IT Professionals - Need Your Expertise

[Randomblink]

I was just informed by the IT Manager here...

That, if I create a database...mdb
And I place it on the server...network'd
And other people 'WHO HAVE A LICENSED COPY OF ACCESS'...
Utilize my database...
We have to pay a yearly fee to Microsoft...????

If I use their tool, create a database for use, why on earth would the place I work at have to pay a yearly fee for utlizing my tool...???

We are talking licenses all around...
Nothing shady, no pirating, everything legal...
Yet they get to take money from something I made?

Can someone clarify this? or dispute it?

Thanks...

 

[Jeff Bailey]

No, you don't have to pay any yearly fee. Maybe he was talking about some kind of support contract (which is, of course, entirely optional).

 

[The_Doc_Man]

Even in the bowels of the US Government, one of the craziest work environments I have ever inhabited, that statement about yearly fees would only be true if all licensed copies had support agreements. But it STILL wouldn't make a difference whether they used YOUR product or their own - or none. All that would matter is the presence or absence of a continuing support agreement.

Particularly for the older versions of Access, at least through AC97, your license applies to your system in perpetuity.

Now, if your product uses a database with an Access front end and a MS SQL Server backend, where the MS SQL license was "per client seat" - in THAT case, the statement could be true. Larry Ellison of ORACLE taught that trick to Bill Gates.