Blackmail

richard

Have you heard the radio ads for the CAAST? The Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft and the BSA (Business Software Alliance) are running threatening-sounding radio spots. They claim that if you take action to become "compliant" before a certain date, that you can do so "without penalty."

We must thank CAAST for their awesome campaign in favour of Free Software.

Users of proprietary software can fall victim to extra-legal, software license enforcement raids by the jack-booted minions of the same software monopolies that fund the BSA and CAAST. Nice.

    So things to do:

  • Use only Free Software, as licensed under the GPL and similar licenses
  • Use only Open Data Formats such as those in OpenOffice.org products
  • Help a friend, or your employer migrate away from proprietary software
  • Remember that in the minds of the BSA and CAAST the definition of "compliant" is "subservient"
  • And of course, only use software with license terms you can agree with