Honesty Is The Only Policy When It Comes To Software Licence

We all know the main risks associated with neglecting software licence regulations: you won’t be able to get technical support when things go wrong, your software won’t be up-to-date blah blah blah.

What many people won’t have considered is the impact being complicit in software licence piracy has on the overall morale and attitude of an organisation. Deliberately neglecting software licence regulations is unethical and illegal. Let’s think about the impact this has on the staff at an organisation.

Build Trust

A bond of trust is essential between the bosses and workers of an organisation. Productive office environments are ones where staff can be left to get on with their work without having to be watched over.

This trust will be established by the ideology and ethos of the organisation. The assumption is that if you do right by your staff, then they will do right by you.

If your company engages in dishonest practices then this will indoctrinate a culture of dishonesty within the staff of the organisation. Lying, cheating and backstabbing are rife at dishonest organisations. It will then only be a matter of time until they turn this attitude onto the organisation itself.

Software piracy is one way of encouraging this attitude at your organisation. When staff see the organisation is doing all it can to abide by the law, then their work will gleam with integrity.

Misconceptions

The reason software licence regulations are so widely broken is because there is a fundamental misunderstanding among its use. This misunderstanding stems from businesses thinking they own software when they are in fact only purchasing a licence to use it.

Businesses need to be educated in this area. It is important that organisations understand the fundamentals of software licence law and ensure that they are complicit.

The maintenance of an honest ethos is imperative if any business is to develop to its full capacity. If it transpires your company has been using software illegally, then it can be a public relations nightmare.