[Info-vax] VSI Subscription Licensing Exchanges

[Arne Vajhøj]

On 5/25/2021 4:07 PM, Arne Vajhøj wrote:
> On 5/25/2021 3:59 PM, Phillip Helbig (undress to reply) wrote:
>> In article <s8jhon$1c4i$1 at gioia.aioe.org>, =?UTF-8?Q?Arne_Vajh=c3=b8j?=
>> <arne at vajhoej.dk> writes:
>>>>> Arne has suggested paying for additional years up front (and therefore
>>>>> getting those licences early as a result).
>>>>
>>>> How would that actually work?  Presumably the goal is to have, say, 5
>>>> years after VSI goes bust to sort out some sort of alternative, and
>>>> presumably VSI doesn't want to sell licenses with no expiration because
>>>> they would rather have a steady revenue stream.  Just having it expire
>>>> after 5 years wouldn't work if VSI goes bust after 4œ years.  Perhaps
>>>> one could buy a 5-year license every year.
>>>
>>> Yes - the idea was a rolling 5 year license.
>>>
>>>>                                             However, that would mean
>>>> that a customer would then have several valid licenses, and apparently
>>>> VSI is also concerned about too many licenses being in circulation.
>>>> (Unloading and deleting the old one won't cut it, since people have
>>>> backups.)
>>>
>>> You have a license 21-25 for node A and you receive a license
>>> 22-26 for node A.
>>
>> Presumably if a license for 5 years costs X, then when buying another
>> one which has a four-year overlap one would pay only X/5.
> 
> Yes.
> 
> Or to do it the other way around.
> 
> If a one year license cost X then a 5 year license cost 5*X and
> a 1 year license extension of a 5 year license cost X.

And maybe they could make the actual license follow extension model, so
it would be:
* you pay 5X for a license 21-25
* next year you pay X for a license 25-26 (extension license)

Or whatever. The point is simply that customers know they have
AVG=4.5 MIN=4.0 MAX=5.0 left which is better than
AVG=0.5 MIN=0.0 MAX=1.0 and AVG=2.5 MIN=0.0 MAX=5.0 for
normal 1 and 5 year contracts.

Arne