US Navy Acknowledges Installing $600M In Software Without Paying, Denies Wrongdoing

This past summer, we learned that even though the US government is adamant about fighting piracy, it found itself in a "Do as I say, not as I do" situation. So far, it's managed to - but given hard evidence, we can't imagine that it's likely to last for long.

Starting back in 2011, the Department of Defense's US Navy worked with German company Bitmanagement to license 38 copies of its BS Contact Geo software, with the intent of giving the software a test run. Later, that installation number burst to over 100,000, and ultimately reached a staggering 558,466. The problem? The DoD didn't want to pay for those excess licenses; only the original 38.

BS Contact Geo 7.2

Now we learn that the DoD is willing to admit that it is in fact using the enormous number of licenses, but refuses to acknowledge any wrongdoing. Its claim is that it worked with Bitmanagement on this rollout, and that the company went out of its way to modify its license to allow the mammoth rollout.

A face value, this seems a bit disingenuous at best. Software and hardware companies alike all share the dream of being able to sell licenses to governments - it's where the big money is made. So who's to realistically believe that this company was content to be paid for only 0.0068% of those installs?

What makes this situation even worse for the DoD is that Bitmanagement found that the agency went out of its way to try to get around licensing roadblocks with its multitude of installs. If the licenses were as legitimate as the DoD claims, that obviously wouldn't have needed to happen.

At this point, it's the DoD saying that it had permission to install all these licenses versus Bitmanagement which says that it didn't. The DoD would like Bitmanagement to thus dismiss the complaint and pay for all of its legal fees.