why are software prices so high anyway?
I can maybe understand specialist software being expensive, but with software that appeals to both mainstream consumers and businesses such as Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office, I don't understand why they price them so high. Surely just adding some new features to every new release of software costs a hell of a lot less than producing a Hollywood movie or developing a computer game, yet software is priced disproportionately higher.
With current pricing, they must be losing huge amounts of sales from people who would buy the products if they were priced reasonably, but choose to opt for Open Source alternatives instead, as they just can't justify the high prices.
"...every new release of software costs a hell of a lot less than producing a Hollywood movie or developing a computer game..."
A movie and computer game. A computer game I can understand, but a movie is a totally different industry. I don't know why you are comparing that.
Maybe SMEs by their very nature form less of a corporate wealth model and more of a personal risk model.
Some SME owners really have to consider the bank and/or creditors seizing personal assets and wealth if the business goes bits up.
Add a dash of envy "We have to work damn hard to make a bit of money never mind profit and these are making billions. Of course it nots right to pirate their stuff but its also not right that they charge us so bl**dy much for using it!" ?
NT had potential, but Microsoft made too many compromises and are falling behind now; Win 8 is a still a dressed up pig, even after way overdue heavy security pro input starting with Windows 7.
QNX looks far better, but is poorly promoted, so lacks a lot of important software and support.
I only pay for very specific commercial software which doesn't p me off and is easy to fix when it breaks, obviously Windows is the absolute peak of p-ing me off since Win 95, so I won't pay anything until the quite astonishingly compromised underlying design is fixed and made properly robust and maintainable. I only use it because FreeBSD, Linux, etc. developers can't seem to comprehend that an OS must primarily be an easy to use and up-to-date appliance, and only very rarely need detailed fiddling, so they don't have the range of well designed and easy to use software. It doesn't help that commercial software suppliers can't seem to drop the stupid idea of DRM as protection for the absurd idea called IP.
Transactional, properly designed multi-user filesystems like ZFS, with 21st century disk and file support should replace all the crufty 20th century journalling filesystems which store OS on the dated idea of partitions on disks. At most a journalling filesystem should be used for a bare-bones boot sub-system to load the filesystem hosting an OS; FreeNAS is close to this lean idea, so can boot off a small USB flash stick.
"I only use it because FreeBSD, Linux, etc. developers can't seem to comprehend that an OS must primarily be an easy to use and up-to-date appliance, and only very rarely need detailed fiddling, so they don't have the range of well designed and easy to use software."
Did't you mean to say: "I can't seem to comprehend how to use FreeBSD or Linux. But I learned how to use a mouse."
Presumably you'll also find Solaris and other Unix variants just as incomprehensible. ;)
"...[you would think] sorting out software licences would be a priority from the word 'go'"
And that's the thing isn't it? When you're running a business, this sort of thing is NOT a priority. Making sure you can pay the rent is a priority. Making sure you can pay your staff, or making sure your invoices get paid, or your shipments get to your customers on time is a priority. Oh, yes, I accept the whole "it's stealing" thing (I write s/w myself for a living, and have done so for many years), but that doesn't change human nature, or the REAL priorities in life.
It's all part of the broader bluster about piracy, whether it be DVDs, CDs (remember them?) or anything else. Just because you jump up and down about this stuff, it doesn't make it important. There are many important things in life (which probably boil down to a handful in reality), but software/DVD/CD/whatever piracy is certainly not one of them.
Why would I think that paying some of my staff to investigate every single computer for every single piece of software installed upon it and checking every single line of small print (or even not printed at all) in a licence agreement that I can't even see let alone read was a "priority"
I'd have to be insane to even start, I've got a business to run!
Especially as the BSA who tell me I should do this are unable to understand simple statistics - 12% do X and 18% have done Y does not mean 30% do XY.
I find it shocking, simply shocking that the BSA should have such terribly incompetent statisticians.
It is simply bewildering that they still haven't changed their statistical management practice to correct this, it would appear that it would require a legal challenge.
Given the costs involved, you'd think the job of sorting out the BSA's own statistics would be a priority from the word 'ready' or 'set', let alone 'go'.
Perhaps the BSA do spend so much of their effort checking all their own software is properly licenced that they can't do their own core business?
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