Software Licensing for Public Access

I am working on a public access computing project in Ukraine for libraries.  Ukraine has over 500 library legal entities. (Regional Library Districts and State Library Districts)

What is the best way to request software licenses?  If we request software licensing for 500 legal entities individually, it would be very bureaucratic and difficult to track.

If our non-profit organization request a single batch of software, and then transfer the licenses (and PC) to library entities, does that violate the license?

If anyone has experience overcoming this issue, I would appreciate hearing about your experience.

Hi, John,

Software liscensing is a very individual thing, from company to company, so I believe the answer is going to depend on the software.

Also it depends on how you want to consider the relationship between the organizations. Are they going to be considered truly independant of each other, or more part of an 'affiliation'. Some software companies will have provisions to accomodate a network of organizations, even if those organizations operate more or less as fiscal independents.

Hope that helps,

Sasha

Hi John--

Software licensing definitely does vary a lot depending on what kind of software it is and the complexity of your organization (as your case shows, it can get complicated)! You might find this recent webinar and discussion on software licensing to be helpful to you. Please feel free to post any additional details here and we can try to advise you accordingly.

Best,

Megan

John,

I've been licensing our product to business in the Uk for about 20 years and here we can  just  build a start up banner with the company name because by and large though we're a small supplier the customers are large organisations who take pirating issues very seriously and have staff who police what has been installed.

Ukraine is a different ball game. I know that because we work there as a social enterprise. I read somewhere that if you distribute software in Ukraine there's an 80% chance of it being copied illegally.

One solution, we've deployed is to set a limit on the number of active users with eacc licence. If it's a desktop based product, I found one developer offering an utility to build a security key tied to the hard disk ID.      

BTW in Ukraine we've been working on promoting the broadband ifrastructure issue, as part of our strategy proposal for microecemomic development.

I was asking a question of the Microsoft communications director in Ukraine on a forum recently and she tells me Microsoft and TechSoup will be partnering in Ukaine as part of their social commitment.  Here is what we've been doing in Ukraine

http://www.p-ced.com/projects/ukraine/national/

Jeff

A couple of options to consider hearing the discussion about the Ukraine and software piracy.

1.  Open source software -  Open office , Linux , and the world of source forge etc.  No licensing, no tracking, and if it gets copied, no problem.

2.  Web 2.0 -- on line based applications like Google apps (if you have Internet capability)  or comparable environment hosted in a web server in the back room.  Client PCs only need a web browser.

Dave