‘I contacted the BSA, which led to the company’s demise': Boss refuses to pay employee for labor, employee contacts BSA as revenge, leading to company's financial destruction

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    Font - Sc w over me and my friend? Earn a software license audit from the Business Software Alliance. TL;DR: I did work for a company. They sci ved me over. I turned them in to the BSA for software piracy. The settlement effectively ended the company.
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    Font - Posted by u/A20Havoc 20 hours ago Screw over me and my friend? Earn a software license audit from the Business Software Alliance. I ran a small IT consulting company for many years. I generally only took on business clients on an ongoing basis, avoiding almost all ad hoc work and one time jobs. Sold the company and retired about six years ago. Had forgotten about this situation but was reminded about it the other day and thought it was worth posting. 2
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    Font - A friend who was a developer convinced me to do a one time job for the software company he worked for. It involved setting up a big server with multiple virtual machines that was air gapped (physically isolated) from the company's network with no Internet access. This was needed to meet a contractual requirement as the data and algorithms they were dealing with were highly proprietary. I got the system set up and approved by the company's client (a lot quicker any other consulting company
  • 04
    Font - Because this company did software development they insisted on buying all the software licenses the server needed themselves. Fair enough. They had me install everything in evaluation mode or with trial licenses. The plan was for me to come back in and activate all the software once they'd bought the licenses.
  • 05
    Font - The company paid for the server (I always required payment in advance for hardware and software) but kept delaying on paying for my labor and eventually just flat out refused / told me to sue them. I engaged a law firm that was also my client and got paid after several months, but it cost me almost half of what I'd earned and left a bitter taste in my mouth.
  • 06
    Font - Eventually my friend moved on from the company. He told me that the company owner hadn't ever bought licenses for the server even though the system was in production. And when he quit the company refused to pay him his accrued vacation days, which they were contractually obligated to pay. Owner told him to sue if he didn't like it.
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    Font - Since the company had screwed both me and my friend I decided to get back at them. I made a detailed complaint to the Business Software Alliance and provided documentation (mainly emails). The BSA is an alliance of software publishers that's extremely aggressive in enforcing licensing; their tactics are controversial to say the least. Really they are pure hell to deal with - there are even law firms that do nothing but defend companies from the BSA. They went after the company hard and en
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    Font - TL;DR: I did work for a company. They screwed me over. I turned them in to the BSA for software piracy. The settlement effectively ended the company.
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    Font - Zoreb1 +2 19 hr. ago Was there any bounty for informing on them? Someone on Reddit reported their form for unlicensed software and ended up getting a payment after the settlement. 148 Reply Share A20Havoc OP. 17 hr. ago There was supposed to be a reward but I never got anything. I understand that's fairly typical behavior for that organization. 141 Reply Share
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    Font - +3 16 hr. ago Damn you are the king of not getting paid. Must feel good to be retired. Marrsvolta 164 Reply Share A20Havoc OP 12 hr. ago Honestly it feels f ' g great! I don't know how I ever had time to work. Anyone who tells you that you'll be bored when you retire has never been retired. 72 Reply Share
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    Font - +3 - 19 hr. ago They had an option, pay people like they were supposed to, or pay the piper when they got sued. RJack151 Too bad they picked the second option. Being cheap never pays. Reply Share 66
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    Font - katmndoo +1.15 hr. ago I had a client that low-balled me on pricing for my time, and did the "wait for the owner to cut a check" thing. Owner of this particular branch was apparently the spoiled playboy son of the famous-name on the letterhead, and certainly acted the part. I charged more than double for the AV software license, which made up for my time. They also insisted on logging in to every machine in their building as an admin user because of one piece of timecard software that the
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    Font - Next time they called, begging for help? Oh hell no, and I made absolutely no attempt to be diplomatic about it. They're gone now, guessing due to mismanagement. Kind of hoping they also got audited by some of the federal agencies doling out educational grant money to them. 36 Reply Share
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    Font - 00 Ugg225 +2. 15 hr. ago Nice! This seems more like nuclear revenge than petty. 8 bigcartoonjay This is a pro move 8 Reply Share 3 15 hr. ago Reply Share : cantarella515 . 9 hr. ago my exact thought, I think this is legend Reply Share
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    Font - Alien_lifeform_666 +1.6 hr. ago I hope you at least emailed the owner of that business to say Haha in a Nelson Muntz style... ↑ 1 Reply Share A20Havoc OP. 2 hr. ago No, but he did find out it was me via the BSA. 5 Reply Share
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    Font - nonamenancy2 - 1 hr. ago Question from a computer dummy...how do they continue to use trial licenses? They don't expire or quit working at some point? ↑ 1 Reply Share
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    Font - A20Havoc OP. 37 min. ago Some versions of Windows Server will run forever on an eval license, but they can only get minimal security updates and some features are unavailable. At the time MS SQL Server didn't actually need a product key, don't know if it does these days or not. The virtual machines were mostly running Windows Server as well but at least two had Windows 10, for those I'm pretty certain they just reused keys from their workstations. There was some analytics package that was
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    Font - The SQL Server license was the biggest cost, they had at least 16 processor cores dedicated to it and as I recall the license cost about $6000 per processor. The Datacenter version of Windows Server is also pretty pricey. Reply Share 3 nonamenancy2 Thank you! ↑ 1 . 35 min. ago Reply Share

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