Let's Get Them Online Let's Get Them Online Although it is possible for the University to give students a copy of "Licence Manager," allowing all students access to all university applications without violating the site licences, they refuse to do so on the grounds that it would over-burden the network. The computer technicians believe that this is not true, and that the university network could handle the load, but nothing will be done until enough complaints are received. Below is the E-Team's response to one of my letters regarding accessing the Sites Applications server.
ResComp has temporarily found it neccessary to stop supplying applications via server to residents. During the last two years, when ethernet service was in its pilot stages, we found that (a) there were a great deal of problems in providing consistent service of applications to residents, and (b) VERY few residents made use of the service anyhow. For now, we have decided to devote our resources to supporting full ethernet service and Internet access to residents, which all subscribers use, instead of the far less used applications. It is our end goal to provide applications AS WELL as full ethernet and Internet services, but for now we must concentrate our resources where they are most needed. I apologize that this leaves you, one of those few users, unable to use the service you want. Again, we do hope to remedy this in the future.
As for why Licence Manager seems to be causing all of your problems is because it is. Applications available on the Applications servers are purchased by U-M from the manufacturers under a Licensing Agreement. This agreement states when, where, and who can use these applications. In order to enforce these agreements, and to protect U-M from being prosecuted under Federal Copyright Law, these applications are "infected" with protection that requires a few conditions for the application to be used on a machine. These conditions are (1) Licence Manager be installed on the machine, (2) the machine be networked with a "License Server", and (3) the machine is in a network location that coheres to the License Agreement as provided by the License Server. As an aside, this is also why no applications run when there is a network failure in a Campus Computing Site.
Again, I apologize for the annoyance and frustration you must be feeling, but please understand we are unable (at this time) to provide consistent Applications service that complies to Federal Copyright Law, and (at this time) are unable to provide temporary solutions due to limited resources. I hope this helps.
--Todd P. Sobocinski of the E-Team
Right now, this is not considered a top priority because not enough students are interested. If enough students will write to rescomp.suggestion.box@umich.edu , then this will become a higher priority for the technicians. Please send a letter of support for this worthwhile cause. Thank-you.
Daniel D. Slosberg | salinay@umich.edu
November 14, 1995