If someone shouts “Truce!”, it means a temporary cessation of hostilities. But be sure that when it’s over the war will go on.
Thus the “truce” called by the Business Software Alliance (BSA), in conjunction with the Department of Trade and Industry, in the war on software pirates.
Having kicked off on February 1, the BSA’s Truce Campaign will provide companies and individuals pirating software with a 90-day window period to come clean and legalise their software. The rationale from the BSA is simple: software piracy is theft, and companies that carry on pirating software will face crippling penalties.
Software piracy has become second nature to South Africans, potentially a legacy from the past where, thanks to sanctions, a lot of IT components and software were near impossible to get hold of. But the piracy phenomenon is not limited to geeks and gamers in dimly lit rooms — companies are, in fact, the worst culprits. Budget constraints, combined with the high price of software, often means that IT departments are forced into piracy.
Andrew Lindstrom, chairperson of the BSA and country manager for Adobe Systems, said penalties for getting caught with unlicenced software could be up to five times the value of the software over the period that it has been used. For example, if the last licensed copies of Windows you have are 98, and your organisation is running XP, auditors will work out your penalties according to what you should have paid — the cost of upgrades, how long the licence would have run for, the value of the new software. This adds up. A small company could find itself out of business completely.
So how does the BSA know who you are, and how does it track you down? While software vendors have worked user-authentication and stricter licensing procedures into the software, there is no such thing as an uncrackable copy of anything. Someone is bound to decipher it eventually and put it on the Internet.
The BSA collects its data in a variety of ways. Take your annual results, for example. If you state your business has grown by 20% and you have employed in 50 new people, but your asset registry reflects no acquisition of new technology or software to cope with this growth, an obvious question arises: What are your people working on?
But perhaps the BSA’s most reliable source of such information is the disgruntled employee. Have you just lost someone in your IT department, someone you paid R3 000 a month and worked like a dog until they cracked? Well, such a person could earn a nice bonus of R20 000 for divulging your stolen-software secrets.
“In a lot of ways it is not the business-owner’s fault,” said Lindstrom. “Many of them have no idea what is going on in the bowels of their IT departments. IT managers have very much adopted the ‘let’s make a plan’ approach.”
A the BSA ran a very similar campaign three years ago. It got a good response from corporates but less so from smaller business and individuals. Lindstrom encourages companies to capitalise on the improved rand and upgrade and legalise. Companies who come forward and ask for help from the BSA will be given a three-month grace period in which to legalise their software.
So why has the trade and industry department become involved at this level? In a recent media statement Lana van Zyl, director of commercial investigation at the department, said: “Copyright protection for software is an important part of any nation’s economic growth …
“If software piracy in South Africa declines by 10% in the next four years, the economy could benefit by a R12,8-billion boost, and nearly 3 300 new high-wage jobs could be created. Additionally, R784-million in tax revenues will be gained by 2006.”
Not too shabby. Companies must start writing software into their expense registers, should see it as an asset and qualify the value. Admittedly, some software remains expensive, but there are alternatives.
Take design suites. One design or illustrator software package can cost up to R30 000 for a single user. But there are alternatives in the market with similar functionality and costing about R10 000. Alternative operating systems, databases and back-end systems are also available. The trick is to start taking your systems seriously, identify what you need, qualify it with what you can afford and then go shopping around.
Software licensing is indeed a minefield. The reality is that the consumer is tired of paying exorbitant prices on software that is going to be outdated in a year’s time.
According to Nols de Wet, marketing director at open-source systems house Obsidian Systems, there are alternatives to the highly commoditised software applications. For example, instead of Microsoft Office one can start looking at Open Office, which has a similar look and feel to the other suites and has filters to ensure that you are able to save to formats users of these systems can see.
“Even though we are an open-source company, we fully support software licensing. After all if people are pirating software there is no need for them to investigate the alternatives in the market. The argument has been that the alternatives are not good enough, but people are entrenched in their ways and are unwilling to explore other options — of which there are many.
“If you are a specialist in your field and need specialist software, then unfortunately you are going to have to buy it. But this does not stop you from looking at alternatives in areas like mail servers, Web servers and even desktop environments, which will save you money in other areas, making the mission-critical applications affordable to your budget.”
Although De Wet agrees with the Truce Campaign and states unequivocally that people should pay for their software, he does not necessarily agree with the way in which the BSA is running the campaign. As opposed to hunting down the perpetrators and threatening them with fines, he believes that they should either ask people to pay for the software or abandon it and go and seek the alternatives.
Companies can read more about the BSA, its members and the Truce Campaign at www.bsa.co.za