Software Makers' Restrictive License Rules Targeted by New Group (bloomberg.com) 31
A group of more than a dozen companies launched an organization to advocate for less-restrictive software licensing rules, targeting cloud providers like Microsoft, whose contract policies have been under fire from rivals, customers and lawmakers. From a report: The Coalition for Fair Software Licensing argues that software agreements need to be more flexible and predictable for customers, including allowing the use of cloud services and programs from different providers. "Cloud customers around the world have long been subjected to repeated financial harm as a result of legacy providers' restrictive software licensing practices," said Ryan Triplette, executive director of the new association, which was announced on Tuesday. The group's member companies, coming from industries including health care, financial services and technology, are remaining anonymous for now due to fear of retaliation, she said in an interview. Microsoft, Oracle and other software giants have been criticized by competitors and clients for limiting the interoperability of products and services, sometimes making it more expensive to use them with rival offerings or prohibiting it entirely.
Doc, it hurts when I do this (Score:2, Interesting)
Sounds like it's time to upgrade your ancient legacy app which still has dependencies on Microsoft or Oracle products.
And needless to say, if anyone starts a new project to entrench these things, then you know they are consciously working against basic fiduciary r
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To really help... (Score:3)
<rant>
If "The Coalition for Fair Software Licensing" or legislators really wanted to help the citizens (of course, legislators don't, they have businesses' dicks deep down their throat, but...), they'd go after eliminating "subscription" software scams.
Subscriptions are the worst thing that's happened to software users, ever. Fucking corporate vampires.
</rant>
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Depends on what it is. If it is something installed locally by a user... yeah. I agree. But if it is something that requires hosting/infrastructure, I don't have an issue with it.
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Why?
What is so unfair about it?
It's a worthy question because why not allow flexibility in licensing?
Microsoft offers a subscription and a "buy once" license for Office - each as their pluses and minuses. Are you saying that the permanent license is the only way? Because corporate IT prefers the subscription variant by a lot I've found.
For example, Office 365 is licensed per user. So if you have 100 employe
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Aside from the constant drain on one's wallet (which can add up to a lot more than historical purchase prices for previous buy once versions and of course that's why they do this), there's the issue of not being able to access and modify one's own data unless one is paying for the "privilege." For instance, create something in a subscription-only image editor in its proprietary layered format, stop paying for the subscription, then you can't edit or load your image. That doesn't h
Don't like the terms? Don't sign the deal (Score:3)
I always am amazed at people who can't read a contract, especially businesses when they complain about the agreements they sign into.
Microsoft and Oracle have been some of the worst purveyors of anti-competitive practice yet businesses sign right up and throw more money
at them. They know exactly how far they can push things and to still be within the law.
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I always am amazed at people who can't read a contract, especially businesses when they complain about the agreements they sign into. Microsoft and Oracle have been some of the worst purveyors of anti-competitive practice yet businesses sign right up and throw more money at them.
The problem is, when you install any software, you only have 2 choices:
(1) Agree to their ridiculous licensing bullshit
(2) Don't use the software
In many cases you have no good alternatives, so you are stuck with option #1
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It is well-known that anti-competitive practices cannot be dealt with by the market in almost all cases. Apparently you are unaware of this basic fact. Every modern state has and needs a special agency to deal with that, and if those agencies do not do their job, the economy suffers. That failure has happened in the US a long time ago and persists.
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We do have the anti-trust act and nothing the TFA says has anything to do with that. What is anti-competitive to one party may be perfectly fine and legal to another. In the case of market leaders, we always need to be wary that it doesn't lead to anti-competitive behavior. Again, that's not called out in the TFA which is about licensing and in the case of Microsoft there are alternatives. I can't think of an instance where they have a stranglehold on a particular technology. The same holds true for Oracle
Re: Don't like the terms? Don't sign the deal (Score:1)
Oh yeah the lobbyists are totally trying to kill Microsoftâ¦.. NOT!
I fucking kill me rofl
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Some years ago, I was negotiating the purchase of some expensive software ($0.5M) and I realized that the license agreement would not actually allow my company to use the software in the way it was supposed to be used.
The vendors lawyers were surprised when I pointed this out. Larger companies had agreed to multi-million dollar purchases using the same license agreements that would not allow them to actually use the software. The lawyers in those large customers had reviewed the license agreements and not a
The best complain... (Score:2)
... is not using software from those so called restrictive organizations.
Nake Fews (Score:2)
Microsoft & Oracle restrictive and anti-competitive? Naaaaa.
Does the govt need to be involved in EVERYTHING!? (Score:2)
Why is it always the "solution" for people?
Don't like the terms? Don't fucking use it!
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Nice one, Sparky.
Try to find a service agreement these days that doesn't have a neutral arbitration clause, where you "voluntarily" give up the right to sue the vendor for anything.
They're colluding against you. Boycotts are a nice pipe dream, but government regulation is the most reliable mechanism that pushes back against such abuses.
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Bullshit. A free market cannot deal with anti-competitive practices and they ultimately end up destroying the economy. Sure, if we were to, say, massively restrict the market share a company can have, like to 10% and after that the are forbidden to sell more, that would do it. As that is not practical, any state that wants a working economy needs an agency that deals with anti-competitive practices and punishes those engaging in them until they stop.
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The free market has failed in this case. This happens from time to time. In these situations it's only right that the government should step in.
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Why is it always the "solution" for people?
The government is the solution for Microsoft, Oracle and the others. Or do you think intellectual property in general, and copyrights, trademarks and patents in particular, exist how? They aren't natural rights, they only exist because governments enforce them.
If it's governments that invent, establish, maintain, and enforce those artificial rules, those same governments can change said rules into anything else they think would be better for any goal they themselves set. Don't like governments inventing int
The govt is already involved in EVERYTHING (Score:2)
What is so damn upsetting about going from 95.3% involved to 95.6% involved?
It's the government who granted copyright. And then because for some reason that wasn't enough, it was the government who said you "agreed" to a license you never read, with a bunch of restrictions you would never have guessed, because you opened an envelope that you had bought.
If you want to take away the government, fine. But unless you're willing to do that, there's no reason the government shouldn't be dictating all the default
All the big legacy firms engage in that BS (Score:2)
Then you get opportunists that come along and snap up companies that have a long line of jurassic customers in tow that are using old crusty tooling. For them, they think it's "cheaper" to continue paying Oracle, CA/Broadcom, Microsoft, IBM, blah blah blah than to bite the bullet and actually retool with software that has better licensing terms. So they are free to just bump up the maintenance/subscription/whatever fees every time there's a renewal because the customer has allowed themselves to be trapped
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Then you get opportunists that come along and snap up companies that have a long line of jurassic customers in tow that are using old crusty tooling. For them, they think it's "cheaper" to continue paying Oracle, CA/Broadcom, Microsoft, IBM, blah blah blah than to bite the bullet and actually retool with software that has better licensing terms.
Except it's not that simple.
Sure, there is software that has better licensing terms. And almost all of it is unusable, amateur shite. If it wasn't, businesses would dump Microsoft/Oracle/etc. and save a lot of money.
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> Sure, there is software that has better licensing terms. And almost all of it is unusable, amateur shite. If it wasn't, businesses would dump Microsoft/Oracle/etc.
Bwahahahaha!
Thanks, I needed that.
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Free markets cannot deal with anti-competitive practices. Hence a free market is not a permanent thing. As a somewhat free market is very desirable, anti-competitive practices must be suppressed by regulation or the economy ultimately goes to hell.
Software licences have always been a hack (Score:1)
We shouldn't have licences at all. A sensible form of copyright law would give us the inherent right to install and use the software we've actually bought! And we should be able to argue this as "Fair use"
But the rights aren't explicit. So this means that publishers have had to grant a "licence", and they've made sure to offer as few rights as possible.
Open Source Licenses (Score:1)
It's amazing how Microsoft managed to own computing through licensing software. One fifth + of company revenue going back to One Microsoft Way.