| Re: New IDL Update Policy [message #1082 is a reply to message #1081] |
Fri, 04 June 1993 13:00   |
thompson
Messages: 584
Registered: August 1991
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Senior Member |
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thompson@serts.gsfc.nasa.gov (William Thompson) writes:
> zawodny@arbd0.larc.nasa.gov (Dr. Joseph M Zawodny) writes:
>> In article <3JUN199323510462@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov> landsman@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov (Wayne Landsman (301)-286-3625) writes:
>>>
>>> I believe that the new policy for RSI is that one must have a current
>>> maintenance license in order to update to Version 3.1. There are no
>>> discounts for multiple licenses.
>>>
>>> I wonder how many people will not bother to upgrade to the new IDL
>>> version in order to avoid paying maintenance costs (which come out to about
>>> $10K per year for our Vax cluster).
>>>
>>> --Wayne Landsman landsman@stars.gsfc.nasa.gov
>>>
>> When I read the new policy, it said that you have to have current
>> software maintenance for each license. So if you are networked with a 7
>> session license it costs the same as a single node locked. If this is not the
>> case then the letter I received was poorly worded.
>> It will be interesting to find out what this is really going to cost
>> (Especially since we have a site license for PV-Wave here!).
>> --
>> Joseph M. Zawodny (KO4LW) NASA Langley Research Center
>> Internet: zawodny@arbd0.larc.nasa.gov MS-475, Hampton VA, 23681-0001
>> Packet: ko4lw@wb0tax.va.usa
> I guess that's fine if you're using network licenses from a single license
> manager, but we've been using IDL so long that most of our licenses are the
> original unlimited node-locked kind, and I believe that all the ones we've been
> buying since then for various clustered workstations have also been
> node-locked. Our problem is that we have lots of small licenses instead of
> just a few big licenses.
Sorry to follow up myself, but I wanted to say more clearly that what truly
concerns me about the new maintenance policy is the lack of a discount for
multiple licenses. This particularly disturbs me in connection with IDL for
Windows, since that would be something that one could conceivably buy a bunch
of small copies for individuals, where before one would buy a single more
expensive copy that would service a whole bunch of people. The fact that we've
not been in the habit of buying floating network licenses also seems to work
against us, in a way that doesn't seem to me to be fair.
Most of the software that I've seen in the workstation world prices it's
maintenance as a percentage of the original price of the software. Thus if you
got a multi-license discount when you bought the software, you would get the
same discount on the yearly maintenance costs. (On the other hand, telephone
support is often priced differently, with less consistency from company to
company, but generally depending on the number of contacts, and sometimes
factoring in the number of licenses, and sometimes not.)
Bill Thompson
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