Licensing for dummies

[CJK]

Last month at a client of mine. They had ordered a new Dell workstation on their own which was fine, but of course they ordered the system with XP Home and Wordperfect. Dumb move but no biggy, I told them I can get them the software they need for x$. This receptionist then pop's out of no where and said, "My husband can get that software for 30$ a piece!" I then state that it is probably illegal what he is doing because XP pro is not 30$ and neither is Office 2003 Basic. Anyways she assures me and the heads of the company that it is all legite and that her husband works for one of the state colleges and is the head IS guy. I get this guy on the phone and he starts getting real nervous, and explains that this is a perk for working at this college for all staff. I already know this is bogus, but I still ask questions and he doesn't answer me clearly. I then advise the client to not order the software through this guy at the state college. They opted for my side after I got a written statement from MS. The thing that bugs me is this guy is supposed to be one of the heads of the IS for this state college (no names) and he said he does this sometimes for his clients on the side. Now there is a licensing program with Microsoft that employees of educational institutions can buy MS products for personal use only and you can't use it or give it or sell it to others. This guy is either stupid or stupid and shouldn't be working their. All of this is slightly more ammusing since this college has been in recent news for different money issues.

[confus-ed]

I'm finding it very hard to be 'agreeing' with this ! .. I'm just sat here thinking that M$ ought to be a bit more careful about who/how it allows licenses to be issued .. (they can spend some of their ridiculous profits on making sure their systems are better to control this, can't they ?)

I believe btw that there's nothing to stop any individual giving away software that's legitamate in their hands (any person receiving & using it, is/are the people 'mis-using' it) & as always in life, its a case of 'buyer beware'..

[NooNoo]

I would imagine that the husband and wife had stern words about who can be offered these rates and that complete strangers are not on the list...

[rgharper]

The only problem with these licenses are that they are supposed to be for "educational" use only, not upgradeable nor transferrable. You'll find them at some retailers with varying degrees of compliance to the "educational" use license - for example, WalMart will sell you a copy of Office 2003 for educational use with no check whatsoever to ensure that you meet the requirements.

To me the big gotcha is the non-upgradeability clause - and they mean it. If you put an educational copy of any OS or application on your system and later buy an upgrade package (like say, the educational discount version of Windows 2000 and later try to upgrade with Windows XP Upgrade version) it won't upgrade. Period. So you're stuck with what you buy.

If that's okay with you ...

[confus-ed]

I would imagine that the husband and wife had stern words about who can be offered these rates and that complete strangers are not on the list...

He-he .. (woman's perspective ! .. ) what I'd be more worried about is 'sharp words' from M$'s legal team, it may feel sometimes like your spouse can send you to jail, but I'd be confident that a lawyer actually stands more chance of doing it for real !

Compliance on 'educational licences' can be a joke many places as Mr Harper correctly observes, however I'm sure he's not as inventive as some of the folks I've come accross on the 'upgradeability' aspects (while ever there's a will, there is a way !) but that's quite enough about that ! or I'll be in trouble again !

[3fingersalute]

Hey CJK, for future refrence, what you might want to consider doing is giving Dell a jingle. I had a client do something similar, and instead of selling them a copy of Win XP Pro, I called Dell to see if they could pay to upgrade the OS, since it was a new system. I figured Dell could sell it to them for cheaper than I could, and then it would be on the original system spec list for warranty purposes.

Wanna hear the real kicker? - Dell said that as a one time courtesy they would ship out a new Dell XP Pro CD, with a new COA, and all we had to do was send back the XP Home CD and COA sticker (in a prepaid envelope to boot).