Open source against piracy

Considering how many GPL violators there are the BSA could be helpful but I'm not sure they are useful in finding copyright violations based on unauthorized code being integrated into a different application. They seem to be mostly concerned with application-level licensing. Every person or organization they bust is another potential F/OSS user.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Business_Software_Alliance

Quoting:They seem to be mostly concerned with application-level licensing.

Uh, not quite. They're mostly concerned with maximizing the profits of their members. The voluntary payments have already been made, so the BSA's main tactic is extortion.

I don't know if you have to pony up some money to join the BSA. If that's the case you might as well stay with the FSF.

The article is a failure from paragraph 6 ... "the unauthorised copying or distribution of copyrighted software. This can be done by copying, downloading, sharing, selling, or installing multiple copies onto personal or work computers."

With Foss (gpl anway) these are not "unauthorised" uses.

Author gets an F.

cgagnon, did you read the very next sentence?

previous poster gets an F

Not a bad idea.

I cannot disagree enough. By joining them you give tacit approval of their methods. The BSA can also accurately claim you as a member, adding whatever credibility you may have to their reputation. You will not gain any influence as a member over future decisions or actions. I see no advantages to this.

The reason for the BSA's existence is to use the Microsoft EULA against companies to enforce Microsoft's bottom line.

I don't disagree with enforcement of the GPL, I merely disagree with using the Gestapo to do it no matter how slick their uniforms are.

Shocker, Sam and I agree on something. Bob and I agreeing or TA and I disagreeing is common enough to not raise any eyebrows here.

OK, I'll refrain from posting my agreement. We wouldn't want the shock to level azerthoth's home or some such.

Well, I agree with Bob: BSA is Gestapo. What makes it worse, is they only are Gestapo outside the US, and when some US government agency uses MS 'illegaly' and someone tips them, they don't act. Same in China, they don't act their either after Bill Gates shook hands with 'the party' (that's not a metaphor, this is something he physically did).

However, in Malaysia they printed ads with people behind prison bars, and in Russia some teacher was sent in prison (after Russian law asked for by BSA) for piracy. After the teacher was in prison, Bill Gates asked to 'release him', while his very own Microsoft caused the same guy to be imprisoned in the first place. Mind you, they also made sure laws were passed in other Asian countries that make piracy a crime with 'imprisonment' as the sentence, because that's the result of theft in those countries.

Such sneakily dishonest actions really make me sick, and we should not support any such organization which acts like a 'nice guy' to the US / Chinese government but not to poor people in Asia. Apart from that they're the biggest lobbyist for software-patent enforceability in the EU and it almost seems they bought the most important politician in the EP too (Klaus Lehner).

I remember BSA ads in Tokyo subways, too, a disk with a padlock through it and "Don't Copy That Floppy" in English and Japanese.

Quoting:a disk with a padlock through it

Yeah, next lobby will be to have /bin/cp removed from all desktops in the world I guess.

Nah, they'll just tax the living daylights out of it, the way Canada does with recordable CD's and DVD's.

Oh great, black-market blank DVD-R.

Maybe a Presidential "war" against blank plastic, the same way drugs are warred against.

Then the CIA can fund itself by running containers of blank media, and they can try plastic-sniffing dogs at the borders...

ugh.