Re: Fair software pricing models

[Phil Gregory <pgregory@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, Nov 02, 2001 at 10:06:51AM -0500, MacWheel99@aol.com wrote:
> I called my buddy who was stuck on Win 3.0 & told him if he wanted Win 3.1 he
> should buy it out of own pocket, install it on company machine, AND NOT TELL
> ANYONE WHAT HE HAD DONE, and do good backups in case he comes to work some
> day & finds it back at Win 3.0.

As David Kahn mentioned, this is not generally a good idea.  I had a
situation like this recently, where a user had installed Office 2000 over
top of the company-supplied Office 97 on his computer.  I found out about
it when he needed help with Word (specifically, he needed additional
components installed, but, hey, I didn't have the CD).

The problems with people installing their own versions of software are
severalfold.  One of the largest is that company does not have a license
for that software.  Even if (and this is a big "if") the person bought a
copy of the software specifically for that computer, the company is not in
posession of the license, yet they will be the ones liable if audited.
Secondmost is support.  Supporting multiple versions of the same software
can get very annoying, which is why most IT departments avoid it.  There
is also the spectre of incompatibility among the verious versions.  (In my
specific case, Word 2000 and 97 do use the same file format, but I don't
know for certain that 2000 didn't add smaller features unsupported in 97.
Microsoft does tend to do things like that.)

In short, don't do it unless you are willing to risk the wrath of your
computer support people and, possibly, the liability to the company.