Looking to purchase Pro/E licenses

I was thinking of purchasing a Pro/E seat for myself and was not sure
what the best way was to shop for it. I was wondering if anyone here
was interested in selling their Pro/E license(I am not sure if that
can be done 'legally' either). So if you folks are planning on selling
your Pro/E license and if it is legal, I am interested. Please send me
an email at:



Tim

 

Tim,
PTC will only allow a transfer of license if the company that wants to get
rid of it is going out of business. PTC, to the best of my knowledge, has
never agreed to allow anybody to sell their licenses in any other fashion.
So, if you can find some company or consultant who are calling it quits, you
have a good chance of PTC allowing a transfer of license to you. Otherwise,
you are stuck with purchasing a new license (knowing upfront that if you
ever want to get rid of it, you will have the same problem). Check the local
VARs (I believe PTC website has a local VAR locator). By all means, find out
what will PTC itself charge for Pro/E configuration you are interested in,
although I am pretty sure some of the local VARs will give you better deals
(especially if you manage to get two or three of them into a bidding war).

 

I have a license that I no longer use, and I would be interested in
anyone's advice as to whether this could be done. I always believed
that the license was not legally transferable unless it was registered
to a business and you then on-sold the business. I was a sole trader
and had it licensed in my name. Can it be sold?

 

You can use the SolidWorks Personal edition for free, which opens
native Pro/ENGINEER files. Go to
http://www.solidworks.com/pages/news/3DSkills.html

 

That's a big help : NOT !



Special Personal Edition Terms

The SolidWorks Personal Edition is functionally identical
to the core SolidWorks software used by industry professionals.
However, the SolidWorks Personal Edition does contain significant
use restrictions and may not be used for any commercial purposes
whatsoever. The creation of models for commercial use is considered
a commercial purpose, and therefore, files generated or modified
using SolidWorks Personal Edition software cannot be opened by
commercial (or other, for example, educational) versions of
SolidWorks software. Other use restrictions include:

* A Personal Edition license to use the software expires
after 90 days, with option for renewal. It does not include
subscription service, and is not upgradeable.

* A watermark which identifies both the software and the files
created as a "Personal Edition"; is displayed with the model
whenever the model is printed, making it unsuitable for use
in a commercial or institutional environments.

* SolidWorks Personal Edition software is node-locked to you
and your computer.


Not worth wsting hard disk space on .....

 

I have in effect gone out of business. I was freelancing with my own
ProE, now my situation has changed enormously and I have a regular job
and have no need for my license. As a one-man show I did not have my
own company - I was working as a sole trader. The license was
registered in my own name. Do I still have a shot?

 

Exactly what do I buy, when I buy ProE since it's not possible
to sell to another party? 'The right to use the program'?
It should also be possible to sell my right to use the program
if I don't want to use it anymore. PTC don't own me even if the
like to think so. A fee to transfer a license would be acceptable
naturally.
If I had bought a car I could just sell it to anyone interested instead
of dumping on the scrapheap if I don't want it anymore.

/Bjorn

 

Chris,

I couldn't agree more.

To clarify it for Bjorn: most of the programs you think you buy are actually
leased to you, which you will find out if you read the small print in the
End User License Agreement (EULA). With simpler programs nobody takes notice
of it or cares because you can reinstall them anywhere from the master CD as
long as you have your original CD key (or whatever else the authors of the
particular program call this line of ASCII characters that unlocks the
program at installation time).

Programs like Pro/E force you to take notice because their makers try to
enforce the terms of EULA with various 'protection' schemes. By the way,
other solid modeling programs are sold..., er, sorry, licensed, to you, on
the same terms. If you ever try to transfer a license of, for example,
SolidWorks to somebody else you will find out that they have exactly the
same licensing terms. As far as I know, they are much more flexible in
application of those terms than PTC, but that's not the point. Right now
they choose to be flexible, out of the goodness of their hearts (and no
doubt to look good when compared side-by-side to PTC), but at any moment
they can choose to enforce their licensing terms in just as boorish a manner
as PTC does.

I think that the only good solution to this can be open source. I already
use OpenOffice instead of MS Office and the more I use it, the more I like
it. It would be wonderful to have something like that competing with Pro/E.
However, programs like Pro/E being orders of magnitude more complex than,
say, MS Office, and simultaneously having orders of magnitude fewer users, I
don't see open source community getting all that interested. Also, it is
fairly easy to maintain compatibility with MS Office file formats. Now try
doing the same with proprietary encrypted Pro/E files without buying a
Granite license...

 

I have in effect gone out of business. I was freelancing with my own

You (and the potential buyer) will have to discuss it with a PTC rep. Since
you have probably stopped paying maintenance, PTC should be interested in
restoring this cash flow. The fact that you were a one-man-show doesn't
matter: you were still a business, and the same rules should apply. PTC will
probably require some paperwork confirming that your business has ceased to
exist. Upon receiving it, I think they will have no objections against
transfering the license.

On the other hand, if you've stopped paying maintnance more than 2-3 years
ago, the accumulated back maintenance that PTC will force the new licensee
to pay might make it cheaper for him to buy a new license.
You need to evaluate all these considerations between you, the potential
buyer, and the PTC rep.

 

Only in the United States. The laws in Europe are different. In
Germany, for instance, you can sell your software and the vendor
can go piss up a rope if he doesn't like it.