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Grant Sewell wrote: > On Mon, 2008-01-07 at 18:42 +0000, Ben Goodger wrote: >> On 07/01/2008, Henry Bremridge <henry.bremridge@xxxxxxxxx> wrote: >> - For MS there is an ongoing PERPETUAL license fee to be paid. >> >> Actually perpetual licensing means the direct opposite of this. A >> perpetual license is purchased and continues to operate perpetually; >> the model you are referring to is "software as a service" where a >> subscription is paid perpetually and continues to operate for about >> forty seconds. > > But if one purchases a "perpetual license" for MS Office 2003, let's > say, does one automatically get to update to MS Office 2007 without > charge? Or is the license *only* for MS Office 2003? If the case is > the latter, then surely in order to "keep up to date" one must therefore > continnually (or 'perpetually') purchase new licenses? > > Grant. > According to Microsoft, a perpetual licence gives the council the option to either purchase a small amount of licences and then purchase other licences at the same price for a 2 year period (the more they buy on the first purchase they get the discount, so if they only buy 10 copies to start with then they pay a discount on the 10 copies, if they buy 1000 copies at a later date they woudln't get the discount they would on 1000 licences, just the discount on 10!), although the council will probably be under a Select licence if they have purchased a perpetual licence. Basically in this case the council makes an estimate of how many licences they want for 3 years and get a discount on that, then they can change the estimates on a yearly basis. Still not as cheap as OpenOffice though. I think you're right by the sounds of things Grant, they don't get any free upgrades to the latest version on perpetual licences, they'd probably get to keep the licences for the old machines but no doubt after 3 years or so if they want to upgrade they'd have to buy new licences for each machine they want to upgrade. Rob -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG http://mailman.dclug.org.uk/listinfo/list FAQ: http://www.dcglug.org.uk/linux_adm/list-faq.html