RE: Piracy, education and the techie garage sale

["Smith, Martin" <martin -dot- smith -at- encorp -dot- com>]

Software licensing is a murky subject, and one that is likely to get more so
as technology marches onward. Consider this. We will soon begin evaluating a
product from a company called Citrix that enables anyone on the network to
run standard windows applications from within a web browser. We are
considering the idea of running Citrix software on a high end Windows 2000
server. We would install, for example, four licensed copies of FrameMaker on
the server and Citrix would grant temporary licenses to the first four
people who want to run the software. When you quit running the software, the
license is relinquished and available to the next user. This is nearly
identical to the UNIX X-Windows model, except the client can run any
operating system capable of running a web browser. Our field service
personnel would even be able to dial in to our network and run applications
resident on the servers at the home office.

This approach treats software licenses in a manner consistent with the way
I've always seen licenses utilized in practice. That is, you can install the
same license on your office PC and your laptop so long as you only run the
software from only one of these computers at a time.

Martin
Technical Writer/Audiophile
ENCORP: The Energy Automation Company