Re: software licence

On Jan 4, 2:01 am, Steve <stephenal..._at_hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi
> Our organisation is using an off the shelf application which has an
> Oracle database back-end.  We have a licence for 10 concurrent users.
> We now need to have additional users access the data for view purposes
> only.  As the cost of increasing the licence count is prohibitive are
> we within the law if we write our own software using VB or something
> similar to access the information on the database, without using the
> paid for app.  As I write this I'm thinking that as the application
> provider designed the database they will have some say in whether we
> can use our own software to access it.  But it is our data so would
> that be our copyright?
>
> I know the question is a bit vague but any suggestions would be
> appreciated.  Thanks.

I don't know your situation, but most of the situations I've been in that have a 3rd party license issue, the 3rd party only cares about usage through their system. Oracle licensing info can be found on their website, there are many intricacies possible. When you say "the law," keep in mind you are normally talking about contract law, which in the US is governed by uniform commerce codes, what the contract says, and case law. Black and White may be Grey.

In general, if you are updating things that the 3rd party thinks only they should update, you are screwed. So if you do that, you need to be absolutely sure about what you are doing, and don't tell them.

View-only may or may not be an issue, it depends. Software licensing is a strange animal. Some of the strangest stuff comes from using licensing from before web-based access was possible, but most current packages I've seen have some way of dealing with that now.

Sometimes you have to just pay it. Vendors call this "lock-in." I've seen many situations where a smaller or cheaper system could do fine, but the new license fees would make it less feasible than just buying more licenses for the current config.

Nowadays, there's always giving each user XE and imp their data (if it is small enough) and let them do what they will...

jg

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