Re: Software 'licensing' <RANT>

[cheer@i.hate.spam (Christopher D. Heer)]

It was 24 Feb 1997 01:19:03 -0700.  I was reading instead of working.  And John 
Bowling <johnlb@primenet.com> said:

>In article <5er7ke$noi@login.freenet.columbus.oh.us>,
>Dave Althoff <dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us> wrote:

><transporting floppy software stuff snipped>

>>Just something that occurred to me last night.  It seems to me that if a
>>single user purchases software for his exclusive use, he ought to be able
>>to use that same software on as many computers as he wants, provided that
>>he only uses one copy at a time.

>Most companies don't agree with that.  In fact, many of them are using a
>hardware key to prevent someone from doing it.  

That's incredibly rare.  The only apps I still see doing this nowadays are 
specialised vertical market apps sold by one- and two-man operations, usually 
because it's (a) a very specialised package that took ages to develop, and (b) 
has a potential client base of, say, ten.  :)  Individual piracy is much more 
of a concern when you've only got a few potential customers and you have to 
sell at a very high price.

Even then, it's pretty rare.  The only one I've seen in the past, say, five 
years was an MS-DOS-based app for the biotech/pharmaceutical industry, used to 
track drug stability samples and analyse the relevant data.  It cost about $15K 
per PC.

>They assume that if you
>are allowed to do it that the company will buy one copy and use it on
>every computer in the company (and many have done exactly that, including
>government offices).  

And later gotten accordingly spanked.  These days, most large companies live in 
fear of such a thing and would never condone it.  I've seen far worse piracy in 
very small, sole-proprietorship type businesses than I have in decent-sized 
corporations.  In fact, the biggest problem in a corporate setting is not 
deliberate piracy, but *accidental* piracy. . . keeping track of what you have 
bought and making sure end users don't "cheat" is a royal pain in the ass.

>And with most computers now networked, they insist
>on a site license and they put in network detectors that will
>shut their software down if the site license isn't properly setup.

I've never seen such a thing.  The closest I've seen is a few Mac apps that 
"advertise" their serial numbers on the net, and if a dupe is found, both 
copies shut down.  I can tell you that we wouldn't tolerate noisy, troublesome 
software like that here; network bandwidth is enough of a growth issue without 
stupid babbling applications.
-- 
          Christopher D. Heer - cheer at us dot oracle dot com
     My opinions are my own and do not reflect those of Oracle Corp.
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