Software License enforcement process

[agent006]

Afternoon,

In a hypothetical situation where someone works for a company that has virtually no software licenses and a large amount of installed software. Say for example that anotehr employee of this hypothetical company decided to go to the nice people at FAST or the BSA and explain the hypothetical license situation, what would they do? Instant fines and prison for the board, or do they take a more measured "sort it out by the end of the month or we'll be back to get you"?

Any experiences?

[Liszt]

Normally it is a sort it out by such and such.

[agent006]

THought as much. Anyone have any idea on penalties dealt out?

[zaktoo]

Not harsh enough - they should be using Free Software anyway! ;-)

As a Free Software advocate, I must cheer the BSA on, and I hope they're caught...

Sorry.

Ciao


Zak

[agent006]

Not a champion of free software myself, but the board are taking hte piss somewhat. THey've known we owe a number of £100k in licenses for a few months now and have only just started to action things. We (the techies) have covered our arses, just wondering what sort of action would be takine by fast etc as we've just had a very poor round of payrises so we have a lot of annoyed people here who might fancy hte £10k reward from FAST.

[_dobbo_]

"Why did you leave your last job sir"

"I shopped them to the FAST for a reward"

"Thanks, we'll let you know."

[plasticpig]

BSA has no powers to force a software audit or impose any fines.
However copy infringment is a criminal offence and you can get upto 6 months in prison and a 5000 fine and obviously the the authors of the software can sue for compensation.

It usually dosent get that far. More often there is some negotiation for paying backdated fees for software licensing and some compensation. What FAST and BSA really dont like is distributors and resellers selling fake software. They can get really heavy handed about that even if you are an innocent party and dont know its fake.