Compliance

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Compliance

Steve Jones - SSC Editor

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December 23, 2007 at 12:15 pm

#180079

Comments posted to this topic are about the item Compliance

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WILLIAM MITCHELL SSChampion Points: 13766 More actions · Answer 1

Proving compliance can be extremely difficult for large companies, especially those that have grown thru mergers and acquisitions. The companies being acquired may not have adequate documentation for their software assets.

Consider some possible states of software: volume licenses, retail purchases, bundled with a PC, and unlicensed. Add to that the fact that Microsoft is not the only vendor of software licenses - you may also have agreements with Novell, Adobe, Lotus, Business Objects, McAfee or Symantec. And what about equipment that is retired, should those licenses be added back into the available license pool?

That being said, I agree that MS is going overboard with their compliance efforts. At a time when Vista and Office 2007 are NOT selling like crazy, they should be making it easier on their customers, not harder.

Miles Neale SSChampion Points: 13147 More actions · Answer 2

Microsoft i s no t alone in this. many of the companies would like to get more dollars and have a better bottom line. But how is the best way to get folks in line?

I have been a fan of working a compliance check to see if a company is okay or not. If they are not they should be given an options to workout a compliance schedule or be required to buy now. The compliance schedule would be to buy software over a few months to get there, thus Microsoft gets the revenue they should get and the company does not have to stop using the software or go bankrupt buying large amounts of software outside the budget. This offer would be a one time offer.

Microsoft and other large software houses can only make money selling, a company should pay for what they are using, and employees should install only what they legally own. But some software is more in demand then companies have money for. And also there are times that it is very hard to manage who has what.

Not all gray hairs are Dinosaurs!

Peter Schott SSCrazy Eights Points: 9675 More actions · Answer 3

Your gaming comment struck me. I had a couple of games that I owned legally for which the copy protection scheme was incredibly annoying. Reading codes printed in black ink on really dark paper, having to look up word #9 of paragraph 25 on page 15, etc. Those were the games I had very little trouble in justifying a hex editor to switch the answers to empty or some common word just so I wouldn't be constantly trying to find the manual.

I didn't pirate the games nor give an "unlocked" copy to anyone else, but the copy protection was definitely anti-consumer in the sense of guilty until proven innocent. I know that there are now less intrusive forms of copy-protection, but they still go overboard at times even to the point of installing what's just about a rootkit. (And then seem to wonder why people look for cracked software or "NoCD" patches.)

I'd also agree that MS' licensing just seems to grow more confusing every time they release a new version. I don't really like their "Genuine Advantage" or "Software Assurance" programs too much. Sadly, nobody ever really indicates whose advantage when they name these programs. I'm pretty sure it's not MS' customers. 🙂

As for the licensing, it would be nice to have an easy way to keep track of it for corporate purposes. Computer X has been retired, all of its licenses are now available for use elsewhere. Stop trying to tie a particular copy to a PC and then not allow people to upgrade their own machines or tinker with them. Don't require Corporate servers to validate PCs on a regular basis - poll them perhaps, but not checking in to see if they're still licensed. Can't imagine the outcry if some odd bug worked in that invalidated all of a major corporations Vista licenses. Make it easier on the customer, guarantee a minimum number of upgrades if you're going to pay for SA, don't use audits as a threat to make people buy into SA or a similar program.

Sadly, it appears that Apple is now pursuing something similar to WGA for OSX. I guess they didn't really hear how well it was received by MS users. (Either that or they figure that Mac users won't care. :D)