The other day a gentleman was doing the rounds in our office park handing out pamphlets from the Business Software Alliance (BAS). Of course we warmly welcomed him in and took his literature. Our entire office is run on open source software and we were keen to show him how companies can avoid visits from the BSA.

BSA Strategy

The BSA does, of course, have a problem. Software piracy in SA, and the rest of the world, excluding Europe and the US, is high, but forcing SME's to fork out hundreds of thousands for software would kill the fledgling businesses or worse, as far as the BSA is concerned, drive them to consider viable, more cost effective alternatives. This would of course reduce the BSA sponsoring companies market share in the long run.

So instead the BSA follows a balancing act. They follow a tactic of intimidating smes into paying, hoping that those who can afford to will pay up, to reduce business risk, while leaving the illegal users, hoping that next year they can afford their expensive software.

Give your business a competitive advantage - use open-source software

Their long-term strategy of course, is to make your business become dependent on their software in its early stages, even if you are using their software illegally. Once your business grows them they will begin to use stronger tactics, knowing that its too late for you to switch to any cheaper, more efficient technology alternatives.

Start your business using open-source software from the beginning

Many small business, naively, only thing of the next 6 months and just keep on using software illegally, only to have it become a bigger problem later. Instead of following a "hope I don't get caught" strategy it would be better for SMEs to start off using open source software at the very beginning. Saving yourself anxiety in the short-term and a huge expense in the long-term.