Thursday May 25, 2006 "Gimme Yer Dinner Money Or I Break Yah Legs"
You may recall that, when OpenOffice.org started its "Get Legal!" campaign, people doubted the assertion that buying software from market monopolists was the start of a cycle of fear of prosecution? Well, just as the monoculture warning has now come home to roost, so has this one. ZDNet UK reports that the UK's software mafiosi enforcers, FAST, have decided the next target for their rich masters is to be the British state education system.
"The message is clear: if head teachers, schools governors and even LEAs allow the use of illegal software then it may be a fast track to a criminal record," said John Lovelock, director general of FAST.
"FAST track" indeed. This is what happens when you get mass-market software with dangerous end-user license agreements. As soon as you step on the treadmill, you are on the hook for endless inconvenience and threats-by-proxy - from the moment that you buy it (yes, you are not even trusted to use software you have legitimately purchased [kudos to Robert for disclosing that but shame on his employer for imposing it]) to the moment you finally break free.
Why put up with this sort of customer abuse (and it's not just schools that face the software equivalent of the money lender's mobsters)? Mark Taylor is on hand to advise:
Taylor said that education professionals are focused on dealing with "violence, drugs, bullying, truancy, shrinking budgets and escalating government regulations", not "worrying about whether they've got licences for anything anyone has ever installed on their ageing networks".
Taylor said that if he represented a school on the receiving end of these threats, he would start researching open source software.
"I'd begin to move away from the people locking me into proprietary solutions whilst threatening me with criminal proceedings, and towards open standards, open source-based software that gives me options, dramatically and permanently lowers my costs, and won't get me a criminal record," Taylor added.
In other words, and I quote: "Get Legal! Get OpenOffice.org!". What the old world - of charging for the privilege to use - calls "pirates" are what the new world - of providing service to ubiquity - calls customers.
Posted by webmink
( May 25 2006, 12:00:00 AM PDT )
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