Shadow Ram
Tale of two Tally pirates
Recently during a meeting with one of our reporters, Bharat Goenka—the founder of Tally software—poured his heart out about how his accounting software is being pirated. According to his estimates, Tally has 480,000 legally paid licenses, while more than 2.7 million users use pirated software.
Goenka narrated a couple of anecdotes about how Tally licenses were abused, in the true Indian entrepreneurial style.
One small business owner in Bengaluru, who bought an unlimited user license of Tally for his company, turned it into a roaring software-as-a-service business. He connected more than 100 offices—located in the same commercial complex—to his company’s server to use Tally. “Each company paid a monthly fee of Rs 100. When we confronted him, he said he is doing nothing wrong as he has already paid for the unlimited user license,” said Goenka.
Another such innovative entrepreneur in Pune made a cool Rs 30,000 a month by sharing his hardware key with customers. “The older versions of Tally came with hardware lock that required a licensed user to enter the key every time the PC booted. He serviced 300 customers by providing his hardware key. Every day he and his staff religiously went to these customers to activate their pirated software. For this he charged Rs 100 a month,” explained Goenka.
 Green peace or green terror?
Greenpeace, the self-proclaimed watch guard of world’s environment recently broke into HP’s headquarters in Palo Alto and painted the words ‘Hazardous Products’ (play on HP) on the rooftop spanning 11,500 sq ft.
This was done to protest against HP’s alleged backtracking on its commitment to eliminate toxic chemicals from its products by the end of the year. In addition, HP employees were greeted by automated calls from Star Trek star William Shatner, when they arrived in the office in the morning. The pre-recorded message called upon HP to phase out toxic chemicals.
HP called the entire episode ‘unconstructive antics’, claiming that the company has recycled one billion pounds of electronic products from 1987 to 2007 and is committed to recycling another billion pounds between 2008 and 2011. |