[ale] OSS in the real world : licenses = friction = cost

Jim Kinney jim.kinney at gmail.com
Thu Aug 26 13:11:51 EDT 2010


A quote from another mailing I'm on (OSS in military) had me chuckling -
equating software piracy prosecution to small arms fire and IEDs.

--quote--
I'm trying to express the licensing pains that we have all felt in the
field.  The vast majority of MS installations are on "pirated" licenses -
and there is a myth that the services have an "enterprise licenses."
Someone called to get the "Enterprise License" code and we were informed
that licenses were all associated with various system purchases, and that
someone at the unit was supposed to be keeping track of all the licenses.
Of course this was not occurring - so we added "software piracy prosecution"
to the "Operational Risk Management" matrix along with small arms fire, IED
attack, vehicle accident, vehicle mishap and dehydration.
--end quote--

Thus the growth of Open Source Software in military and all branches of
government. It's not always "official" but like in corporate IT shops, it
comes in with the tech crowd "below the radar" until it reaches a critical
mass and some management person realizes they have both good tools and cost
savings using these things. Then it becomes "official". Then it becomes
mandatory. Then we win!

-- 
-- 
James P. Kinney III
I would rather stumble along in freedom than walk effortlessly in chains.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.ale.org/pipermail/ale/attachments/20100826/9be9456e/attachment.html 


More information about the Ale mailing list