lkw@titan.UUCP (03/25/87)
Someone recently asked how to handle the problem of student microcomputing
software. I thought I'd share our possible solution, and pose a more
general question.
In a couple of months, we'll (finally!) be setting up several open
microcomputer labs for the use of the entire university community. Our
plan is to come up with a "best of" list of freeware/shareware for the
most common applications (WP, spreadsheet, database, terminal
emulation). Tentatively, we're planning to put all the software on one
or more disks and distribute them, for a nominal fee, through the
campus bookstore; we're still working out the final details, such as how
much the nominal fee will be, and whether we'll be legally/morally obligated
to pay licensing fees for some of the shareware we select. We've solved
the problem of more specific course-oriented material by completely
ignoring it for now; that will probably have to be dealt with by the
individual academic departments.
This is fine for the applications, but leaves us with one very
important piece of software that is NOT in the public domain: DOS.
Obviously, we are obligated to purchase a copy of MS-DOS for every PC
in the labs (these are floppy-only IBM-PC clones, by the way), and we
have done this. The big question is: how do we give each user access
to MS-DOS when they need it -- legally? We contacted Microsoft; they
don't do site licenses. Ideally, we would like these labs to be open
24 hours a day, which means that a checkout system would not be our
best answer. These machines will not be networked initially, so a
central "server" is out. The best solution we've come up with so far
is to have DOS disks "chained" to the PC's in some way, but that has a
multiplicity of obvious drawbacks, too.
This situation has to have occurred all over the country, so -- how did
YOUR school handle it? Please send e-mail replies to me, and I will
summarize to comp.edu. I've also directed followups to comp.edu only.
--
Larry Wake uucp: {ihnp4 | hplabs | psivax}!csun!lkw
CSUN Computer Center BITNET: RETPLKW@CALSTATE
Northridge, CA 91330 ARPA: RETPLKW%CALSTATE@WISCVM.WISC.EDU