CPI-U All Items
If you’ve taken my advice from the Software Licensing Handbook and included maintenance fee cap language that ties any increase in fees to the Consumer Price Index or x%, “whichever is less”, well, you might be in for a treat! Depending on the index you chose, and the time schedule for it (whether you chose [...]
Y2K+38
Some folks think I’m crazy for continuing to include Y2K-type language in my software licenses. [Special appearance of the Wayback machine: For those of you who don't even know what I'm talking about, back in the day, we were concerned that software was going to stop working on January 1, 2000. The fear was that [...]
Death and Taxes
Just as in your normal life, contracts deal with some consistent yet unwelcome issues – such as taxes. Let’s see, there exist: sales tax, use tax, value added tax, ad valorem tax, excise tax, income tax, transfer tax, and my personal favorite, tariffs. In most licensing situations in the US, you should ONLY be worried [...]
Maintenance Percentages
How much are you paying for software maintenance? In the last 10 years, it seems that the average price for maintenance has increased from 8-10% for basic maintenance to nearly 20%. The underlying service hasn’t changed. Software really isn’t THAT much more stable than it was a decade ago (twice as stable? I doubt it). [...]
Take this EULA… and shove it!
[Note: The following is an article written for Soft*Letter early this year. I got a few calls about EULAs the other day, and like NDA's, I felt they deserved a shout out. The article is a bit long and does cover some topics already discussed - the advice given herein is specifically for EULAs and [...]
How Much for that Maintenance in the Window?
[The following is an excerpt from the Software Licensing Handbook. If Google never gets around to allowing you to "view inside" the book, I guess I'll have to do it here over time.] Maintenance and support comes at a price, usually expressed as a percentage of the license fees paid in the license agreement. This [...]
Keeping up with Maintenance Costs
I keep talking about contracts sitting in file cabinets and drawers and how you need to have some sort of contract management system to keep things organized. This isn’t, however, a tip just for the buyers/licensees… but rather it’s for everyone involved on either side of a transaction. Take Maintenance costs, for example. Your average [...]
Warranty vs Maintenance
A few years ago, it was very common to find one year warranties on products and maintenance and/or support programs that would pick up where these warranties would leave off. As a result, most IT folks still understand Maintenance to be a paid-for version of a Warranty. Unfortunately, vendors do not see it the same [...]
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