A Police Raid; Is Your Business Software Worth it?

"Wednesday, 07 May 2008
COLOMBO: Officers of the Colombo Crime Division with the assistance of representatives of the Business Software Alliance (BSA) conducted criminal raids against distributors of illegal business software in Colombo marking the beginning of greater focus and crackdown on business software piracy distribution and business software under-licensing in Sri Lanka." More >>

Well folks. It looks like the days of the "100 Rupee Window$ and Other Commercial Software" CD is over. The Software Licensing Regime is here and it looks like through the Business Software Alliance or the BSA, it is here to stay. Remember those 3 letters, you will be hearing them a lot in the near future and one day they might even show up at the door of your business.

Free and Open Source Software (or FOSS. Remember those 4 letters too) evangelists in this country often come across the question "Why should I use GNU/Linux (ie: Ubuntu) when I can get Window$ for the same price (Rs. 100) at {insert-pirated-cd-vendor-name}?". At least now they'll know that the price you pay for the GNU/Linux CD is actually paid for the production of the CD-ROM and not the software itself. In other words "You are not stealing software from Micro$oft or {insert-proprietary-software-vendor-name}".

Here's how much your Vista Premium Edition should legally cost you and this is how much the same functionality will cost you in the FOSS World.

Here's how much you should legally pay to have Office Professional 2007 installed and here's what you have to do to get the FOSS equivalent installed, which will give you all the features you will 'actually' use in your day to day work.

Part of being human is the ability to make choices. So make one today ...