Week four covered Application Software, and helped me to realize all the major components I needed to look for before buying software for my personal use, and future business use. The clearest part of week four to me was the analysis of the different license agreements, the penalties, and the types of licenses that can be purchased. Learning about EULA (End User License Agreement) was one of the most interesting things to me. I had no idea that there were so many license agreements that I agree to everyday when I am downloading applications, music, and new software. I also was surprised at some of the ways companies will enforce the license if you break the EULA.
To begin with, commercial and open source licensing were completely new to me and were extremely easy to catch onto. Commercial licensing can be broken down into several groups depending on what your company needs and how big your company is. These licenses can be sold in bundles to be used on multiple computers as a per-seat license., or A site license can be purchased to legally allow all the computers in a LARGE business to run certain application programs. There are also Trial, Shareware, Freeware, Developer, and Per-CPU commercial licenses that can be purchased all according to the specific needs or a corporation.
Open Source Licenses on the other hand give buyers access to the programs source code, which allows its users to be able to modify and even redistribute the software. These types of software are typically developed by teams or communities, not distributed by a sole creator. Also, they are usually free, although some may have a donation fee. However, concerns when choosing either a commercial licensed software or open source licensed software are mostly dealing with support activity, patches and fixes, response time, and its migration path.
I found that the consequences and repercussions for breaking the license agreement were also made very clear. Your system, computers, and network could be locked. You could be sued to your illegal actions, and your business or good name could be given a bad reputation all by breaking one license agreement. I learned so much from this section of the class, and it has been made extremely clear that I DO NOT want to break a license agreement!!
The following links helped me greatly understand software licensing, and the consequences of not following licensing rules.
http://www.aaxnet.com/topics/slicense.html
http://www.the-eggman.com/writings/piracy.html
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