Software License Scare Mongering

I see Version1 have been spraying a press release all over the place in the last few days trying to put the fear of God into every company director in Ireland regarding software license compliance.  Today in The Computers In Business section of the Sunday Business Post I see the same numbers quoted, directors can face up to 5 years in prison and/or 127,000 euro fine for failure to comply with software licensing laws of Ireland. Note the “can” the last vestige of the press release scoundrel.

What they fail to mention and what the BSA try and make as ambiguous as possible is that these penalties are only available to the criminal courts and software license infringment at the company level is always a civil matter.  For it to be criminal you would have to be an actual software pirate who was copying Microsoft Office and reselling it on Moore Street.

Needless to say the civil remedies are all financial are are targetted at redressing lost revenue.  So be in compliance, but don’t waste your valuable business time worrying about it.

I run a software company, and have worked for software companies that sold software for a living all my life, but I find the BSA and version 1’s tactics extremely distasteful.  I can see a lot of money being wasted on fruitless audits in the coming weeks as company directors who read these rehashed press releases in the papers start to question their Managing Directors and CEO’s as to there state of compliance.

Irish Industry has enought to do trying to  competeing with the rest of the world without pissing away its time doing hours of busy work trying to generate more money for the company that foisted Vista on us all.