When it comes to the programs or software on our computers – what do we actually own?
When you ‘purchase’ software you are not actually buying the software but licenses to use that software.  As a business owner it is critical to understand what licensing you have on your software
A typical license grants a user permission to use one or more copies of the software. Licenses generally fit into two distinct categories – proprietary and open source.
Proprietary licenses grant use of one or more copies of software but ownership and virtually all rights regarding the software remain with the publisher.  The click wrap license ensures the user must accept the terms of the license to use the software at all.  This ensures the publisher will win any court case regarding use of the software as the user has explicitly accepted the license terms.
Open source licenses allow ownership of the copy of the software by the user however every business owner must understand that this does not give copyright ownership even though the user can use the software without accepting the license. Open source does not mean free of obligation.  Within the category of open source there are a range of license types.
Businesses have an obligation to track and maintain their software licenses and large organisations use software to monitor this.  Schedule an annual software license review. This important activity allows you to decide how many copies of software are required and therefore the annual cost to the business can be included in your budget.
Although the cost of upgrades and renewals may seem onerous, the potential legal costs and your systems degraded performance due to not being able to utilise updates resulting from running unlicensed software are much higher.