The Chemistry Department pays CU Software for this license on behalf of all uses in Chemistry. It was $1,800 in 2015.

See also

  • T:\Scientific Apps\LabView
  • R:\Chem IT\Software & Licensing\Software Licenses.xlsx

Summer 2017 (5/23/2017)

  • Status quo: Based on last year, pay using department funds. Don't collect funds from groups.
  • CU Software wrote the community on Tuesday, 5/23/16, "FIRST NOTICE: LABVIEW Licensing Renewal Pre-order", sent to <cusoftware_announce-l@>.

Summer 2016 (5/31/2016)

  • Asked Michael Lentesky permission for status quo (see Summer 2015, below).
  • CIT wrote the community on Friday, 5/27/16, "LABVIEW Licensing Renewal Notice".

Summer 2015 (6/25/2015)

  • Chemistry IT charged the $1,800 department license cost to the Chemistry IT account.
    • This nominally covers up to 50 seats.
  • Challenge: CU Software wants to know our actual counts since they bracket pricing based on counts.
    • When we tried getting a count, we only were able to account for 26 of the 36 seats we were expecting to count.
    • Enforcement hard (impossible?) since software doesn't require a licensing renewal. (This is unlike MatLab and Mathematica.)
      • AND most groups want to keep using their current version and not use a more current one.
    • To get coverage for more than 50 seats, would cost us $2600.

    • CU Software writes (6/23/15): We decided to break the departments into two tiers so that the cost could be shared more equitably between single users, departments with small install bases and those with large install bases. Because what we're doing is actually cost recovery for a campus license, the per seat guidelines are a bit fluid. We just wanted to differentiate between large and small. We aren't limiting installs and don't ask the departments to do so. We believe that lab managers will fairly estimate their use and purchase accordingly. If you purchase the small department license but have 52 installs, we're not coming after you. Most of the large users are well above that mark anyway.

Details and context

Michael Lenetsky approved the (continued) process of having the department cover the cost. Factors to support this decision:

  • Enforcement hard (impossible?) since software doesn't require a licensing renewal. (This is unlike MatLab and Mathematica.) And groups are usually prefer not upgrading their version.
    • Thus, no opportunity to gate access, and thus count use, based on annual installs ChemIT performs.
  • Within CCB, this decision will naturally benefit some research groups.
    • This is much as the department subsidizes (to a larger degree) some (mostly other) groups who use ChemIT's computational server support services, such as clusters.

An alternative is get research groups to pay the cost proportional for their use. And here's what happened when this was tried summer 2015: ChemIT was only able to get pledges for $1,300 from research groups for the use of LabVIEW for the 2015-2016 year (26 seats at $50 each). That left out groups who had chosen not to respond.

We guessed there would be about 36 seats, hence the estimated $50 amount to collect the $1,800 needed. And if more than 36 seats were pledged, then we could have lowered the price charged per seat.

To hedge against free riders, we could then submit a "research group charge-back" spreadsheet to Kevin and then somehow hold the software back from users in non-payment groups. All the above would have represented a non-trivial administrative cost.

FYI, for the 26 seats pledged, we heard from the following research groups:

  • Freed
  • Marohn
  • Petersen
  • Park

We had expected to also have heard from:

  • Zax (who just worked with us on LabVIEW )
  • Abruna (used extensively around the group)
  • Disalvo (used on a machine or two)
  • Others?
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