Software 'licensing' <RANT>

[dalloff@freenet.columbus.oh.us (Dave Althoff)]

Just a rhetorical question, not designed to get Nathan into an
uproar...but I'd like to pose this question...

Here is something that most of us A][ people don't have to deal with
unless we've put all of our applications on hard drives, but it is
apparently a big issue for people who want to remain completely legal on
most modern computers.

Remember how it was in the old days?  You bought a piece of
software...say, Appleworks, for example.  You have a computer at home; you
have a computer at work.  You go to work, you stick the AppleWorks disk
into the drive, you do your AppleWorking.  Great.  Now, it is quitting
time, so just before you leave, you throw your AppleWorks disks into your
briefcase and take them home.  Then you can do more AppleWorking on your
own stuff on your own time on your own computer at home.  And as nearly as
I can tell, this is perfectly legal.  You bought a copy of the software
for your use; you have only one copy (unless you count your archival
backup in your closet), but you use it...the same copy...on both machines.

Today, things are a bit different.  You have a Wintel machine sitting on
your desk (the ][e was taken away from you kicking and screaming by the
Technology Division), and you have a Wintel game machine sitting next to
your IIgs at home.  But when you bought a word processor for the Wintel
machine, it came on a CD-ROM and demands 22Mb of disk space for
installation; installation takes about an hour.

Now, given that...
a)  Your office is locked up and vacant when you are not in it, and
b)  No one is home if you are not there

It seems obvious to me that you can only use your Gigantic Word Processor
on one computer at a time.  So why is it not permissible for you to
install that word processor on both machines?  Just because the program
now installs on a hard drive, making it possible for two people to use it
at once, it is no longer OK to use the same program in both places.  You
must now spend many $$$ in order to be legal about it.

The argument could be made that because the program is loaded on the hard
disks, it could be run in either location, but then what about the backup
disk of the old software that you had in the closet?  Does that not make
the same situation possible with the older model?

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.

Other thoughts?

--Dave Althoff, ][.
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