Software Piracy At the Workplace?

An anonymous reader writes "What does one do when a good portion of the application software at your workplace is pirated? Bringing this up did not endear me at all to the president of the company. I was given a flat 'We don't pirate software,' and 'We must have paid for it at some point.' Given that I was only able to find one burnt copy of Office Pro with a Google-able CD-Key, and that version of Office is on at least 20 computers, I'm not convinced. Some of the legit software in the company has been installed on more than one computer, such as Adobe Acrobat. Nevertheless I have been called on to install dubious software on multiple occasions. As for shareware, what strategies do you use to convince management to allow the purchase of commonly used utilities? If an installation of WinZip reports thousands of uses, I think the software developer deserves a bit o' coin for it. When I told management that WinZip has a timeout counter that counts off one second per file previously opened, they tried to implement a policy of wait for it, do something else, and come back later, rather than spend the money. Also, some software is free for home and educational use only, like AVG Free. What do you when management ignores this?"

Happens all the time

[eln]

Asked [slashdot.org] and answered [slashdot.org].

Copyright Infringement != Piracy

[AP31R0N]

Don't play their game.

Piracy is ship to ship armed robbery. Unless this company is boarding a ship full of software with cutlasses drawn... it isn't piracy. Calling infringement piracy makes it seem worse than it is and makes light of what is happening off the coast of Africa.

Cue the descriptivists....

Re:Contact the BSA AFTER you secure other employme

[pluther]

...is somewhat like trying to declare yourself a virgin when you're already pregnant.

You mean, somebody's likely to start a religion around his company?

Re:Bide your time

[Yvan256]

I think you just found the IT equivalent of ambulance-chasing laywers...

1. Find job at company XYZ.
2. Make a list of all licensing violations.
3. Quit job, stating "found better job" or whatever.
4. Call BSA with all violations, collect rewards.
5. Profits!

Re:Bide your time

[frank_adrian314159]

Accounting, engineering, law, medicine are professions - we're computer janitors.

Yeah... But at least you don't have a union to hold you back.

Blackmail

[Inda]

Ask for a brown paper bag full of cash in exchange for your silence.

Re:Bide your time

[Clover_Kicker]

There's one difference between IT and janitors - sometimes the users LIKE their janitors.

Re:Bide your time

[RajivSLK]

Lawyer - Hell no, I'm not getting disbarred/whatever for you guys, and furthermore there's not a lawyer in the country who will put their name on %dodgy_thing%.

You're kidding right?

Re:Bide your time

[tomhudson]

There's one difference between IT and janitors - sometimes the users LIKE their janitors.

Another difference - janitors can drink on the job ... oh, wait ...

9 similarities and one difference between programmers to janitors:

1. They both have to clean up shit.
2. They both aren't really see as all that important until the shit hits the fan.
3. They're both told it's more important to "just get the job done" and not waste time making sure it's perfect.
4. The boss always underestimates the length of time it will take to do the job properly
5. They both instinctively know that PowerPoint makes you stupid
6. They both have less pr0n and malware on their computers than their boss.
7. They both understand the importance of "visiting the library" as a temporary reprieve
8. It might be good enough today, but you know by next week, the guys in marketing will have made a mess of things
9. They both belivee that if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself.

One important difference: Janitors have better unions. Unlike programmers, janitors have a limit to the amount of shit they have to take from their bosses.