Financieel Dagblad in the Netherlands recently featured an article on the #MeToo variant of software abuse.
“The Dutch chief information officers of more than 100 big companies have raised the alarm about monopolistic practices by major software suppliers. Oracle in particular is said to have locked its customers into unfair contracts before demanding millions of euros a year in extra charges.
As the CIO of one large firm puts it, ‘it’s as if you think you’ve bought a chicken. While you’re cooking you get a message from the supermarket telling you that on closer inspection there are three chickens. And by the way, they’re turkeys, not chickens. And then they send you a bill.’
For the first time the Dutch chief information officers (CIOs) of more than 100 large companies have publicly raised the alarm about the monopolistic practices of major software suppliers. The focus of the CIOs’ ire is primarily the intermittent unilateral variations to the licence agreements. These include announcing new ways of measuring software use in so-called white papers, outside the regular contract, leading to sharp increases in costs.”