Service Packs - Upgrades or Corrections

If we have several licenced seats of Solidworks, but only one that
gets a renewed subscription service, will all the seats load the
service packs?

I am only interested in this particular issue with respect to service
packs.

 

Ron Waligora quipped:

yes, they will all upgrade just fine.

so what then, you bought 2 seats straight out, then 1 seat with support?

makes sense I guess.

-nick e.

 

They will until SW starts issuing a reg code for every service pack. Of
course doing this is against the EULA you agreed to and if SW found out you
were doing it they could demand their software back.

Do the rest of us that pay for our software a favor and try not to get SW
too paranoid about whether they are being ripped off.

 

our VAR recommended sassafras to monitor and dole out network licenses.
It's 1000 bucks one time... not 900 or so each seat and then maint on top of
that.

 

First of all, this is not a decision I can make. I am only collecting
data here.

Personally, I think it's a poor financial decision. If we are trying
to save money in the short term, only to get hit with the $500.00 per
seat registration fee when the next major upgrade comes, on top of the
license fee!

So if the decision makers are going this way, I just want to know if
anyone has actually loaded a service pack onto a license that has
expired.

 

Gee, I thought it was $750 per seat for upgrades.

 

Well, you're on the horns of a moral dilemma...

The service packs will install for a seat on which the maintenance hasn't
been paid. Doing so, however, is a violation of your license agreement.
Especially since you've now posted your corporate email onto a forum that SW
is known to watch, you violate the license agreement at your peril--it
wouldn't surprise me if you were to get an inquiring phone call from your
VAR and/or the BSA at some point in the future.

good luck

 

Ron Waligora quipped:

FWIW, I have the same copy of SW installed on both computers (we do pay for
2 seats). I just happened to use the same set of CD's for both computers
because for the second computer, my CD's were more convienent to grab and
use. they both upgrade just fine with new SP's.

i know i probably should be using different copies, but there's no drawback
to it.

-nick e.

 

oh great. this thread again.

are bug fixes free or not?

<sigh>

-nick e.

Mr Atari quipped:

 

Nick,

Most of the rest of this post has to do with Ron asking other users for
their support in his dancing around and the eventual violation of the
licensing agreement that we all agree to when we hit that accept button.
Your case is a bit different. If you read the licensing agreement you are
not legally allowed to simultaneously run the same serial number at any
point in time. The End User License Agreement does not address the fact that
you have other licenses you have paid for and don't use. If it ever came
down to it (which is very unlikely) you could probably talk you way out of
it without getting in a jam. Don't be surprised if some day SolidWorks in
conjunction with your reseller very nicely suggests that you go ahead and
register those other seats.

 

Dave quipped:

dave,

the other seat IS registered. they're just both installed from the same CDs.
not even intentionally. i just used the first set of cd's I grabbed.
they're all in the same box.

if anyone complains from SW/VAR i'll reinstall, but it's not something i'm
worried about. it'd be a hard sell for the BSA to convince a judge we're
actually running pirated software. because we're not.

short story, as long as we;re using 2 seats and paying for 2 seats, i'm not
really concerned.

-nick e.

 

No argument with that--it's just not the question he asked....

 

Nick E. wrote:

The CDs themselves are identical. There is nothing distinguishing one
from another. There is nothing wrong with installing from one set to
multiple machines as long as you have the same number of registration
numbers and installations.

Jim S.

 

I wouldn't bet the farm on this statement. I've always been told that
if you submitted a bug report, and that bug was fixed in that version,
then yes you could(?) get updates (I was a VAR in '97-'98). I bet you
it hasn't been done "officially" more than a handful of occasions. A
lot of times the VAR's will do this on their own (depends on the VAR)
as a show of good faith. There is no official statement to verify
this, or official way to make this happen as far as I know.

It's one of the hazards of buying a seat without subscription and then
perhaps getting sp0 which is a bugfest. I agree, that if you buy a
version, then you should be entitled to bug fixes for the life of that
version without buying support. But, as they have been known to add
features in the service packs, I don't think this will happen.

They most definitely want the revenue generated by the subscription
cost. I would like to see them bump the purchase price and include a
year of subscription. I've been told that the reason it's seperate is
an accounting issue because support is a different budget item than
software purchases in a lot of large companies.

Just my $0.02 worth. YMMV.

Chris