[school-discuss] The BS Alliance

[Joel Kahn <jj2kk4@xxxxxxxxx>]

I figure that at least some of you have
already seen the article entitled
"Software Piracy Fight Makes Enemies"
since it has been mentioned in a large
number of blogs &c; however, for those
who may have not caught it yet, I decided
I'd pass along a link to it:

http://www.physorg.com/news115219459.html

I have three inter-related comments. . . .

1. This seems to confirm the point (which
is well-established already, of course) that
the "BS" in "BSA" stands for something other
than "Business Software." :-(

2. FLOSS is mentioned only in the last few
paragraphs--and when it is, one sees the old
mythology: "For many businesses, open-source
has seemed technically daunting or unable to
match the proprietary programs seen as
essential in some industries. These days,
however, the march of technology might be
changing that." Yeah--it just might. Has
author Brian Bergstein actually *used* any
FLOSS apps produced during the past decade,
or is he just parroting BSA propaganda?

3. My favorite part of the whole piece is
the "unbundling" of prices when it comes to
dropping the hammer on evil-doers: "If a
company loaded too many copies of a $300
package of Microsoft Office, the BSA might
tally the retail value of every element in
the package--Word, PowerPoint, Excel, etc.
--which totals more than $1,000, and then
at least double that." This must certainly
be the best argument for adopting OpenOffice
that I have ever heard.

I suggest that this article could be a very
interesting topic for class discussion for,
say, high school and above.

Just my two cents worth. . . . :-)

Joel



      ____________________________________________________________________________________
Be a better sports nut!  Let your teams follow you 
with Yahoo Mobile. Try it now.  http://mobile.yahoo.com/sports;_ylt=At9_qDKvtAbMuh1G1SQtBI7ntAcJ