Article: Free alternatives to un-licensed software in the corporate environment

Like the famous goateed Spock in Star Trek's negative-dimension universe, alternatives can be a good or bad thing... (I know that was a stretch, but I loved the idea of Spock with facial hair).

When companies get audited (for software, hardware, security, etc.), they typically will be asked to provide documentation for proper licensing for installed software. If they don't have it, said company will be 'dinged' by the auditors if they are lucky. If the company is especially unlucky, they could be sued for software piracy.

A few weeks back, I wrote a review of IZarc, an excellent freebie ZIP utility that is as good as WinZIP in many regards (in some cases, better!), and talked about using it as a replacement for WinZIP - - surprise, surprise...

On a related and timely note, I have been tasked with uninstalling un-licensed WinZIP from our corporate workstations and replacing it with IZArc.

Like my company, many organizations have installed WinZIP on their corporate images because up until version 10, WinZIP never stopped working after the initial 45-day trial period was up. Granted, an annoying nag-screen would appear, but otherwise, you could easily use WinZIP FAR beyond the eval period with full functionality, even though you were blatantly opposing the license agreement. Many still to this day are using it, believing it is freeware (it never was).

This got me wondering - what would be the proper thought process behind replacing a non-licensed application with a freeware alternative? Here are some points I pondered if you decide to utilize freeware or open-source applications in the corporate environment.

Please comment and let me know your thoughts, as I know this is a topic that many IT shops face.

Support and maintenance

If you have a problem with the new freebie, how will you resolve the issue? Say we have a mission-critical processes running that require the program to run 100% 24x7, then do you want to use a free application for this purpose? If something is free, then most likely the freeware software publisher doesn't have a budget for a technical support hotline.

How are you using the un-licensed software currently?

Do your users require certain features that go beyond the basic usage of the program?

Picking the candidate

Taking into account the aforementioned needed/currently used features, you will need to find an adequate replacement. If you do have a few users that absolutely need a certain feature, but you can't find a suitable replacement that fulfills those needs, you may fare better by purchasing a license (of the previously un-licensed package) for those exceptions and go freebie with the rest of the users. This of course, will generate slightly higher support costs due to two application installs, but lower cost in the front-end.

A good list of paid applications vs. their freeware counterparts is Open Source Alternatives.

License agreement

Reviewing the license agreement for the freeware application we will be replacing the non-compliant software with may seem like a boring task (and it is), but you need to make sure you can utilize the software for your organization's use (many software publishers make exceptions regarding non-profit/charitable/educational institutions) without any legal repercussions.

Training your users

You may/will want to write up appropriate documentation and learning materials that go over frequently used features of the old software, and then make a matrix comparing those features with the new software. Perhaps you could schedule some training or create online flash/PowerPoint presentations for user-initiated learning sessions.

Piloting the new software

You may want to install your new software to a few heavy users (and your "squeaky wheels") as a pilot to see how your users are handling the new application. Also, this serves to find any initial troubles you need to handle before going full-out to the rest of the network.

Application roll-out and removal of un-licensed software

You will want to research the non-licensed software and determine if there is a way to quickly & silently (preferably) automate the uninstallation process. Do the same research for the freebie replacement. As an example, IZArc does have a silent setup routine of 'izarcsetup.exe /sp /verysilent'.

There are a number of websites that can help you find scripts and compiled MSI resources to assist with this phase.

• AppDeploy.com
• Desktop Engineer
• MyITForum

If you are not a network tech or do not have access to your network servers to deploy the application, buy a pint for your local admin, because he will need to become your best friend!

Again, if you have any comments, please leave them - I hope to make this a quick resource for anyone who wishes to look for alternatives to non-licensed software.