Linux autodesk software

And free software for all: LPI

ORLANDO -- The Linux Professional Institute (LPI) is touting free software as one way to help halt piracy. But not all VARs and anti-piracy advocates think open source products offer enough features and support to entice end users to ditch their proprietary solutions.

Evan Leibovitch, chairman of the board of directors for the Brampton, Ont.-based Linux certification organization, told CDN that although the Canadian Alliance Against Software Theft (CAAST) has been working hard to curb software piracy, it's not laying out all the options for end users and resellers.

"(CAAST's) answer to software piracy is pay penalties, do internal audits, pay for licensing, and in some cases pay double for licensing," said Leibovitch. "But the open source community basically says that it's an answer to software piracy to simply start using open source software as an alternative."

Ottawa-based Roaring Penguin Software Inc. recently launched the Stay Legal -- Use Free Software campaign, an initiative intended to help deal with the piracy problem. Leibovitch said the campaign is supported by more than a dozen consulting companies in Canada and the U.S.

Leibovitch, who is also president of Starnix Inc., a solutions provider in Thornhill, Ont., said VARs are often caught in a bind when they sell software to someone who they know or suspect might be making illegal copies. Many software vendors offer a snitch line for people who want to report suspected piracy. The problem is that "[resellers] have two choices: one is to snitch and lose a customer, and the other one is to lose sales because a customer is not being properly licensed," he said.

He added that the fear of lower margins might deter the channel from making the switch to selling open source. However "you're not making any margins if somebody's using pirated software. So it's not an issue of, 'Are you losing revenue?' -- you're losing revenue anyway." he said. "The issue, however, is when working with open source software, you're working legally this way, and you have the opportunity to keep loyal customers for whom you can do value-add."

If resellers work with open source, they may make a little less money off the software itself, Leibovitch admitted. "But the money for training, support and customization is still there just as much as ever," he said.

Andrew Hutton, CEO of Steamballoon, an Ottawa-based Linux development service provider, agreed that services will be the main money-making tool for open source resellers.

"If a company has $50,000 to implement a solution and I can implement it using free software, I can put $50,000 in my pocket. If I do it using Windows, depending on the licenses, I could end up making 60 to 70 per cent less on the same job."

But Allan Steel, president of CAAST and general manager of Autodesk Canada in Markham Ont., maintained that it will still be more difficult for resellers to make money selling something that is free than by peddling proprietary goods. "A reseller is somebody that sells something and adds value on top of it, and gets paid for it. Selling something for nothing -- it's pretty hard to make money off of it," he said.

Although open source is free, retailers or resellers can still buy boxed copies of Linux from distributors, which offer other opportunities to make margin, said Leibovitch. "While Linux itself is open source and it is legal to copy it, what these boxes offer is vendor support, printed documentation, and occasionally some other services such as software updates," he said. "It is possible to go through companies such as Mandrake and Red Hat and buy boxed Linux and still make margin on that."

However, it's difficult to pinpoint exactly what the customer gets if resellers start offering shrink-wrapped versions of open source software, said Steel.

"Are [customers] buying something that's supported and has all the integrated into it in the shrink-wrapped complete version? Or do they have to continually pay and upgrade and maintain?"

There might be some opportunities for resellers who want to develop and package to compete against the shrink-wrapped open source packages out on the market, noted Steel.

Hutton said he's recently been confronted with a new twist to the piracy problem: one which directly involves open source.

"Companies will take GPL (General Public License) software, develop a product around it, sell the product, but not release the code," he said. Since not releasing the source code is a violation of the license, it's software piracy because GPL software is still protected by copyright of the original author.