Article from August 20, 2003

Did you want to settle?
Never, never. That’s the difference between the way an employee and an owner thinks. They attacked my family’s name and came into my community and made us look bad. There was never an instance of me wanting to give in. I would have loved to have fought it. But when (the BSA) went to Congress to get their powers, part of what they got is that I automatically have to pay their legal fees from day one. That’s why nobody’s ever challenged them–they can’t afford it. My attorney said it was going to cost our side a quarter million dollars to fight them, and since you’re paying their side, too, figure at least half a million. It’s not worth it. You pay the fine and get on with your business. What most people do is get terrified and pay their license and continue to pay their licenses. And they do that no matter what the license program turns into.

I wonder if that little poison pill about having to pay the legal fees for the Business Software Alliance from day 1 is still true? I’d also be curious to see a follow-up today for how they’re using FOSS in their business. There are a lot more resources today than there were in 2003!

“In 2000, the Business Software Alliance conducted a raid and subsequent audit at the San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based company that turned up a few dozen unlicensed copies of programs”

Later in the article they claim this meant armed marshals showed up at their door to enforce based on a tip from a program that designed to get employees to snitch on their bosses. If that’s true that’s absolutely wild. In what world do you give software companies license to do mandatory audits with severe financial penalties and police support based on heresay that was enticed by the auditor

This article is over 23 years old. I'd be curious if they're still entirely open source.

Great read even if it’s an old article.

Ah, so this happened in 2000 and the MS anti-trust ruling came down in 2001. That tracks. It was in the 90s that I really started to distance myself from MS as a small-time dev, and I haven't looked back since. They were a notoriously evil monopoly that, while lacking any true innovation in their products, was very inventive at coming up with ways to screw over the competition, steal trade secrets, etc. They knew they could get away with it. We all did.

To give you an example, I had a friend who attended a developer conference and ran a booth where they were trying to sell software involving running mall directory consoles I think it was? Whatever. Well, rumour spread that the vendor Internet was running on a sandboxed subnet managed by the graphics research division at MS, and there was a lot of suspicious activity on that LAN. This was not long after it had become clear that MS had outright stolen disk compression tech from another company (Stacker?) and folded it into their own OS, so indie devs were super paranoid. The busiest booth quickly became that of a new company that had just come up with a security and full disk encryption package. They made a lot of on-the-spot sales just to fellow vendors!

Just bought some Ernie ball accessories recently. I feel much better about that purchase. I wonder if the company still refuses MS products.

Why does Microsoft always abuse its customers?

The idea that if you have 2,000 terminals they all have to have a Web browser, that’s crazy. It just creates distractions.

Anybody else read this on your work computer?

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