Control the use of unlicensed software
Types of software licences 2 Commercial software 2 Shareware 3 Freeware 3 General public licence 3
Determine what software is being used 4 System software 4 Application software 4
Monitor software usage 6 Software for monitoring software 7
Check for illegal software 8
Develop reports on illegal software 10
Delete illegal software 12
Summary 14 Check your progress 14
Reading: Control the use of unlicensed software 1 2005
Types of software licences
There are four broad types of licensing available for system and application software. They are: 1 Commercial software 2 Shareware 3 Freeware 4 General public licence.
Commercial software This form of licence is issued when you ‘buy’ software from a retail outlet or more commonly on the Internet. Commercial software is characterised by technical support, higher prices and detailed terms and conditions.
Commercial licensing is further broken up into sub-categories of: single user bulk licensing site licence.
A bulk licence allows for a fixed number of users but the software is distributed with less packaging and a reduced number of documentation sets. Often, the software CDs are simply shrink wrapped in a sleeve and there might be one set of documentation per 10 CDs. This licensing agreement has a lower cost-per-licence than a single licence agreement.
A site licence allows the licensee to make additional copies of the software with its usage being limited to a work area, regardless of the number of users. Documentation is usually supplied on a CD and may be distributed and printed within the organisation as required.
Many commercial organisations now offer a 60 or 120 day evaluation copy of a product and, if it supports your needs, you can then purchase a licence, otherwise the software ceases to function.
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Shareware Shareware is usually distributed on a trial basis and, if you like the product, you are asked to register the product. At this time you pay a fee and are given a registration code which, when entered into the shareware program, gives you a licence to use one copy of the software under the terms and conditions of the licence. The idea of shareware is to share the cost of development only. There should be no commercial fee at all and, as a consequence, you will not pay a premium fee for what may be a superb product. Winzip is an example of a widely used product that started out as shareware. Winzip usually offers a 21-day evaluation window.
Freeware This class of software is available free to users on condition that the software is not altered in any way. Freeware is developed and distributed for ‘the greater good of the computer using public’. These programs are usually small utility packages that can help you to use your computer system more effectively.
General public licence This form of licence is similar to a freeware licence but allows any member of the public to alter the software in any way and redistribute it as long as they recognise the copyright owner and do not introduce a charge. This form of software has been made famous by the GNU ‘Great and Not Unix’ group where there are literally millions of programs in the public domain available under this licensing scheme.
Reflect
When installing software, how would you identify the type of licence agreement the software was distributed under when all you have is the installation CD set-up program off the Internet?
Feedback
When you begin to install the software, it’s a legal requirement that the copyright owners of the software display the terms and conditions of the licence agreement under which the software was distributed.
Reading: Control the use of unlicensed software 3 2005
Determine what software is being used
All organisations have to keep track of the software that is being used on the organisation’s computer equipment. It is the responsibility of the organisation’s management to ensure that software being used on the computer system is adequately licensed. To that end, many organisations prohibit staff from using software that is not licensed by the organisation.
It is important to understand that software is divided into two broad classes (or categories): system software and application software.
System software System software is the operating system software such as Windows XP, Apple OS10 or Linux. In the case of the first two, the files of the operating system are covered by the operating system licence. With the Linux operating system, only the kernel or heart of the system is licensed and other operating system components are licensed under general public licence and, as a consequence, are an unlimited licence.
Device drivers such as printer drivers are licensed by the printer manufacturer for the life of the printing device.
Application software Application software performs an application function, interacting with the operating system. This form of software will usually be required to be loaded into a base folder, only on the computer for which it is licensed, along with a descriptive name identifying the application.
Reflect
What types of software could be found on a computer in the workplace?
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Feedback
Possible software that could be found on a user’s computer:
Spreadsheet Word processing Graphics Learning management Communications Database Operating system Booking systems Tracking Project management Inventory management Programming language Virus detection Internet browser Accounting Help desk Payroll Stock market
Keeping track of software
The most efficient way to keep track of all this software is to perform an inventory and to maintain the inventory with periodic checks. This is known as a software audit and can be performed manually, but there is software that performs dynamic or automatic audits.
Reflect
What might be recorded in a software inventory?
Feedback
For adequate identification, software inventory records should include:
Title and description of supplier’s name software:
Supplier’s product code: a unique organisational asset number
Software version number: purchase date
Cost: licence details
Where it is installed: the name of the user or department using it
The number of backup number of patches or updates applied copies:
In the case of site-licensed software, the ‘number of concurrent users allowed’ is information that should also be recorded.
Reading: Control the use of unlicensed software 5 2005
Monitor software usage
We have now discovered that there are two classes of software: operating system software and application software. Additionally, there are four types of licence: 1 Commercial 2 Shareware 3 Freeware 4 General public.
Within all of the above types, there are two sub-types of: (a) single user (b) site licence.
So, you can imagine that it may be a daunting task to keep track of (and maintain) information such as when software is licensed, when the licence expires, or the manner in which software may be used.
In a small organisation, which has few types of application software, it’s a relatively simple task to manually enter data into a database or even into a hand-written register to keep track of the licences.
In large organisations, however, this can be a very difficult task, as there may be many different versions of the same software ‘purchased’ at different times, or users may be using their own licensed or unlicensed software on the organisation’s computer.
Reflect
How might we discourage users from installing personal software onto an organisation’s computers?
Feedback
To avoid the personal software issue, the computer system may be configured to convince users that loading personal software is a pointless exercise.
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This might be performed by having users store all their organisational data on a server system that does not allow the installation of software. All the workstations in the various departments of the organisation are configured in the same way and an image is created for each department. When the user starts the workstation for the day’s work, the workstation is rebuilt to a pre- configured state containing no non-organisational software. This of course comes at the cost of the time to rebuild the computer. Additionally, a workstation would usually be configured so that only administrators could install software.
Software for monitoring software A computer system is built for automation, so why not use software to monitor software?
Site licences often specify that only a certain number of users may use software concurrently. As the addition of more users can add significantly to the cost of a site licence, many organisations opt to purchase licences for say only 70% of the total users of that software on the assumption that not all the users will be using a particular software package concurrently.
Therefore, there is a need to monitor the number of occurrences of particular software in use at any one time. Many server operating systems have functionality that allows the organisation to monitor users of software on a server. However, there are now third party programs that will automate the monitoring process and dynamically monitor the software from all parts of the organisation’s network, as well as warning when licences are about to expire and so forth.
Reading: Control the use of unlicensed software 7 2005
Check for illegal software
In order to check for illegal software we must first know what is legal. We have already considered the need to keep inventories of licences, considered automatic and manual monitoring of software usage, and discouraging users from loading their personal software. However, that is not the end.
As time progresses it is reasonable to assume that the computers within your organisation will have more, rather than less, software on them. This also implies that some software will not be required in due course. Consider the fact that many programs will also be upgraded and that these new licensing terms and conditions may replace the previous terms and conditions.
Also consider any software that may be run from a server. Can licences for server-based applications be handled by the server? In some cases they can. A good example is Microsoft’s Terminal Services, software developed by the Cyrix organisation for Microsoft.
Running Terminal Services causes a PC to act as a ‘dumb’ terminal. That is, all the processing is being done by the server, relaying screen images to the ‘terminal’ client with user responses only being relayed to the server from the terminal client. The net effect of this process is that the application does not exist on the PC and will be licensed to the server. This also means that client machines do not have to be new, fast and have lots of memory to run the latest applications.
There are many ways to gather information relating to software and software licences in your organisation. How you implement a record of software and any corresponding licences depends on the size of your organisation and the variations in software being run by your computer users.
Reflect
How might you utilise the resources we have so far discussed to check for illegal software?
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Feedback
In the case of automatic monitoring and management, it might be risky to simply believe that the reports generated by the software are always correct. We must consider that the validity of the output from any piece of software is only as good as the data input. Remember the adage, ‘garbage in, garbage out’. Therefore, it might be safe to develop an organisational guideline whereby one departmental area of an organisation’s software be audited on a regular basis and compared with the results of an automatic monitoring process. This may well identify illegal software.
Similarly, in the manual case you would perform regular audits at a predetermined interval, perhaps yearly, with an update of the inventory records.
If individual workstations were not protected from illegal software being placed on them, this would mean that staff members would have to make visual assessments of all the software installed on the workstations to assess legality of software. This is a time consuming and resource expensive process as well as being fraught with human error. The Business Software Association of Australia (BSAA) has developed a product, Software Assets Management (SAM), to manage the software assets of an organisation. Visit the Business Software Association of Australia site and read about the product system by following the link on SAM at: http://www.bsaa.com.au
Reading: Control the use of unlicensed software 9 2005
Develop reports on illegal software
In order to develop a report on illegal software, you must know which software is being used, how often it’s being used and who is using it. You must also have an insight into the type of licence that the software is issued under, if at all, and who owns the rights to the licence.
Reflect
You have been asked by your supervisor to follow up management’s concern that illegal software might be used on the organisation’s network. You are aware that monitoring has been taking place and it is due to this monitoring activity that management have concerns about illegal software in use.
What processes might you utilise to examine these concerns and to develop a report on illegal software?
Feedback
Firstly, you would have to establish the type of monitoring that is taking place — is it manual or automatic?
Secondly, establish whether a database or a manual recording system is being used to keep track of the software used in the organisation.
The next step is to look at what software is being used, the type of licence under which it is being used and who is using it. Following a review of the available data, you have to develop a ‘what, how and who’ analysis. In other words, you have to evaluate:
WHAT software is being used? HOW is the software being used, and is it being used in a licensed manner? WHO is using the software? This may be individuals or groups. You would then isolate the software being used that does not meet licensing conditions.
Finally you need to prepare a report for management which states the above facts, making a recommendation on the course of action to take to resolve the use of illegal software.
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An illegal software report may look something like this:
User Software Recommendation
Ivan Rolands Personal software Ivan has been found using this software before. Recommend deletion of software and user counselling. Accounting Group Attache site licence for Accounting group has grown to the point (up to 50 users) 20 concurrent users where there are regularly more concurrent users than licensed. Recommend upgrading the site licence to 30 users. Multiple users, Winzip evaluation We have found multiple copies of Winzip multiple licence used for evaluation which have expired departments following 21 days use. Recommend purchasing five site licences as Winzip is rarely used concurrently.
Reading: Control the use of unlicensed software 11 2005
Delete illegal software
Not so long ago, it was a simple process to delete software from a computer. All the software resided in the same region of a hard disk drive, there were no associated files, such as library files, for the main software, and with many operating systems there were no associated difficulties. However, we must accept that 95% of client machines on networks today have a Windows flavour, and since the advent of the central registry system associated with the Windows platform, deleting software can be a difficult and time consuming task. If all the files or registry entries are not removed when a software package is deleted, the remaining files and registry items can impact on the proper functioning of the remaining software.
Reflect
How might you be assured that all the associated files of a software package are removed at the time of the software deletion?
Feedback
Windows software usually requires associated files to be installed to the Windows/system32 folder, and registry keys to be added to the central registry of the Windows operating system. Various third party companies have created software to delete illegal or unwanted software because of this process. In fact, the Windows operating system has a control feature called Add or Remove Programs which is designed to aid in this process. See Figure 1.
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Figure 1: Windows ‘Add or Remove Programs’ feature
Reading: Control the use of unlicensed software 13 2005
Summary
We have now considered the types of software licences that are available and how we might develop a management plan. That means we have to determine what software is used within an organisation and categorise it into either system or application software.
Having determined what software is used, we must continue to monitor usage. This is to ensure that the permitted maximum number of concurrent users is not being exceeded, and whether any software is being used illegally.
Deleting illegal software is not always a simple or straightforward task. Application software lays down associated files and registry entries that will impact on the efficient running of remaining software. This is particularly true in a Windows operating system.
One way of analysing the position and state of illegal software within an organisation is to provide regular reports and recommendations to management outlining the protocols that might be used to stop the proliferation of illegal software within an organisation.
Check your progress Now you should try and do the Practice activities in this topic. If you’ve already tried them, have another go and see if you can improve your responses.
When you feel ready, try the ‘Check your understanding’ activity in the Preview section of this topic. This will help you decide if you’re ready for assessment.
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