Looking to purchase Pro/E licenses

Tim, PTC will only allow a transfer of license if the company that wants to get rid of it is going out of business. PTC, to the best of my knowledge, has never agreed to allow anybody to sell their licenses in any other fashion. So, if you can find some company or consultant who are calling it quits, you have a good chance of PTC allowing a transfer of license to you. Otherwise, you are stuck with purchasing a new license (knowing upfront that if you ever want to get rid of it, you will have the same problem). Check the local VARs (I believe PTC website has a local VAR locator). By all means, find out what will PTC itself charge for Pro/E configuration you are interested in, although I am pretty sure some of the local VARs will give you better deals (especially if you manage to get two or three of them into a bidding war).

I have a license that I no longer use, and I would be interested in anyone's advice as to whether this could be done. I always believed that the license was not legally transferable unless it was registered to a business and you then on-sold the business. I was a sole trader and had it licensed in my name. Can it be sold?

You can use the SolidWorks Personal edition for free, which opens native Pro/ENGINEER files. Go to

That's a big help : NOT !

Special Personal Edition Terms

The SolidWorks Personal Edition is functionally identical to the core SolidWorks software used by industry professionals. However, the SolidWorks Personal Edition does contain significant use restrictions and may not be used for any commercial purposes whatsoever. The creation of models for commercial use is considered a commercial purpose, and therefore, files generated or modified using SolidWorks Personal Edition software cannot be opened by commercial (or other, for example, educational) versions of SolidWorks software. Other use restrictions include:

• A Personal Edition license to use the software expires after 90 days, with option for renewal. It does not include subscription service, and is not upgradeable.

• A watermark which identifies both the software and the files created as a "Personal Edition"; is displayed with the model whenever the model is printed, making it unsuitable for use in a commercial or institutional environments.

• SolidWorks Personal Edition software is node-locked to you and your computer.

Not worth wsting hard disk space on .....

I have in effect gone out of business. I was freelancing with my own ProE, now my situation has changed enormously and I have a regular job and have no need for my license. As a one-man show I did not have my own company - I was working as a sole trader. The license was registered in my own name. Do I still have a shot?

"Alex Sh." skrev i meddelandet news:If21c.27638$ snipped-for-privacy@nwrddc01.gnilink.net...

Exactly what do I buy, when I buy ProE since it's not possible to sell to another party? 'The right to use the program'? It should also be possible to sell my right to use the program if I don't want to use it anymore. PTC don't own me even if the like to think so. A fee to transfer a license would be acceptable naturally. If I had bought a car I could just sell it to anyone interested instead of dumping on the scrapheap if I don't want it anymore.

/Bjorn

--snip--

--snip--

Exactly the situation. You DO NOT 'own' the software, whether it be the OS, or any components of the software for any commercial software on your PC or workstation. Read the EULA. Why do you think the GNU, FSF, etc... software license initiatives are catching on?

Checkout:

--rant--

I wait anxiously for the methodology and techniques of solid modeling to become 'common knowledge' so that GNU licensed solid modeling software can be created much the same way that 2-D CAD is available now.

Don't get me wrong, I don't want this for reasons of getting something for nothing. I want to be able to tweak, and submit enhancements for, such a product. No different than any craftsman would do to the tools he relies on.

As creative people though, all of us should be very concerned with current attempts (and successes) to patent 'computing techniques'. This makes it impossible to use a logical or mathematical method. Previously, such computing processes were put into the same group with mathematical formulas and could not be patented or copyrighted. But, "there's gold in them thar' hills" and attempts are being made now to patent almost every method and technique that exists in computer software, so that you can't even write a 'hello, world' program without paying someone for the privilege.

--rant--

Chris,

I couldn't agree more.

To clarify it for Bjorn: most of the programs you think you buy are actually leased to you, which you will find out if you read the small print in the End User License Agreement (EULA). With simpler programs nobody takes notice of it or cares because you can reinstall them anywhere from the master CD as long as you have your original CD key (or whatever else the authors of the particular program call this line of ASCII characters that unlocks the program at installation time).

Programs like Pro/E force you to take notice because their makers try to enforce the terms of EULA with various 'protection' schemes. By the way, other solid modeling programs are sold..., er, sorry, licensed, to you, on the same terms. If you ever try to transfer a license of, for example, SolidWorks to somebody else you will find out that they have exactly the same licensing terms. As far as I know, they are much more flexible in application of those terms than PTC, but that's not the point. Right now they choose to be flexible, out of the goodness of their hearts (and no doubt to look good when compared side-by-side to PTC), but at any moment they can choose to enforce their licensing terms in just as boorish a manner as PTC does.

I think that the only good solution to this can be open source. I already use OpenOffice instead of MS Office and the more I use it, the more I like it. It would be wonderful to have something like that competing with Pro/E. However, programs like Pro/E being orders of magnitude more complex than, say, MS Office, and simultaneously having orders of magnitude fewer users, I don't see open source community getting all that interested. Also, it is fairly easy to maintain compatibility with MS Office file formats. Now try doing the same with proprietary encrypted Pro/E files without buying a Granite license...

You (and the potential buyer) will have to discuss it with a PTC rep. Since you have probably stopped paying maintenance, PTC should be interested in restoring this cash flow. The fact that you were a one-man-show doesn't matter: you were still a business, and the same rules should apply. PTC will probably require some paperwork confirming that your business has ceased to exist. Upon receiving it, I think they will have no objections against transfering the license.

On the other hand, if you've stopped paying maintnance more than 2-3 years ago, the accumulated back maintenance that PTC will force the new licensee to pay might make it cheaper for him to buy a new license. You need to evaluate all these considerations between you, the potential buyer, and the PTC rep.

I see the PTC file problem similar to the DWG/DXF problem in AutoCAD.

The only reason PTC encrypted the file format was that Solidworks came out with a converter that would read the unencrypted files and build the part with features on the fly (fantastic hack, by the way). I don't begrudge PTC or MS trying to hold onto their user base by using file encryption methods, but you slowly piss off your users, and what happens when PTC (or anyone else) gets bought/goes out of business. With the current state of software legislation (DMCA) you can't even contract someone legally to 'reverse engineer' the file formats to extract your original data! An thats the real payoff. The things you developed with the software are much more valuable than the software itself.

The strange thing is that I see software development going full circle.

There was a time when individual companies (McDonnell-Douglas, GE, etc...) developed their own CAD software. I can envision a time when the OSS development model will make this a competative advantage for companies again. Remember that the college kids starting out in IT now have several years experience (in some cases), using the OSS model.

The best thing I can say for the OSS development model is that the things that are important get worked on. For example, do you think that Pro-E would have gone through so many changes in interface from v19 to WF II, if this was user directed. I say no. We would still have the old menus, with a 'plug in' developed to use the graphical interface that has hooks back to the core of the system.

Only in the United States. The laws in Europe are different. In Germany, for instance, you can sell your software and the vendor can go piss up a rope if he doesn't like it.