Conference 7.286::digital

        I've seen a bunch of replies (in comp.os.vms) some relating other
    	horror stories, but several (most of them?) praising Digital for 
    	rapid and timely service with respect to licence control / PAKs.
    
> Imagine...Getting a call in the middle of the night...Users logging
> onto your VAX-VMS system are getting only "ACCESS DENIED...License Expired!"

       The reply is simple and was provided by non Digital folks saving us
       from having to embarras a customer ::-). Something along these lines:
    
    	"Imagine a system manager ignorantly asleep at home while
    	 his licenses are expiring and his users are about to be 
    	 hurt because he failed to do his job appropriatly"
    
Regards,
    	Hein.
    

    Re .1:
    
    Blaming the customer for this is absolutely inappropriate.  If they
    paid for installation, Digital should have done a thorough job and the
    customer should not have to double-check it to see if the licenses are
    installed or other problems will occur.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

Why do we need to sell software licenses that expire??

I have gobs of software on my PC at home, and NONE of it expires. I bought
it, I own it.

The vendors squeeze additional revenue from me by offering upgrades, new
features, support agreements, etc. 

Or maybe we should go in the opposite direction! Let's have our hardware
expire also!...

>>> Boot
%F-TSBUDDY your hardware license has expired

--RS

The CSLG program is practically a give-away.  Licenses to hundreds of products
for a modest flat fee.  The licenses expire after a year, presumably to
make it more difficult for the licenses to be misappropriated.

I forwarded the original posting to US Customer Relations (and suggested
the author call them), but have seen no indication of a response.  Sigh.

					Steve

    - .0
    
    I have extracted this note and will forward it to the Customer Support
    Consultant for the University of Oklahoma. She should be able to assist
    this customer and hopefully repair some of the damage.
    
    Thanks for posting - 
    

             <<< Note 3355.3 by WRKSYS::SCHUMANN "UHF computers" >>>
                              -< irritate the customer! >-
    
    >Why do we need to sell software licenses that expire??
    
    >I have gobs of software on my PC at home, and NONE of it expires. I
    >bought it, I own it.
               ^^^^^^^^
    
     	Beg to differ - you own the right to use it, not the product, that
    is why the licence system exists surely.
    
    				Malcolm.

    The customer's issue has been resolved completely. 
    
    The CSLG program, as described in an earlier note, is a very 
    low cost annual fee based program where Digital provides over 
    1000 software licenses to educational institutions. The licenses
    terminate annually, per the t's and c's the customer signs and 
    agrees to. The program is partnership based in that the customer
    has an obligation to distribute, track, and manage the software
    licenses throughout their institution. 
    
    A grace period of 2 months past the annual expiration is provided
    to allow for unusual circumstances at renewal time. Customers are
    contacted by Digital telesales at renewal time, but in many cases
    do not act promptly, resulting in the situation of expired license
    PAKs. 
    
    There's more to the situation than the customer provided in their 
    memo. 
    
    Regards,
    Betsy Carroll
    Edu/Research Market Segment
    

    I have forwarded the base note to the US EDU Business Manager as well
    as the people who administer the CSLG program.  As I am familiar with
    the program, I do know a couple of things about it:
    
    The customer knows the EXACT date that each of the PAKs will expire. 
    In fact, they know this in writing when they receive their EDU PAKs on
    their CD-ROMs (only way they are now distributed - no more TK50's).
    
    They do pay a flat fee for the library (OSF/1 + ULTRIX or OpenVMS) and
    are GRANTED a "right to use" for one year.  They must keep records of
    the CPUs on which they install the licenses and have them available for
    Digital.  They purchase H-kits at 50% discount from DECdirect.
    
    Their DEC account manager also has been notified of their license
    expiration dates to make certain that they are moving.  However, the
    tickler to the account rep does not replace their responsiblilites as
    outlined when the school signs their yearly CSLG Agreement with
    Digital.
    
    Now other things may have gone wrong in this account but the historical
    data, I'm told, indicates that the schools often forget that their year
    is up and they ignore the tickler which they receive.  I was also told
    that the PAKs always are written with a substantial grace period (may
    be 1Q) just because it may take a school some time to get a PO through
    their system.

There's been little sympathy in the newsgroup for this customer...

			Steve

    I'm not surprised that someone has been in touch with the customer, and
    that's good. The real point of .0 is that HP or Sun would have
    acknowledged that fact within 24 hours in the same newsgroup, leaving
    bystanders with the impression that Digital listens to and cares about
    its customers, whether the customer is "right" or not. Maybe that also
    happened here and I missed it. If so, I apologize.
    
    -Tom                  

Bottom line is customer is responsible for managing their licenses, Digital
is not.  Granted, we didn't respond appropriately to the customer's 
requests so there was a problem there that needed to be resolved.

We the CSC's used to send out tons of temporary PAKS to customers who used
to call us due to expired PAKS, product is down.  The problem got worse as
time went by.  Customers were being told that this was a temporary PAK
and appropriate action should be taken to find out why they don't currently
have a permanent PAK on the system.  Once one has been received, it should
be put in place of the temporary one.  Most customers didn't do this and
as time went by, more and more customers had temporary PAKS.  What a mess
this turned out to be.

We Digital try to be nice to the customer and send them temporary PAKS and
they don't follow up on the problem which is essentially theirs.  Customers
got to depend on the CSC's for their PAKS and started to ignore the
permanent ones that they were being sent.

Now we only send out PAKS on extremely urgent situations and hardly ever
get calls anymore asking for temporary PAKS as customers have learned that
managing their licenses is THEIR responsibility.

/Mario
Hull CSC - Canada

Well, the Person Responsible would have replied right away,
but unfortunately the licence on his/her newsreader program
had expired.

 

I sent mail to the author immediately after reading the post with contact
information (and forwarded it to US Customer Relations.)

				Steve

    The customer has been contacted, says she is now happy and will
    continue to purchase from Digital as long as there are "caring
    employees around."
    
    BTW: There is a listserv which we Digital have set-up at SUNY, Buffalo
    for our customers to discuss the TEI program and anything else about
    Digital and education.  It is monitored daily!  EDU customers do have a
    place to go.  A WWW server is also being readied for them which will be
    placed on the other side of the "firewall" for their use also.
    
    Barry
    

re .7

This sounds like a bureacratically intense program that returns little revenue,
but creates considerable hassle both for us and for the customer.

There are other vendors who give away software. They generally send you
the product in exchange for nominal "postage and handling." Their software
doesn't expire. It merely gets stale as they release new versions. They
hope you'll buy the new versions, which you may do at your leisure, if you
are so inclined. They also do follow up mailings and telesales, but nothing
obnoxious happens to you if you don't respond.

--RS

    Well, I'm impressed with how quickly people hopped on this. I hope the
    customer posts her apparent satisfaction and some of the information she
    learned about contacting CSLG and the TEI program.
    
    -Tom

    They could always have set the date back on their machine by a month or
    so.... last time I tried it, it worked... 

>Bottom line is customer is responsible for managing their licenses, Digital
>is not.  Granted, we didn't respond appropriately to the customer's 
>requests so there was a problem there that needed to be resolved.
    
    Bottom line is, Digital is responsible for managing the features
    of its products, customer is not.  I have no doubt that educational
    institutions are hotbeds for piracy, and PAKS that expire help with
    this.  Offset against this is that one reason to give edu
    instituions a break is that they showcase our stuff to the next
    generation of buyers.  If most of them come away feeling that Digital
    is a paranoid tightwad company that would rather put you off the air
    that risk you getting a free ride, then some of the value of putting
    our good stuff in front of the student would seem to get eroded, IMO.
    
    I'm sure the grace period is well intentioned, but my memory of
    edu institutions is that they are notoriously discoordinated internally
    (like Digital), and I would expect that it would often happen that
    "the customer" in the form of person A is clearly told about an
    expiration date, but "the cutomer" in the form of person B is the
    one who must take action, "the customer" in the form of person
    C is the one who gets hurt, and A,B, and C don't even know each
    other's names.
    
    They all know one name: Digital.  We want them to associate that
    name with positive things. (OK, and we don't want to be ripped off).
    
    As an aside, won't this become increasingly moot as Digital gets
    out of the SW business?  (That's what I understand us to be doing
    from commentary in the "RDB Sold" note).
    
    Dave
    
                

    	I know nothing about doing business in the U.S., but I think I saw
    once that the Federal Government must be offered the lowest price that
    is commercially available. Maybe this licence expiry is one way of
    differentiating the product that is sold to an educational
    establishment (limited period licence but low price) with what is sold
    to a tax office (indefinite licence but high price)? We want to sell
    high priced non expiring licences to everyone we can, but on the other
    hand there is some advantage in allowing an educational establishment
    to get our software cheap. Maybe we should just ensure that educational
    establishment licences expire during the summer vacation so as to
    inconvenience the minimal possible number of people?

    
    	In a previous job I used Cadre's Teamwork Software Analysis
    	and Design tools on Apollo Workstations.
    
    	Cadre's Licensing practices struck me as even more
    	restrictive than Digital's. Each node had its own
    	individual license, and each license had a time-limit,
    	depending on how much you were prepared to pay.
    
    	The one good feature of this licensing system (IMHO)
    	was the way that it warned everyone who, used the
    	software, when a license on that node was due to expire.
    
    	Roughly a month before expiry, a warning was printed every
    	time you started the software package.  The warnings were
    	aimed at the people who would be directly affected by the
    	license expiration, rather than the System Manager, who
    	rarely, if ever, used the software.
    
    	It seemed to work very well. We were only caught out once by
    	an expired license. I believe that this was largely because
    	the engineers demanded that the licenses were renewed, rather
    	than hoping that the Systems Manager remembered.
    
    	Maybe Digital should implement a similar warning mechanism!
    
    /Duncan
    

    Assuming the customer is now happy, has someone "high-up" repaired the
    damage done to us on the Internet? I hope so.
    
    Laurie.

Re: .22

No damage was done.  As I said, the reaction from others was generally
unsympathetic.

					Steve

    re: .22
    
    It seems that the customer posted this message independently in
    at least 2 newsgroups. One was comp.os.vms, which Steve follows (and I
    don't). I don't recall seeing any responses from Digital in that
    newsgroup, but there were, as Steve noted, several responses from
    others including "same thing happened to me" stories and "Why didn't
    you renew your licenses before this?" admonishments.
    
    In the comp.sys.dec newsgroup, I hadn't noticed any followups from
    anyone, as of the last time I looked. I don't know which other
    newsgroups she might have posted in.
    
    -Tom
           

                  I N T E R O F F I C E   M E M O R A N D U M

                                        Date:     30-Aug-1994 11:21am EDT
                                        From:     Ellen Minter @AKO
                                                  MINTER.ELLEN
                                        Dept:     Education and Research Industry
                                        Tel No:   508-264-7807

TO:  SANDER                               ( SANDER@VMSBIZ@AKOCOA@MRGATE@AKOCOA@AKO )


Subject: RE: Request:: Answer to COMP.OS.VMS                         

Could you please post this to the newsgroup.

Thank you,
Ellen


The University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma's licensing issue was immediately 
resolved upon posting.

The Campuswide Software License Grant (CSLG) Program is a partnership program 
for educational institutions that annually grants the license and rights to new 
versions to over 1,000 software products for an annual membership fee of between 
$2,500 and $50,000. The institution agrees to manage, track, and distribute the 
software licenses.  

Part of the agreement requires the institution name a "CSLG Manager" to manage 
the CSLG Program.  It is this person that is contacted by sales or telesales to 
renew the agreement and it is the CSLG Manager's responsibility to annually 
renew the agreement.  This is a "PARTNERSHIP" program.  Educational institutions 
pay approximately 1% of the commercial price of the software they are using and 
in return are required to "manage" the licenses and the program for the 
institution.

In this particular incident, the individual designated in the previous year's 
CSLG as the CSLG Manager was another individual at the institution who was 
contacted regarding the renewal of the CSLG and for some reason, did not renew.

Please note that the licenses technically expired 6 MONTHS AFTER the CSLG 
Agreement legally expired providing the institution with plenty of time to 
renew.

We are always looking for ways to improve our processes with our customers and 
we have a discussion list (DECTEI-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU) to allow education 
customers to discuss these issues, provide suggestions, etc. and a distribution 
list (TEIANN-L@UBVM.CC.BUFFALO.EDU) so that Digital can effectively communicate 
to customers.

Regards,
Ellen Minter
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    Ellen Minter				
    Worldwide Education and Research Marketing	
    Digital Equipment Corporation		Phone: (508) 264-7807
    50 Nagog Park, AKO2-2/D8			FAX: (508) 264-7134
    Acton, MA  01720-3499             Internet: MINTER@AKOCOA.ENET.DEC.COM or
    :-)						Ellen.Minter@AKO.MTS.DEC.COM
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    									       

    
    why don't we just take the customer out and shoot her. 

re .-1

I wonder how Ford handles people who let their cars run out of gas and complain
about it.

RE: .25

	You might want to format that for 80 columns..

RE: .27

	By being sympathetic on the phone and saying there is nothing
	they could do and ending the conversation.

							mike

> I wonder how Ford handles people who let their cars run out of gas and complain
> about it.

Doesn't seem the same to me.  Internal combustion engines burn 'gas' and
therefore running out of gas is an intrinsic feature; Ford didn't deliberately
add on devices to cause gas to run out.

On the other hand, software-enforced licensing schemes are not intrinsic
to the way in which software works; someone had to deliberately make that
software expire.  That is, the software has a failure mode which was 
intentionally added.

There may well be a business requirement for some LMF-like scheme as
a result of the way in which the rights to use software are sold today.
Nevertheless, that wouldn't stop me from getting pissed off when my
software suddenly stops working.

You are, of course, correct. My out of gas comment was in response to the
no-excuses, customer is always right, go fix it NOW mindset. You can afford
to provide premium service if you're getting premium dollar for it. If you
are offering the blue light special...

    Ford's cars have a gauge which shows the user when their fuel is
    getting low.  LMF bombs without warning.
    
    
    				-- edp
    
    
Public key fingerprint:  8e ad 63 61 ba 0c 26 86  32 0a 7d 28 db e7 6f 75
To find PGP, read note 2688.4 in Humane::IBMPC_Shareware.

    Come on folks, go back and read Ellen's message.  The CSLG customers
    AGREE to manage their SW licenses in exchange for a drastically re-
    duced cost of investment.
    
    We didn't shut them off "suddenly"; the PAKs timed out 6 months after
    the contract had officially expired.  Do you expext your insurance
    company to pay off a claim six months after you allow your policy to
    expire?
    
    

      <<< Note 3355.31 by RUSURE::EDP "Always mount a scratch monkey." >>>
    
        Ford's cars have a gauge which shows the user when their fuel is
        getting low.  LMF bombs without warning.
                      ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    
                                    -- edp
    
    
    	That isn't what I read in earlier replies.  I read that they get a
    'phone reminder, but that in this particular case, the wrong person was
    nominated to receive the call - or was it that a non qualified person
    was doing the complaining?
    
    				Malcolm.

    re: .31
    
    > Ford's cars have a gauge which shows the user when their fuel is
    > getting low.  LMF bombs without warning. 
    
    Unless you buy the "expensive" option (bold the EXPENSIVE), you 
    get no warning at all unless you LOOK at the fuel guage.
    
    Well, a simple SHOW LICENSE/BRIEF command will give an even more 
    exact indication as to actual expiry time than any analog fuel
    guage ever will.
    
    
    Robin

    
    	Perhaps a better analogy to this Licence expiry and a car would be
    to consider having the Engine Oil run out?
    
    				Malcolm.

    
    only if it turned the cpu into a brick.

Perhaps the best analogy to a car would be the yellow light that comes on
saying "Service Engine Soon".

I think (but I'm not sure) that new cars come out with an odometer senser
that will set this off when it's time for regular warranty maintenance.

Dave

    >to renew.   I've noticed that magazine publishers are
    >tenacious in following up when a subscription is about to
    >lapse.  Numerous letters, phone calls; and even 'we miss you'
    >letters after the subscrition lapse.  How come they can do
    >this for something that costs $15-$20 year?
    
    Because the $15-20/year basically pays for the postage. They make their
    real money by selling advertising space in their magazine. The higher
    the circulation numbers, the more they can charge for ad space....
    
    Harry
    

    >And, digital sell hardware and service, and charges far more
    >than $15-20/year for software licenses, and still can't do
    >the job; and has the gall to offer the excuse that it isn't
    >much money, and we're doing the customer a favor to sell them
    >this license.
    
    Go back a read this string again. I'm pretty certain that someone back
    there mentioned that the licenses in this particular program (offered
    only to educational institutions) are sold for ONE DOLLAR per year. The
    expiration dates are installed to prevent someone from stealing the
    software and using it elsewhere for free. Just how much time, effort
    and money should we spend trying to renew a $1 license?
    
    Harry
    

    when you can sell into 150million platforms you can make money even
    when 50million have pirated the software.
    
    ed

re:.27 > I wonder how Ford handles people who let their cars run out of gas
       > and complain about it.
    
re:.36 > Perhaps a better analogy to this Licence expiry and a car would be
       > to consider having the Engine Oil run out?
    
    The best analogy of Licenses to Cars that I can think of is that of
    the tread left on your tires.
    
    If, as a driver, you are oblivious to periodically examining the tread 
    left on your tires, who are you to blame when a blow-out occurs?
    
    If, as a system manager, you are oblivious to the operation of a 
    computer you are responsible for, who are you to blame when:
    1) your software licenses expire 
    2) your operator.log file consumes all of the system disk 
       (leaving you quite dead in the water)
    3) you fail to establish a regular habit of backing up critical files
    4) you operate the equipment outside of acceptable temperature/humidity/dust
       (and I've seen a lot of this - but mostly in my former life)
    5) add your favorite system manager gaff here: _________________________
    
    If the system manager doesn't do their job, hire another one.  
    In these days, VMS managers are a dime a dozen.
    And contrary to what some believe, these machines DON'T run themselves.
    I guess being an Educational establishment, they expect everything for free.
    
    
    This lady is blaming Digital!  GET REAL!  
    The next thing you know, she'll probably sue 7-11 
    because the coffee was hot.

    I believe the fee is something on the order of a $1500 flat charge
    for all of the several hundred licenses in the package.
    
    In the case cited, Digital did attempt to contact the customer, but
    the Digital office can't know on their own that the person they're
    trying to reach isn't whom they should be talking to.
    
    					Steve

    I believe it would be very reasonable for Digital to provide some
    (optional) automated mechanism to generate messages on startup, to the
    operator console, and/or to the operator log file to warn of an
    impending license expirattion.
    
    This is a trivial technical problem to solve, but I believe it is in
    Digital's best interest to do so.  It can aid in customer satisfaction,
    which, as we all know, directly affects our potential for future profits.
    
    Perhaps a command like "SHOW LICENSE/WARNING" could display a message
    detailing only those PAKs which will expire in (say) 30 days.  The
    command could be added to the standard startup file to display any
    warning on system startup, with a commented out section that would send 
    the output to a temp file and then mail it (if it exists) to SYSTEM.
    The comments before the section could encourage the system manager to
    direct the mail to the appropriate location before uncommenting the
    code.
    
    It's a trivial problem that an engineer could implement during a
    lunch or two, yet if it means that just ONE customer stays with Digital,
    it could easily generate a hundredfold profit.
    
    -- Russ

    I think the best analogy with the license issue and the car would be a
    driver's license.  I think it meets all the stated criteria.
    
    While I accept that it is my responsibility to keep my driver's license
    current, I have been caught out.  The Copper who pointed this out to me
    let me off with a warning.
    
    My VMS password expires every so often.  I'm not sure how often. 
    However, every once and a while, I get a warning message when I log in. 
    I don't always act on it the first time due to 'other things to do'. 
    However, I am given enough warning to organise the 30 seconds to make
    the fix before the actual expiry.
    
    FWIW,
    
    Bill

    
    With DCM (Data Centre Monitor), there is an example command file that
    will check licenses and display a message on the DCM screen.
    
    This would also work with DCM's sucessor, SNS (System seNSor).
    
    
    Max.
    

    People *do* complain to Ford or whoever when their engines die because
    the customer never checked the oil or had it changed.  That's why Ford
    and Cadillac, among others, have spent millions of dollars in research
    over the past several years trying to develop a sealed-system engine
    that never needs its oil changed.  
    
    Note that one of the prerequisites for such an engine is an oil that
    can stand up to a hundred thousand miles of driving -- bearings, seals,
    and so forth ditto.  It's not easy, but apparently most of the auto
    manufacturers think it's worth doing. 
    
    --bonnie

I think the more appropriate analogy is that of a parking meter.  It's
your responsibility to make sure it doesn't run out.  If it does, the
meter maid (or is it now "parking enforcement officer"?) doesn't go looking
for you to see if you want to throw another quarter in.

				Steve

re .-1

Right.  And the reaction to having parking meters installed
is probably about the same as the reaction to having LMF
support added to software.

At least as a user of parking meters, I can see some benefit
in that they ensure parking-space churn.  As a user of 
software, I can't see any benefit in having LMF in the
software I use.

    It's interesting to me that the two closest analogies, namely
    the driver's license and the parking meter, are both government
    operations, not private commercial transactions.
    
    Dave
    

Customer situations like this are one of the reasons Digital isn't living
upto its potential.  Another application of 80/20.  In this case its the 80%
of our customers who are generating 20% of our revenue (while simultaneously
consuming 80% of our support structure).  IOW, a pain in the butt.  

My understanding is they've got the products (& licenses) for campus 
educational benefits.  If so then my response is:  so your licenses expired
when you weren't looking? Boo-Hoo.  If a certain product was really being
used in production and it HURT not to have it then my response is to BUY
a license.  It won't expire.

The idea in .49 could be intelligently implemented in a couple of hours if
the current devo could spare them.  Wouldn't generate us any revenue though.

Scott

            "No tickee  -  No laundry"

>    Previously I thought this company was doomed.  Now, I'm
>    really worried.

Thank you for a late night chuckle. Makes my evening...

Scott :)