The Mod Squad
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Software rights are an interesting issue in today's society. Many people, especially IT people, are quick to use a piece of software on another computer, not worrying about the licensing. Indeed, I suspect that many corporations blanket license software just so people don't waste time worrying about the issue.
Apparently Best Buy didn't agree. Their Geek Squad, the mobile computer geeks that travel to people's homes and fix their computers. They used Winternals software without a license on customers' computers. Shame on them! Mark Russinovich has done great work for the Windows community and his company deserves to be paid.
I'm not sure who is at fault here: corporate Best Buy or the geeks, but it shouldn't have happened. If negotiations broke off, then the software shouldn't have been used and the individual workers should have been informed. I've read some posts in places from this case and it's not clear what happened. It seems that some people report that they were told not to use it or any other illegal software. Others say they were encouraged to use whatever they could. The important thing to know is that Geek Squad isn't a couple people in one office. It's hundreds of people spread across the US.
I know licensing can be expensive. We're looking to buy more software now and it's an expensive proposition to spend thousands on software. BTW, anyone at Microsoft, we're not opposed to some goodwill here
But someone built the software. For better or worse, money was spent in creating a commercial product and it should be paid for. The great team at Microsoft that builds SQL Server are wonderful people, and I know most of them love what they do. But they also need to be paid for their work to support their families.
And they deserve to. The licensing issues will evolve and I think we'll see changes over time in software cost and licensing. But there still will be a cost somewhere. Even with "Free" software, you'll pay employees or consultants or someone to understand and configure and support it. We may even get there with SQL Server one day, where the software doesn't cost anything.
But we'll still pay somehow.
Steve Jones
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Software licensing can be such a pain to deal with, but it's a necessary evil. Like Steve said, the programmers need to be paid to support their families. I've read numerous license agreements, and I've had to contact companies on them quite a few times to make sure I understood what it meant and how they worked and made sure I knew what to recommend to my boss as far as ordering software. (If you have 5 computers and are printing on super fast printers, buy this... ugh!! Why can't they be straightforward?)
Is it just Best Buy or the geeks who should be held liable? Best Buy should (if it doesn't already) have a policy in place to stress the importance of software licensing and make it part of the geek's job to understand that. Perhaps a code of ethics and an ethics hotline, since piracy is definitely an ethical issue. And the geeks should also be held liable - they should know a little about what software they're using and if it's legitimate. If it's pirated, an ethical mind should stop using it until they can get a licensed version.
I know... easier said than done. It's easy to go online and find hacks/cracks/serials for programs. It's easy to go down the dark alley of piracy. From Google to special search engines for these dark ways, they're easily attainable. But it doesn't mean they're right.
Piracy leads to cheating someone out of their earnings... and businesses should put policies in place to prevent it.
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