On most of our licenses, they are for a particular machine. The HP Susan # and CPU Name are imbedded into the licensed copy on the machine, so that, if we try to move it, it does not work. On all of them, we purchased the license as a "primary site" license and any additional licenses were considered "secondary licenses" (at one time we had 5 HP3000's in our shop which have been consolidated down into just one, much larger HP3000). When we consolidated down to the one machine, we still "owned" the licenses for the other machines (machines which were sold); however, we discontinued paying for the annual support. I do not have an annual charge for my licenses, only support charges. I still have vendors reminding me that I "own" the other licenses and asking if we plan to buy another machine. I am only aware of having to pay back support if you discontinue using a product, not buying an additional license. I have had licenses upgraded though (from a 967 to a 979/400), which can be expensive enough. Haven't heard of needing to go the other directions.

Cynthia Bridges-Fowler
North American Salt Company
a division of Compass Minerals Group
[log in to unmask]
http://www.compassminerals.com/    

>>> Tom Brandt <[log in to unmask]> 03/15/02 08:55AM >>>
At 02:42 PM 3/15/2002 +0000, John Dunlop wrote:
>A question about software purchases.
>
>We bought a copy of XXXXX Backup product for a 967 system some time
>ago. As we are gradually moving off the HP3000, we cancelled the
>maintenance contract. Recently, we have transferred our remaining
>applications to a 918 (smaller than 967) but because we have no
>maintenance contract, XXXXX will not allow us to transfer a working
>copy to the 918.

<snip>

>The problem is that we have no budget for the 918 and are unable to
>justify a new maintenance contract for the remainder of the 918s life.
>The short answer is "use STORE" but it is the principle that I am
>asking about here. Surely we paid upfront for the software and should
>be able to continue using it. If we were going to a bigger machine,
>then, yes, I can see that we would have to pay for the additional
>users but the other way...?

You probably did not purchase the software, but instead purchased a license
to use the software on a particular machine. The vendor is probably
sticking to the letter of the license and requiring you to purchase another
license for the other machine.

Whether it makes business sense to do that is a decision for the vendor to
make. The vendor has to balance revenue gained by requiring customers to
pay a license fee in a case like yours, against the probability of a
customer upset at the requirement to purchase the additional license.

Since our licenses specify that the customer can use our software on one
machine, rather than a particular machine; were you using our software, I
would allow you to transfer the software to the 918 without a fee, as long
as you weren't using the software on both the 967 and the 918.

--------------------------------
Tom Brandt
Northtech Systems, Inc.
313 N. 1st Street
Ann Arbor, MI 48103
http://www.northtech.com/

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