Microsoft licensing

Rotten effort is a good look by Computer World at how MS conducts it's licensing compliance and how many software vendors use compliance to drive sales.

In my view it is unethical, but a wholly predictable result of the push to put license breaches on a par with terrorist acts. In fact, a cynic like my selfishly might even suggest it's one of the reasons for big corp to push changes to IP laws.

The real fear for most companies though is that these threats are real. The complexity of many software licenses means many business would be caught out. If I'd been Dale Frantz of Autowarehousing, I wouldn't have been so confident an audit wouldn't have found something.

All companies need to take licensing issues extremely seriously. But companies like Microsoft and AutoDesk need to understand that restrictive, or marketing driven licenses only encourage their customers to look elsewhere.