{"id":61,"date":"2007-05-17T12:00:42","date_gmt":"2007-05-17T10:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/wordpress\/?p=61"},"modified":"2007-05-17T12:00:42","modified_gmt":"2007-05-17T10:00:42","slug":"bs-alliance-on-software-piracy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/?p=61","title":{"rendered":"BS Alliance on software piracy"},"content":{"rendered":"

The mainstream press is trumpeting figures from the Business Software Alliance<\/a> (BSA) that software piracy costs the South African economy R1.5 billion. Perhaps a more appropriate name is the BS Alliance.<\/p>\n

On the whole, mainstream media has been found rather wanting in questioning these figures. Rather, they play their all-too-common role of simply parroting what they’re told by the authority<\/em> in question.<\/p>\n

Can anybody believe these figures? Is it not conceivable that, if forced to pay, many of these businesses and individuals won’t pay the full price – they’ll either do without, or switch to FOSS<\/a>. So the cost to the economy<\/em> is based on the rather flawed assumption that everyone using unlicensed software will actually pay the full price for it.<\/p>\n

As an example, when I started as IT Manager of a particular online media company<\/a> (which I no longer hold), I did a software audit, and found that there were instances of unlicensed software. For arguments sake, let’s just say it came to R100 000. All included in that R1.5 billion I’m sure. How much did we spend to rectify the situation? Nothing. We switched to FOSS where appropriate, or removed the software where it wasn’t needed.<\/p>\n

Now I’m sure not all situations are as easy to resolve, but I’d guess you could lop a zero off that R1.5 billion estimate.<\/p>\n

The BSA, as a front of various software companies, has to walk a fine line – by getting too strict (or spreading too many alarmist stories), they chase people into the arms<\/a> of the enemy<\/em>, FOSS. By not being strict enough, piracy of proprietary software flourishes. But exaggerating the scale of the situation doesn’t harm their cause at all.<\/p>\n

So, here’s wishing the BSA all the best in their endeavours to support FOSS. <\/p>\n

Tags: Business Software Alliance<\/a> software piracy<\/a> FOSS<\/a> SA economy<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The mainstream press is trumpeting figures from the Business Software Alliance (BSA) that software piracy costs the South African economy R1.5 billion. Perhaps a more appropriate name is the BS Alliance. On the whole, mainstream media has been found rather wanting in questioning these figures. Rather, they play their all-too-common role of simply parroting what… Continue reading BS Alliance on software piracy<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-metal-technical","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=61"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=61"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=61"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greenman.co.za\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=61"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}