The Washington Post reported that the U.S. Army recently was
sued for copyright infringement by breaching a license agreement for software—which
the U.S. Army apparently did. Okay, so
that is government not at its best. The
silver lining for the U.S. Army is that the copyright owner settled for $50
million--$130 million less than it would have cost the government to license
the software. The silver lining for the copyright owner is
an unexpected check for $50 million and, I would hope, a lot more business. The nice message for the rest of us is that
the U.S. government can hire folks that can create software that works well.
Here is a portion of the complaint:
In March 2009, Apptricity inadvertently learned that the Army
may have been using more Apptricity software than that for which it had
procured licenses. Apptricity employees
attended a PD TIS Strategic Capabilities Planning Meeting held March 3-5, 2009
in Richmond, Virginia, where the U.S. Army Program Director stated that the Army
was deploying thousands of devices with the Apptricity software.
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