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Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

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21–30 of 62 posts

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#21
post #2

Normalizing this would start a game of cat & mouse, no?

(Anecdotally) I don't think most big corps using commercial software without a license are doing it intentionally/maliciously at an organizational level. Most of the time it's just individual employees downloading supposedly "free" software without reading the license and not realizing it isn't free for commercial use.

> Most of the time it's just individual employees downloading supposedly "free" software without reading the license and realizing it's not free for commercial use.

And chances are, that company's IT department would love to know when that's happening so they can put a stop to it.

I work in ops, that's called "shadow IT" and it's a huge problem. It's really prevalent now because most SaaS is marketed toward individuals/small teams rather than marketing toward the business itself, so you get people within an org spinning up trials and free versions, putting company data into it with zero oversight, and often IT doesn't know about it until the quarterly budget review when they find out from accounting that it's been blown on software purchased outside of the IT org, now it's "critical" to operations and we're forced to onboard/support it.

Obviously these code snippets won't work for SaaS, but a notification pop-up along the lines of "We see you're on a company device. Please contact your IT administrator to proceed with your free trial" would be great, but would kill a big sales avenue.

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#23
post #10

As with every similar heavy-handed approach to enforcement you are making life difficult for the 99% of regular, honest users while the remaining 1% can trivially bypass it.

I disagree, corporate systems will try to be transparent about being a corporate device. And they will not particularly be avoidant of software licensing, they may refuse to use the software, but they'd rather have that than use unlicensed software.

It seems like this makes things easier for everyone?

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#24
post #6

I heard folks here used MDM to give themselves more control over Apple security features that they otherwise don’t. This code example and scenario penalizes them by side effect

That's fine, there's no enforcement suggested though, maybe they get a popup asking about licenses, not necessarily a brick.

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(Anecdotally) I don't think most big corps using commercial software without a license are doing it intentionally/maliciously at an organizational level. Most of the time it's just individual employees downloading supposedly "free" software without reading the license and not realizing it isn't free for commercial use.

> Most of the time it's just individual employees downloading supposedly "free" software without reading the license and realizing it's not free for commercial use. And chances are, that company's IT department would love to know when that's happening so they can put a stop to it. I work in ops, that's called "shadow IT" and it's a huge problem. It's really prevalent now because most SaaS is marketed toward individua…

It sounds great from a sales and marketing perspective.

Instead of convincing the guys with the wallets to shell something out. Just convince the devs to npm install solution, and then send an invoice.

Win/win

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#26
post #2

Normalizing this would start a game of cat & mouse, no?

You can already easily pirate the software by running it on your personal device for free, and the software would never know you were also working for a corporation that was supposed to buy a license.

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#27
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most of the time it's just individual employees downloading supposedly "free" software without reading the license and realizing it's not free for commercial use. And chances are, that company's IT department would love to know when that's happening so they can put a stop to it. I work in ops, that's called "shadow IT" and it's a huge problem. It's really prevalent now because most SaaS is marketed toward individua…

It sounds great from a sales and marketing perspective. Instead of convincing the guys with the wallets to shell something out. Just convince the devs to npm install solution, and then send an invoice. Win/win

Ah, the Oracle and Broadcom model - Java, Virtualbox, VMware, etc.

Woe betide thee who doesn't notice the difference between Oracle Java and OpenJDK.

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That, and a lot of false positives. People that run an AD domain for their home lab, people that use apple configurator to create profiles for their own devices (can enable some settings/features that are otherwise gated behind using an MDM profile - like shared iPads), etc. On the flip side, you are also missing all of the solopreneurs using your software for commercial use but obviously aren't spinning up a whole e…

A lot of people use MDM for managing their kids devices (pinning DNS for filtering etc.)

First time I've seen "a lot of people" used to mean "practically nobody."

Just joking, but seriously, I've never heard of anyone doing this, and I think maybe 1 in 100 people would even know that it's possible.

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#29
post #7
post #6

I heard folks here used MDM to give themselves more control over Apple security features that they otherwise don’t. This code example and scenario penalizes them by side effect

This happens in a lot of software in the Windows world, too. As soon as you run it on a non-Home SKU you’re suddenly The Enterprise, even as a home-gamer.

I’ve used Pro (or Ultimate under Win 7) instead of Home for my personal devices since sometime in the XP era and literally never experienced this with anything.

Re: Normalize Identifying Corporate Devices in Your Software

#30
post #16

I use MDM on my own systems because it gives me a bit more control. It's also a superior form of device oversight for kids.

I’m curious to know how you use this on your kids devices. Which mdm do you use?

I have the same question.

What MDM is priced to make this scale reasonable?

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