Schools that have been caught without licensing

[jahbulon]

Hi all

In our workplace we've been talking about licensing quite a bit recently especially with the recent reporting of a big crackdown on small businesses this year [i.e. the 20K reward for reporting suspects].

So I was wondering if anyone knew of any similar cases with educational institutions such as secondary schools being caught and punished much?

We've had trouble finding examples and it is hard trying to convey the seriousness of licensing to some younger/naive staff members.

Thanks for any feedback.

[AlexB]

No info, but where do you work? I could do with 20k

[SimpleSi]

I just mention that its stealing and if a child stole something in the school - what would they do?

regards

Simon

[jahbulon]

haha Thanks guys

Can you imagine the difficulty of kids understanding that it is theft when their teachers don't even understand?

We are licensed as it is and using more open source by the day. I've been reading a lot of FAST articles but I still can't find examples of schools being taken to the cleaners as it were.

[markberry]

At my last school we were visited by FAST. They were very nice and didn't come in heavy handed. We had a nice chat and we went over how we licensed our software. They came with an attitude of wanting to help us manage our licensing better rather than wanting to screw us over.

Luckily I am quite anal about licensing and had everything covered. We didn't even have any trial versions of Winzip anywhere.

[russdev]

I now of one school few years back (Well must be going on 10) that got caught out not sure if got fined but got told to get up to speed very quickly (well they did have 5 window licenses for the whole school).

Russ

[AngryTechnician]

I think a lot of schools would be caught out if visits were common. I've been very strict since coming on at my current school, and don't believe we have any unlicensed software, but the devil would be proving it.

My predecessor did not keep any proof of purchases since he bought almost all our software through RM and believed they were looking after it all, since they have a section on their website detailing what software you've licensed through them (including 3rd party software). Unfortunately, as I've recently discovered, RM don't keep any proof of purchases either!

[garethedmondson]

I think a lot of schools would be caught out if visits were common. I've been very strict since coming on at my current school, and don't believe we have any unlicensed software, but the devil would be proving it.

My predecessor did not keep any proof of purchases since he bought almost all our software through RM and believed they were looking after it all, since they have a section on their website detailing what software you've licensed through them (including 3rd party software). Unfortunately, as I've recently discovered, RM don't keep any proof of purchases either!

HI AngryT,

I'm sure I can look back at my invoices from RM for a fair few years. Wouldn't this be proof that you purchased something?

Gareth