edski@mot.UUCP (Ed Skinner) (11/29/84)
The recent case of a major company being taken to court concerning the
illegal copying of software packages by employees caused me to consider the
long-term consequences.
As more and more instances like this occur, companies will try harder
and harder to prevent their employees from making illegal copies.
However, considering the ease of copying (in most cases), the rapidly
growing use of "personal computers," and the high cost of (some) software,
it will be extremely difficult to prevent illegal copying. At best, purchases
of a sophisticated (read "high priced") program will be rare, and access to it
will be tightly controlled: The more expensive the software, the higher the
temptation for pirating, and therefore the higher the "risk".
The time will come when a company purchase of a $5000.00 package will be
next to impossible. Only the inexpensive packages will be purchased - those
which a departmental budget will allow "n" copies to be bought. The expensive
programs simply won't be bought, the "risk" will be too great.
In turn, the development of low-volume, high-cost software will cease.
Only high-volume, low-cost products will be developed. This will require new
levels of development efficiency to be found.
The market for software writers will begin to shrink unless this happens,
and soon! Those that learn to turn out high quality products with minimum
expense will profit. Those that expend man-years of effort won't.
Software writers beware - The hand-writing is on the wall!
(These are my thoughts, and not necessarily those of my company.)witters@fluke.UUCP (John Witters) (12/12/84)
Actually, there is another solution. Rather than having individuals buy the software, the corporation buys the software and negotiates a "site license" with the seller. This gives the corporation, and the individuals that work for it, the right to make as many copies as they want, and run it on as many machines as are available. The agreement usually specifies that the software is not to be distributed outside the corporation using it. The cost is usually the cost of one copy of the software plus a license fee, which is usually quite high. The total cost, however, is a lot less than the cost of multiple copies of the software, especially if your organization has hundreds of PCs. The disadvantage of this scheme is that one must usually wait a few months for the lawyers to work out a site license agreement, and for the purchaser to haggle over the size of the site license fee. This can take a while because obviously the seller would much prefer to sell individual copies. However, the seller usually cooperates when it is made clear that NO copies of the software will be purchased without a site license. -- John Witters John Fluke Mfg. Co. Inc. P.O.B. C9090 M/S 243F Everett, Washington 98204 (206) 356-5274