Microsoft Pursues The Pirates
Staggering starfish! As reported by Susanne and David, it looks like Microsoft UK is turning words into action at long last, with an out-of-court settlement and more cases in the pipeline.
This is great. This pleases me on two fronts:
- They (Microsoft) are doing something proactive that benefits customers and honest and legitimate partners
- They are telling us about it.
I have personally been in the position of going into a customer site and having to tell them that all their software is unlicensed and they have to start again from scratch. It is not a nice situation to be in, because they had no idea anything was wrong and it creates a short term conflict of interest between helping out a hapless customer and staying on the right side of the law. In my case, I used a 'softly softly' approach and after a few months of gentle persuasion I got them to do a complete hardware refresh, and they are now using brand new "Office Ready" PCs loaded with OEM Windows Vista and Office 2007. They are properly licensed and have state of the art equipment. A good result - in the long run.
It is important that Microsoft continues to announce successful prosecutions to the public and in particular to the Small Business Specialist Community. We are, effectively, Microsoft's licensing police (I like to think that we are the "good cop") so we need to have concrete examples of what can happen when the rules are broken. It is also a MAJOR incentive to encourage us to report the bad guys who compete with us unfairly. This is the first report I've ever seen of anything actually happening to a rule-breaker in the UK and now I am much more inclined to believe that Microsoft UK is serious about helping legitimate partners do the right thing and compete on a level playing field.
So thanks, Microsoft - and thanks for keeping us in the loop.