What can I use in explaining to my boss how software licensing regulations work? My boss seems to think that we can just borrow software from another department and use it for a project that we need to deploy. [more inside]
posted by anonymous on Oct 24, 2008 - 16 answers

Anyone know of a tool to automatically extract 'Product Keys' from Microsoft Products installed on your machine ? [more inside]
posted by southof40 on Aug 2, 2007 - 7 answers

The company I work for has expressed interest in purchasing a software product I've been developing privately. How do I go about doing this so I don't get screwed? [more inside]
posted by saraswati on Dec 11, 2006 - 9 answers

Can I use an academic discount on software and hardware that I eventually will use to generate money? [more inside]
posted by visual mechanic on Jan 28, 2006 - 23 answers

The GPL: If I were to include a piece of GPL'd code in a commercial application that I'm selling a license to, what do I need to do to be in compliance with the GPL?
posted by SpecialK on Nov 10, 2005 - 11 answers

Why don't the software companies use the internet to see if two people are on the internet and using the same software license on two separate machines (as defined by IP address, or serial number, or whatever)? This seems like such a basic anti-piracy strategy, and even if it's easily flauted by the technorati, that still means that 95% of users, and maybe 80% of pirates, will be foiled by it. But no one seems to do this. Why? (I've often wondered the same thing about speeding tickets; there have to be more cost-effective ways of catching speeders than paying highway patrolmen to sit there -- is lax enforcement synonymous with tacit endorsement, while still allowing the enforcers to profit by penalizing the occasional transgressor?)
posted by blueshammer on Sep 15, 2004 - 17 answers

Can someone please explain to me the difference between owning and/or licensing proprietary software, or if there is even a difference in those two terms?
posted by archimago on Jul 8, 2004 - 5 answers