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License Agreements

Microsoft Products

UW-Madison elected to not participate in the UW-System site license renewal for Microsoft products that expired on July 31, 2003. UW-Madison departments will own licenses to the latest versions for the Microsoft desktop products that were included in the original contract. They can continue to use those licenses indefinitely on department-owned machines.

DoIT will continue to offer Microsoft products and licenses to departments and students at educational discounts through the Tech Store.

StarOffice Software

StarOffice, Sun's productivity software suite, is now available to the campus community. Departments, faculty, staff and students can get StarOffice from:

Enterprise Licenses

One of the major changes for faculty and staff who installed an Enterprise Agreement copy of Microsoft Office on their personally-owned computers must remove it if their department does not purchase Software Assurance (SA) for their office computer. If departments are not planning to purchase SA for their Office licenses, those installations of Office on personally-owned machines should have already been removed, although departments have until 10/24/2003 to complete their SA purchases.

Departments will have to start tracking work at home licenses for their faculty and staff because the licensing rules change at the beginning of the new Select Contract (August 1, 2003). The faculty and staff who take advantage of this right will have to complete an Acceptance Form if they want to use a “work at home” copy. “Work at home” rights are allowed only on Microsoft Office products.

Departments, faculty and staff are encouraged to maintain a copy of the Acceptance form to document compliance with the terms. The work at home license is not perpetual. At the end of the Select Contract term, users must remove the software from their computers.

 

Select Licenses

New Office Select licenses purchased under the new contract come with work at home rights whether or not Software Assurance is purchased at the same time.

For secondary Use details from Microsoft see: http://www.microsoft.com/licensing/downloads/secondary_use.doc

Contact Information

If you have any comments or questions, please send them to Kolleen Apelgren at kapelgren@doit.wisc.edu

Overview

This is a general overview to the current licensing requirements for the Microsoft products. Details and a more complete summary can be found at the
WISC Web site.

Specific Information

Looking for information on how this applies to you? Can you keep using your software? Do you have to buy anything? Rules are different for each group below.

Software is still available

Software, including Microsoft products, will still be available at UW-Madison after the current license expires:

  • DoIT offers Microsoft products and licenses to departments and students at educational discounts through WISC and the Microsoft Select program. Faculty and staff can purchase Microsoft products at academic discount at the DoIT Tech Store.
  • DoIT provides Star Office to the campus community free for download or at minimal cost for media. Star Office is Sun's productivity software suite and includes word processing, spreadsheet, presentation, graphics, and database tools. It operates on Solaris, Linux and Windows platforms and offers a high degree of compatibility with other office suites including Microsoft Office.

Background on the licensing agreement

The current licensing agreement between UW System and Microsoft began in 1999. Lengthy negotiations to renew the agreement resulted in two options, both of which UW-Madison found unacceptable:

  1. System schools could enter into a lease agreement with Microsoft and relinquish ownership of all licenses acquired under the current licensing contract.

  2. System schools could continue ownership, but at a significant increase in cost (more than double for UW-Madison).

The open-ended nature of the lease option, coupled with the loss of license ownership, made it unacceptable. The price increase called for in the ownership option was unaffordable, given the State's budget shortfall. For more information, see www.wisc.edu/wisc/UW_Madison/ms_contract_issues/conthist.html.

Other UW System campuses and Wisconsin Technical Colleges may or may not have renewed a contract with Microsoft. Final resolution of contract issues may vary from campus to campus.

Frequently asked questions

For answers to frequently asked questions, see www.wisc.edu/wisc/UW_Madison/ms_contract_issues/faq.html.