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Re: [LUG] Scottish firm pays out £120,000 over unlicensed software

 

Julian Hall wrote:
> Henry Bremridge wrote:
>> Problems would come if eg
>>
>> - one license was bought for use on one computer
>> - No one read the license agreement
>> - 3 other people then used the software very occasionally on their computers eg 
>> when the main user was on holiday
>>
>> Would this mean that they would have to buy 3 more licenses?
> I would guess 'yes' as it's installed on more PCs than it's licensed 
> for, regardless how infrequently it's used.  One way round that would be 
> to use hot-desking so that while the main user is away someone else can 
> use the software *on the same PC* without compromising the security of 
> the main user's data.  The same situation would occur if the main user 
> was ill for any length of time.
> 
> Kind regards,
> 
> Julian
> 

I wonder about the gray area of staff's personal computers used on the 
network.  A client of mine allows their staff to bring in their own 
laptops and use them on the network.  Now personally I'd say this should 
be a no-no unless the computers are verified that they are secure and up 
to date with things like OS updates, AV updates (if they're Windows 
machines which they generally are) and that the software is licensed. 
This company doesn't seem to think about that though despite me 
protesting about it (and finding one of the staff had malware on their 
laptop).  When I was working at GCap Media there was a strict policy of 
not allowing any machine which wasn't company owned on the network 
(luckily they were a bit more lenient about Linux as some of the 
networking team ran Ubuntu on their company notebooks).

Anyway to get to the point, I'd be interested to know if unlicensed 
software on a staff members personal machine counts if it's been used on 
a company network.

Rob


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