What do I buy?

[carl123]

It is easy to confuse "sole use" and "control" in situations like this.

 

An employee may be granted use or even sole use of a computer in a business but that does not imply control of that computer.

 

In fact most companies strictly prohibited their employees from installing any additional software on work computers to protect the company from license infringement issues, viruses, malware, security issues and other stuff that could impact on the business.

 

In your definition of "control" a business could simply give £50 to his/her employees and tell them to buy their own copy of AP and install it on their home PC then install it on "their" work PC as well.  This would effectively be 2 licenses for the price of one, which would benefit the employer as it would allow their employees to "legally" work on company business at home and at work. 

 

Clearly this is not the way the Affinity licensing is designed to work.

 

Any business that wants to use a certain piece of software should expect to have to pay for that use directly, not via the back door by having an employee use their own copy of the software on the company's PCs.

[Alfred]

Thanks, Carl. That all makes perfect sense to me, but it leaves me wondering why the words "or control" are included in the licence agreement. I can't think of a scenario where you might have control of a computer that you don't own, yet the owner wouldn't need to buy a licence because you already have one.

[R C-R]

"Own or control" is used so that to comply with the licensing terms someone must assume the responsibility of controlling what software is installed on & used with the computer, but it is not restricted to the legal owner of the computer.

 

For example, the legal owner could be a large corporation rather than any of its employees. By including "or control," an employee who actually controls the use of the computer on behalf of the corporation can't avoid that responsibility.

 

Because of this, in Carl's scenario two licenses would still be required unless the employees, not the employers or their representatives, are given control of what software is installed & used on the work computers.

[Alfred]

My brain hurts! :o

[R C-R]

My brain hurts! :o

:)

[Alfred]

My brain hurts! :o

 

 

:)

 

I thought you'd like that!! ;)

 

Actually, giving my brain a bit of a rest before thinking about it a little more, I can now see that we're really talking about two distinct legal entities: a person who is a private individual and the same person who is an employee. One of those legal entities owns a personal computer, and the other one controls a computer owned by their employer; because they are separate entities, they are not entitled to rely upon a single licence.

[R C-R]

The more I think about this, the more I wonder why "own" is included in the licensing terms to begin with. In every scenario I can think of, all that really matters is who controls what the computer is used for & what software is used for that. It seems to me that the controller is the only one always able to determine what license or licenses are required. The computer's legal owner may or may not be able to do that, so it seems an unnecessary addition.

 

What am I missing that makes "own" an alternate requirement?

[Solly]

My employer provided a laptop computer for work done while on site and professional work off site, even at home. All non-work required computer tasks were done on my personal equipment. I purchased (owned) and controlled the software on my personal computer. The employer/company owned the work computer and the software on the work computer. Licensing on the work computer was controlled by the assigned member of the IT staff. Yes, two seats and two copies of the same software were required. It was very easy to turn in the company laptop when I retired, since there was no mixing of purposes or software on either computer. That computer turnover was smooth—the IT staff was grateful—all records and software inventory were in order.  This is all part of being a professional.

[Firekillzz]

So i buy it once and its forever or monthly paid

[MEB]

Hi Firekillzz,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
There's no subscriptions/monthly payments. You pay for version 1 and get all 1.x updates for free (1.2, 1.2, 1,3 etc) until version 2 which is a paid upgrade. You then have to decide if you want to pay the upgrade price to version 2 ( which again will include all free updates until v3) or not. Meanwhile the version1 you already have paid for will continue working as long as it's supported by the OS.