Special Focus

The newspaper headline reads: "Local Park and Recreation Agency Fined for Software Licensing Violations."

This has not happened yet but, without the knowledge of correct software licensing procedures, it is only a matter of time before a violation is committed. It is important to understand that while this article will cover many aspects of licensing, every agency should have its own compliance assessment done by a staff member or an outside contractor knowledgeable in licensing issues. It is also important to work with a vendor that understands licensing very well, and this may not be your local retailer.

The Business Software Alliance (BSA) is the group that comes in and determines compliance of a given organization's software and licensing. The BSA offers a host of programs and documents that can help an organization to find out if they are in compliance or if they become out of compliance, what they can do to correct the situation. These can be downloaded free of charge from its Web site at www.bsa.org.

Compliance

One of the most complicated and confusing issues in the computer industry is the licensing of computers. It has gotten so easy to download software from the Internet, install software and make copies of CDs that keeping in compliance has become very difficult. In an ideal world, we would all have 100 computers all using the identical software and hardware but this simply is not realistic. We have different applications for accounting, registration, record keeping, etcetera, and not all machines need each application. It also has become very easy for users to drop in a CD, punch in some basic information and install the program by clicking OK. This is one of the biggest problems.

The newspaper headline reads: "Local Park and Recreation Agency Fined for Software Licensing Violations.

Licensing violations come in different varieties. Some of the most common include purchasing one copy of a software program and copying it onto multiple machines, and "borrowing" a CD from someone and making a copy for your own purposes. It is important to understand that if an organization is taking part in any of these practices, it is committing piracy and whether it is accidental or intentional, it is still very much against the law.

Software manufacturers have tried for many years to prevent the pirating of software and some of the more recent methods have required a purchaser of software (without special permission) to register each copy of a software product with the manufacturer or the product will fall into limited use capacity.

By now you may be asking, "How do I know if I am in compliance?" There are many ways to tell this and they range from going around machine to machine and checking what software is on which machine to using software meant for the purpose of license verification.

There are three ways to approach licensing. The first is to buy a computer from your preferred reseller with all of the applications that you need already installed. The next is to go to your local software retailer and buy one boxed copy of a product for each computer where you want to install the program. Finally, the third is to buy licenses for those products and this is the preferred method for most organizations due to ease of administering and the cost benefits associated with licensing.

November/December 2001 ¦ 25

SPECIAL FOCUS

Computer/Desktop Licensing

As far as ensuring compliance from a desktop standpoint, each computer is required to have its own copy of each software title installed on the computer. Everything from the operating system (e.g., Windows®, Mac OS ®) has its own license and can only be installed on one computer at a time. On top of the operating system, programs used to complete tasks (such as office suites, accounting packages and utility programs) may only be installed on one computer per purchased copy of that software title. There are a few exceptions to this such as if an employee is assigned a desktop computer with an application and a laptop computer with the same application on it. Certain vendors only require one license to cover both computers, check with your specific vendor for details.

Network Licensing

Every organization uses a 'network' of some sort as simple as sharing your files from one computer to another. Some organizations do not have their computers connected by cables or wireless connection and share files by copying to and from diskette. (We'll call this "sneakernet.") Others have quite complex networks that connect buildings that are miles apart. If your organization is networked together through sneakernet then the licensing requirements for networks do not apply however, as time goes on, there are fewer and fewer organizations that utilize sneakernet. There are a great number of issues to address with network and server software. These include simply needing a license to connect to a server to get resources on that server such as files or to print from that server.

If you use a thin client, sometimes called "dumb terminal" setup, you have specific licensing criteria setup by your vendor and it is usually easy to follow. Of course, there are exceptions, so if you are concerned you should contact your specific vendor. If you use a peer-to-peer network than there is no central location of storage or logon servers in place and licensing is usually pretty straight-forward unless you use applications that are installed on one machine and use on several. Finally, if you use a client server environment you need to understand that in most cases, a license is required for the client (desktop) to interact with the server.

The purpose of this article is not to answer all of your questions about licensing and the ins and out's of licensing, the purpose was to raise your awareness to the situation and remind everyone that proper licensing is a requirement of the organization, even if your employees violate this law without your knowledge. The only way to ensure compliance is to do an audit of what you have compared to what you can prove purchases for followed by working with your software reseller to ensure that you are in compliance.

RANDY L WILSON, MCSE, MCP+I
is the network administration manager for the Park District Risk Management Agency (PDRMA), randy@pdrma.org.

Microsoft Licensing While there are obviously many vendors providing many different brands and versions of software, the focus of this section will cover Microsoft Licensing. I am not trying to promote its product but the facts speak for themselves: 95 percent of all desktop and laptop computers are running some version of Windows®, and Microsoft has the lion's share of business application suite software (Office®). In addition, its server side networking applications are growing at very rapid rates. I understand that a large number of park and recreation agencies are using WordPerfect®, but there are so many versions of this product and it has been owned by so many companies, explaining the licensing for each and all of these would be far to extensive for this article. For those of you who do not know, Microsoft has completely revamped its licensing model to allow customers to "get current and stay current." This took effect on October 1, 2001, and dictates that customers pay a set fee each year for the right to get your software up to date and keep it up-to-date with the most current commercially available software in that product line. If you do not wish to follow this model, it is still feasible to execute an Open License Agreement and get your software up to date and legal (even if you do not plan on physically updating your computer for while yet). For complete licensing issues for Microsoft products, visit www.microsoft.com/licensing/ to find all the information you could ever need on licensing Microsoft products. - by Randy L. Wilson. MCSE, MCP+I

26 ¦ Illinois Parks and Recreation