I am a technology attorney in Texas specializing in software
license transactions and disputes with the major software
publishers including Microsoft, Adobe, Oracle and IBM. I represent
some of the world's largest corporations in enterprise software
license transactions. I have been involved in more than 600
software license disputes in the last 10 years and during that time
I have discovered that device- based licensing leads to many
compliance problems that could be easily avoided. I have been
encouraging my clients to move toward user-based metrics for many
years, and the market trends are moving in that direction.
A device-based license is a type of software license that covers
one or more devices regardless of how many users work on the
device. An operating system license is a classic example of a
device-based license. You buy one OS to cover the device regardless
of the number of users. Enterprises with multiple users per device,
such as call centers and
