License (was: Mentec)

It was written... There is no cut and dry answer, at the least because of the phrase "or whatever". Some software is sold (implying a transfer of ownership), some software is licensed (implying only a right-to-use). Separately, there can also be conditions on either transaction as to reverse engineering, re-sale or re-licensing, subletting or "rental", partial inclusion in derivative works, etc. The simple answer - just because you received a machine with a valid license doesn't neccessarily mean that license is valid to you. It may be. It might not be. It was common that when a software was licensed (not sold) - the license was tied to the machine. This meant that if you gave or sold the machine to someone else, the license (right to use) was transferred with the machine. I believe this was the case with the base 2-user HP-UX on HP9000 gear for example during the period I was involved with selling it (it was not true for add-on licenses above 2 users). It was also another common practice that when the software was licensed it was tied to the purchasing company instead of the machine. If the company sold the machine they could not (legally) provide the software (or perhaps the license) with it. That means that what ever company bought the system would have to go purchase a license for the software in order to be legal. In other words, the license was not transferrable. That is why the term "right to use" is probably more clear. To confuse matters more - I have seen various software packages where the policy changed over time. For example - early on in a software products life it may have been sold to each customer outright (while copyright was retained of course). Then later versions were only licensed. Also complicating the picture is that some times a company would have different licensing policies for the OS versus layered products. 3rd party application software could of course also have different terms than the underlying OS. I must say I don't know what DEC's policy was. Pure conjecture on my part - but my GUESS would be that for the appropriate fee you received a non-transferrable right to use. So if the computer goes to someone else, they have to buy their own license. I do know that some vendors would charge for a whole new license, while others would charge a token "license transfer fee". I think sometimes this depended on the current desire of management to get maintenance revenue from the company it was transferring to. In other words, for a small shop they may not see much future revenue in maintenance/support fees so they quote a full license transfer. For a large shop they may be willing to lowball the license transfer just to get the maintenance/support fees. It all depends. One datapoint - I know that most (if not all) versions of TSX+ were licensed to the company, non-transferrable. If you got their original disks and they were no longer using it - you still did not own a license. You had to buy the "right to use" yourself. Hope this expands on the issue! Jay Jay