Limiting logons to licensed number: how?

[Mike Tilson]

Keith F. Pilotti (telesoft!pilotti) recently questioned the propriety
of charging for UNIX "by the user", on the grounds that when you buy
something, there shouldn't be any restrictions on the use of the item
bought.  The license restriction on number of users was viewed as a
"Big Brother" feature, and generally a ripoff.  He said that he
should be able to do anything he pleases once he has bought a copy.

While it is true that AT&T is charging a different price for exactly
the same software, depending on use, I don't think this is immoral, at
least if you agree that it is OK to charge for software in the first
place.  (If you think software should be public domain, that is another
argument.)

Software is not a tangible item -- it is "intellectual property", and
the terms under which it is used can be set by the owner.  If you don't
want to use it under those terms, you don't have to buy a license.
It can be licensed for use in a company, at one site, on a particular
CPU, by the user, and sometimes according to how much it is actually
used.  (This last is common for proprietary packages used on timesharing
systems, for example.)  Per-user licensing is an attempt to recover
costs and make a profit that is roughly constant according to the
number of users -- an unlimited user license makes sense on a large
machine with over a hundred users, and the cost per user approximates
the licensing cost for a hundred single user PCs.  Therefore, AT&T's
revenue is in proportion to the value received, whether or not
the hundred users are spread over a network or operating on one machine.

If only one price was charged, then in order to get the same revenue
stream, AT&T would have a charge a price that was somewhere between
the current single-user price (very cheap) and the "mainframe" price ($7000
I think.)  The result would be a bargain for big mainframes, at the
expense of higher prices for the "little guy".  You might feel better
to view the user-pricing as a small machine discount.  Historically,
I believe that was how it was derived.

/Michael Tilson
/Human Computing Resources Corp
/{decvax,utzoo}!hcr!hcradm!mike