Bonum Certa Men Certa

Business Software Alliance (BSA) is Not Good for Free Software

Summary: Response to a new claim that the BSA is good for Free Software (the reality is more complex than it may seem)

WHEN does the BSA cross the line and become helpful to Free software in the same sense that banks running Windows provide an advert to GNU/Linux (due to Windows' failings)? We previously showed that BSA lobbying played a role in characterising Free software as illegal. Setting aside the Microsoft/Gates (senior) roots in the BSA [1, 2], one might reach the conclusion that the BSA not only enforces the rules of proprietary software; in order to defend its existence, the BSA also attacks the right of Free software to exist.



Nonetheless, here is an opinion piece which insists that the BSA is good for Free Software because of the intimidating crackdowns.

There are a few good reasons why open source fans should support the Business Software Alliance.

I've never made a secret of the fact that I dislike the Business Software Alliance (BSA). It's questionable statistics and its sweeping generalisations make for annoying reading at the best of times. But recently I've been thinking that perhaps open source advocates should get behind the BSA.


The reality is not that simple and the main question is, does the benefit of BSA aggression outweigh the negatives? It's an open question.

Jon "maddog" Hall has also just written about the subject, although less directly:

Several times I have written about "Software Piracy", and I think a lot of my readers get a little tired of hearing about it, but something happened this week that started me thinking about Software Piracy again. Microsoft made Software Piracy Prevention a voluntary thing.

Of course Microsoft will probably pitch a different explanation, but what they actually did was post an "update" to Windows 7 that had lots of anti-piracy software in it, and told their customers that it was "voluntary" to install the anti-piracy software.

Now this was probably in response to another time when Microsoft tried to force down the throats, er....ah..."distribute" anti-piracy software for Windows XP, but that time they called it "critical bug fixes" and made a lot of their customers mad because they installed the "bug fixes" and ....hello! The "fixes" did not fix any bugs, and in some cases caused the customer's systems to act in very bad ways. Very, very bad ways! And of course Microsoft's customers then acted in very, very bad ways.


This is a subject that we covered some days ago, as well as last week. Generally speaking, pressure on users of proprietary software is always a good thing for Free software, but those who apply this pressure are also lobbying against Free software and the pressure they apply to users gives them money and thus more power to lobby (self enrichment). Microsoft's "Under NO circumstances lose to Linux" approach shows how far they would go. Consider Munich for example. Slashdot reported that "Steve Ballmer's recent trip to Munich to offer up to 90% rebates for the Microsoft Software Assurance and Licenses was in vain." Microsoft is cracking down and pricing down selectively, so it's not so simple after all.

Speaking of the BSA and preference for proprietary software, a Sirius employee implicitly calls for a boycott of UK ICT (maybe including BECTA):

Nearly forgot to mention the Microsoft-Cabinet Office's latest Child Protection wheeze I blogged about last time.

Have a care if your children have access to IE8 and CEOPS; at a click you could be in the frame as a potential abuser.

This little list will do for the time being.

If I were still a teacher I would be mightily fed up with the above.

If we want to extend learning using modern technology, as most politicians seem to wish to do, then we need to sort out how it should be used.

Meanwhile teachers: band together and boycott ICT that'll give them a fright.


This IE8 promotion from the government is quite a fiasco that we wrote about last week. But given the relationship we have witnessed between the UK government and the BSA, for example, none of this is terribly surprising. It's a brutal pairing [1, 2, 3].



Comments

Recent Techrights' Posts

Greener Pastures for Free Software Users
This coming week we'll publish many articles about GNU/Linux and technical means of/for user empowerment
 
Over at Tux Machines...
yesterday's posts
mp3HD: Another Patent Trolls' Patent Trap That Failed
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
IRC Proceedings: Tuesday, October 03, 2023
IRC logs for Tuesday, October 03, 2023
"Modern" Computing Sucks and Harms Computer Users
Reprinted with permission from Ryan Farmer
Red Windows
Red Hat is not into Free software
Richard Stallman Giving Talks in the Czech Republic and Germany This Week (Tomorrow's Talk is "Artificial Intelligence vs Language Models")
This past weekend he gave two talks in the Czech Republic
Companies Faking the True Number of Layoffs With Return-to-Office Mandates and Forced Relocation
we estimate that Microsoft cut about 30,000 so far this year, having cut many more jobs last year
Links 03/10/2023: Cellphones (Mobile Phones) Banned in Classrooms in England
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Monday, October 02, 2023
IRC logs for Monday, October 02, 2023
Google News, Which We Call Gulag Noise, is Following the New York Times Into the Digital Graveyard
It merely gives an illusion of volume and instead of giving readers more stuff to read it wastes people's time
Daily Bulletins Coming Soon (Hopefully as Early as Next Week)
Today we finish testing IRC logs and their upload to Gemini, not just to IPFS
Over at Tux Machines...
yesterday's posts
Software Freedom is the Future and Microsoft is the Biggest Obstacle
GNU/Linux, at its roots, was all about Software Freedom
Links 02/10/2023: NUC, GTK Themes, and More
Links for the day
New Union Syndicale Articles About the European Patent Office
We'll probably get back to regularly writing about the EPO in the near future
If WordPress Knows Well Enough to Self-Host Its Podcast, Why Can't GNU/Linux Shows Do the Same?
For those who want videos and podcasts, here are today's latest additions from other sites
Richard Stallman Can Outlive Many of His Prominent Haters
M.J.G. tried hard to take our Web site offline, based on lies and repeated threats
The GNU/Linux Revolution Ain't Here. Look at Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa (BRICS) Instead.
The revolution won't be televised
Chaffbot Effect: Microsoft Bing Falls to Lowest Share in Two Years (Amid Loads of Bing Layoffs This Year)
Press outlets mostly failed to report that Bing is collapsing
Forget VSCode (Microsoft's Proprietary Spyware), Use KATE Instead
KATE is great
Sometimes It's Time to Reboot
No, not Android. KDE.
GNU/Linux Distributions as "Appliances" and DRM Platforms (the Case of ChromeOS and SteamOS)
Is this what we envisioned in the 1980s and 90s?
Fulfilling the Site's Full Potential
We remain devoted to the aforementioned goal of posting more original material
Over at Tux Machines...
2 days' worth
Upcoming Talk by Dr. Richard Stallman: Large Language Models Are Not Artificial Intelligence
LLMs aren't truly intelligent and cannot quite grasp what they spew out
GulagTube is a Burning Platform (Exit YouTube, Invidious Won't Save Us From Google/Alphabet in the Long Run)
Alphabet Agency (Google) sees the future of video as a "skinnerbox" (running Android) that indoctrinates you like TikTok does
Microsoft's Demise in the Global News Cycle is Rather Telling
It should be noted that Microsoft is, in general, no longer prominent or dominant in news headlines
Gemini Migration and Backup Capsule (Archive)
At the end we'll end up with something a lot better than before and latency should be massively reduced
Links 01/10/2023: Science, Education, and pro-Russia Slovakia Leadership
Links for the day
IRC Proceedings: Sunday, October 01, 2023
IRC logs for Sunday, October 01, 2023