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Vivi Chellappa wrote: What makes software different from common household goods such as TV, automobiles, etc?
Nothing, the rest of those industries just hasn't caught up yet. If you read about about The Great Reset, or whatever it's called, one of the key components is that nobody owns anything -- they rent stuff. 
"You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" - World Economic Forum, 2016.[^]
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Marc Clifton wrote: "You'll own nothing and you'll be happy" - World Economic Forum, 2016.[^]
Much better stated as, "You'll own nothing and like it.
The difficult we do right away...
...the impossible takes slightly longer.
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Vivi Chellappa wrote: Once upon a time, when you bought a software, you paid one price for it, no matter how many persons in the purchaser company used it.
I don't agree with that premise, but let's keep going to see where that sort of thinking leads...
Vivi Chellappa wrote: What justifies differential pricing based on number of users?
Scale.
You sell one license for your software to Company A that is going to have 3 of its employees use your software.
Then you sell one license for your software to Company B that is going to have 1000 of its employees use your software.
Company B should pay the same price as Company A? The only thing that's fair in that market is for you (as a software vendor) to have a single opportunity to sell one license (one per company), because every company in the world can get away with purchasing a single license?
Consider also that Company B will use so much more of your support than Company A that it'll completely eat whatever profit you made on the sale, and soon having that company as a customer will cost you money. Unless you charge a fortune for each license, which means you'll never have any opportunity to sell to Company A to start with.
The TV/automobile analogy severely falls apart because when you sell those, you charge for every TV/automobile you sell. The customer has a need for more of his people to use a car? Sell him more cars.
I'm never going to defend Oracle for its licensing practices, but that's because they deviate from the sort of common sense (I hope) I've described above.
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In today's world, one does not buy software, one usually licenses software. When you install said software, you are required to agree with the EULA (probably without bothering to read it). Many times, you agree to abide by said EULA and any changes they decide to make in the future. There has been great gnashing of teeth when recent farmers find out they own the tractor but license the microcode that runs it.
When Larry took over from Sun, I doubt that he had the intentions of losing money on Java. He did not become extremely rich by giving stuff away. Is he greedy for wanting to make lots of money? That is in the eyes of the beholder.
1. Whatever the market will bear.
2. You makes your choices when you sign up.
3. You are greedy if you make a lot of (my) money. I am an entrepreneur if I make a lot of (your) money.
Alas, I didn't make a lot of anybody's money. 
>64
It’s weird being the same age as old people. Live every day like it is your last; one day, it will be.
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Yet another example, in MY OPINION, so go ahead and flame me...An example of using the latest and greatest (!) business custom and deliberately or by accident, forgetting the "business 101".
I you have 10 "team members " each using a hammer (to make a product AKA money for you ) , you buy , and PAY, for a dozen hammers.
( cheaper by a dozen (rule)) .
By same token, if your business require software for SAME # of "team" members" etc etc ....
you use your own , (misguided) logic , to say it politically nicely and popular, AND MAKE (10 illegal) copies and call it "good business".
...until one day a kid in the crowd will yell "...the emperor is naked ..."
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Follow up, because I'm about to respond to Jeremy. Companies come up with licensing schemes to make money. ALL companies and I include myself as a small business have to decide how much money they want to make to stay in the market. It has to be worth the effort. And there is nothing wrong with that. The other day, I took my wife out for her retirement dinner. I live north of atlanta, and we have noticed a HUGE price jump in eating anything made in a restaurant. I had a burrito, one beer, she have her enchiladas and a glass of wine. $90. I can honestly say, I cook better than most restaurants, and my wife leaves me in the dust.
What's the point? I made a decision to trade treasure for service. The result? We have more and more restaurants failing because their substandard product is overpriced.
Getting back to Oracle - this is nothing new. Over the past 20 years, the industry has been trying to transition to a service/subscription based business model. It might make sense for corporations, but seriously - consumers? The fact is that companies have a product that they support, but people are happy with the old version. Back in the mid 80s, I worked for Digital Equipment. Their s/w licensing model was based on CPU performance. We kept rolling out faster and faster systems that broke the license model. It got so ridiculous that the sales people would sell a new system and then licenses for $1.
Oracle is playing games, and as developers, we need to be nimble. Any wonder why Oracle bought mySQL?
For example, there is NOTHING Microsoft has added to Office since 2007 that I need. *Nothing*. I am not going to pay an office 365 subscription of any form. Microsoft can do their thing, and I can keep my money. Watch when they try to monitize OS updates.
Charlie Gilley
“They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.” BF, 1759
Has never been more appropriate.
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Vivi Chellappa wrote: Once upon a time, when you bought a software, you paid one price for it, no matter how many persons in the purchaser company used it.
When was that exactly?
Or perhaps you definition of use is limited.
When one bought Lotus 1-2-3 it installed itself in such a way that it could only be installed on one computer.
I would be very surprised if the early payroll systems (big iron) had contracts that allowed one to install it on other computers say at a different company.
By seat licenses are absolutely not new.
Vivi Chellappa wrote: Then they decided to charge according to the power of the processor the purchaser company used.
So? Why is that surprising?
The point of companies is to make money. So they learn new ways to make money they do it. Checking luggage on passenger airlines used to be free. But that doesn't mean that they didn't charge for cargo shipping.
You did learn about steam ships right? Steerage class passengers didn't have a lot of fun.
Vivi Chellappa wrote: Oracle is threatening an audit of those companies to determine if any of the contractual terms are violated by the purchaser.
Eh? Software companies have been suing other companies for licensing violations for decades. I think there is even a company whose sole purpose is doing that.
They would and did take the offending company to court, win a judgement, then conduct an audit. The offending company would then have to buy the number of licenses that they did not have and pay a substantial penalty.
And somewhat related Sun, the original owner of Java, sued Microsoft and won because Microsoft created and distributed a non-compliant Java version for Windows. Microsoft violated the terms of the license.
Vivi Chellappa wrote: If a customer refuses to accept the new terms,
Or the company can use something else. You do know there is an open source version of Java right?
Vivi Chellappa wrote: such as TV, automobiles, etc?
Well for one thing because they are tangible. But do you know how an automobile lease works right? You know the ones with the 'lower' cost?
Or what about companies that rent household furnishings? Including TVs.
Actually I think I saw a place that rents high end wheel covers.
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jschell wrote: By seat licenses are absolutely not new.
A long time ago, in the early 1980s, I talked with one guy whose engineering project needed the power of a VAX-780. They needed to write a couple reports, and the natural tool to consider was the VAX 'All-in-1' office automation package. (AI1 was also referred to as 'All-in-several' - the integration of the tools were less than perfect!) AI1 was priced by the capacity of the machine. Their 780 was the most powerful VAX around; DEC claimed it could handle 100 simultaneous AI1 users, and priced the software accordingly. Their project had 3 members, one of them were the to do the major part of the documentation work.
They found a cheaper solution, though: Buying another VAX, a 730, plus a 1-user AI1 license was together significantly cheaper than buying the same software for the 780 they already had.
So you are certainly right: Seat licenses are ages old.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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jschell wrote: And somewhat related Sun, the original owner of Java, sued Microsoft and won because Microsoft created and distributed a non-compliant Java version for Windows. Microsoft violated the terms of the license.
That was a good thing! It caused MS to develop C#, and I definitely prefer C# over Java.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Movies, to be shown in movie theaters, are products.
Whether one or a hundred persons view the movie does not affect the production cost of the movie. So it makes no sense to require the second and following viewers to pay a ticket to view the movie. Especially if they all view in in the same theater, which just sits there anyway.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Decided to make some ice cream today and rather than my usual Salted Caramel I thought I'd try a new recipe I found on the internet: Chocolate and Damson. My mouth was watering just thinking about it ...
So 200g of 70% chocolate, 3 tbsp of cocoa powder, 1 tps good vanilla extract, 500ml of double cream, a tin of condensed milk, all prepped together and into the ice cream maker at -23C for 30 minutes while I prep the damsons. Take the ice cream out of the machine read to transfer to the freezer tub and add the damsons ... and it's useless. Grainy, icy, and terrible. Tastes magnificent, but texture wise it's unusable.
Damn it! That was good chocolate and I've got a bowl of damson "jam" that's useless as well. Note to self: don't do anything expensive today ... it's going to fail. 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Also problems over here making mango-cheesecake, the mango just was not ripe enough 
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I hope / assume / recommend un-alkalized cacao. Also heavy metals is a concern in case you are not previously aware. However post an even slight meal uptake is reduced to 4%.
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If you had not given up drinking (alcohol), you could have turned that jam into some delicious damson vodka.
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Vodka I preferred with lemon sorbet ice cream - If you haven't tried it, it's a really good combo!
The jam is a little too sweet - that's why I figured it would be good with a rich dark chocolate. Ho hum, back to the drawing board ...
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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If I were closer I'd be willing to offer a second opinion...
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Three Gorges Dam Slowed Earth Rotation
MSN[^]
synopsos : by 0.06 microseconds
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Finally more time to enjoy the weekend 
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All right everybody, "It's a jump to the left..."
Software Zen: delete this;
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I dare question the truth of this 'factoid'.
Religious freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make five.
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Visit at your own risk. MSN[^]
synopsis : too grotseque to provide
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Oh gawd, no! That's revolting!
It was bad enough before I got to the "Collected from school toilets" bit ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Um... um... 
Jeremy Falcon
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