Tuesday, August 10, 2004
a narrow escape
Thank God Van mentioned to me in passing that a group of IT "consultants" recommended to their bank that they license all their Microsoft software before the big bad BSA come down on them with a court order. I smelled a scam coming up - IT freelancers are not usually known for their law abiding tendencies.
Sure enough, the total cost of upgrading was "about" 1.8million. NOt including their fees of course.
As with anything in the Philippines, the case for and against software licensing is never straightforward. On the one hand there are the big bad software giants like Microsoft whose full price applications cost more than most people's annual salaries and help them take over the WORLD. On the other there are the evil software pirates whose activities fund terrorism, steal your wife and shoot your dog!!!
There's so much hype and bullshit and politics on both sides. As always, it's the decent small business who gets squeezed. Open source software groups, thankfully, have begun to produce decent alternatives to the Microshit empire and solve both problems at the same time: the license and application are free, compatible with Word and Excel etc., and are sometimes even better than the £399 pound version - viz the OpenOffice.org application suite .
Sure enough, the total cost of upgrading was "about" 1.8million. NOt including their fees of course.
As with anything in the Philippines, the case for and against software licensing is never straightforward. On the one hand there are the big bad software giants like Microsoft whose full price applications cost more than most people's annual salaries and help them take over the WORLD. On the other there are the evil software pirates whose activities fund terrorism, steal your wife and shoot your dog!!!
There's so much hype and bullshit and politics on both sides. As always, it's the decent small business who gets squeezed. Open source software groups, thankfully, have begun to produce decent alternatives to the Microshit empire and solve both problems at the same time: the license and application are free, compatible with Word and Excel etc., and are sometimes even better than the £399 pound version - viz the OpenOffice.org application suite .
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