[General] Arab League and Microsoft in software piracy initiative

[Burhan Khalid]

The "typical employee mentality" - or more precisely, training and  
knowledge retention are the real costs of open source or alternate  
software.

Till this is solved (which can be done many ways) adapting other  
alternatives is always going to be an uphill battle for all but the  
very tech. savvy companies.

Most companies do the math and decide that its actually *cheaper* to  
pay for licenses than have to pay for:

1. Training
2. Certification (for example, from external authorities)
3. Loss of productivity (not everyone picks up new technology easily)
4. Compatibility concerns (for partners/external programs -- in some  
cases, even between departments)

Regards,
--
Burhan Khalid

On 28 Sep 2009, at 19:26, Majed B. wrote:

> Bashar, the actual cost of the license was about 50,000 but since they
> were using pirated copies on almost all machines, MS filed a law suite
> for that high figure.
>
> It's easy for you to say remove MS office & use OO.o, but you haven't
> dealt with typical employee mentality. Back in Yousifi, Finance
> department employees *demanded* Office 2007 because it can handle
> 1000,000 rows, not the typical 64,000 in OO.o & office 2003 and less.
> Of course, there's the untold reason: It's pretty!
> When they complained about performance, I'd tell them switch to  
> 2003 :p
>
> The problem with companies here is that they just purchase any
> software they need from Hawally & don't consider buy the original as
> part of the budget. They assume: Software -> Free. As if the
> developers who worked to make it deserve no money :/
>
> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 6:51 PM, Bashar Al-Abdulhadi
> <bashar at kuwaitnet.net> wrote:
>> 250,000KD ? madre laish!
>>
>> i heard couple of stories here and there regarding the same, they  
>> could just
>> uninstall msoffice and install openoffice !
>>
>>
>>
>> Majed B. wrote, On 09/28/2009 05:36 PM:
>>
>> Believe it or not, Microsoft has been visiting/raiding some big
>> companies in Kuwait lately, inspecting their license usage (or lack
>> of).
>>
>> I know of 2 companies with at least 400 users, where the first got
>> slammed with a law suite and paid well over 250,000 KD, and the other
>> was almost slapped with a law suite but they settled with MS.
>>
>> On Mon, Sep 28, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Bashar Al-Abdulhadi
>> <bashar at kuwaitnet.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>> The Arab League, Microsoft Corp. and Khasawneh & Associates  
>> confirmed on
>> Sunday the launch of the Arab Intellectual Property Centre, an  
>> online portal
>> providing a central hub for ‘best practice’ sharing and legal  
>> resources on
>> intellectual property in the Arab region.
>>
>> http://www.arabianbusiness.com/568678-arab-league-microsoft-launch-arab-intellectual-property-centre
>>
>> http://www.arabipcentre.com/
>>
>>
>> so Binkhaldoun st. is going to be killed soon ? doubt it ;)
>>
>>
>>
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>
>
>
> -- 
>       Majed B.
>
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