Hi, I meant to add that as usual the meeting will be at lunchtime. Best, david On 12/04/12 17:21, David Colling wrote:
Hi,
I have cc'ed Jo and Kenny just to keep them informed about the Wolfram situation.
A (not so) quick summary of this morning's meeting with Wolfram would be:
- The current three year "comprehensive" deal expires at the end of August. This may be changed to the beginning of August to make college accounting easier. College would not loose money in such a deal.
- Currently Physics spends £9,483.60 pa for the following licenses 55 Single Machine Licenses 3 License managers 17 Network Increments (i.e. movable seat licenses)
- Physics is about half of the college spending on Mathematica with no other single department being significant. I also believe that there are some copies out there not purchased through the scheme but am not sure (I can think of one in HEP).
- The comprehensive deal will change next time around. The changes include: o currently people who have it installed on their machines and use it with a roaming seat license are entitled to a home edition free that they can use on their laptop/at home etc which doesn't contact the license server and so doesn't count against the total. However in future this will not work in future and their extra installations must be able to contact the license server over the network and so count against the total number of seats. o the price has remained fixed over the last couple of rounds of three year deals but will go up slightly this time around. I was promised prices by Monday.
- As we have discussed in our meetings, I suggested that we would probably like to change the balance of Single Machine Licenses to network increment licenses with ICT running the license servers. All were happy with this and if this is the approach that we take it is expected that some fraction of the rest of college would follow us.
- The cost of an unlimited license for a department or group of departments (or even whole site) is dependent only on the number of UG and PG students registered on "technical courses" - apparently the medics are not technical but the business school is.
- For Physics alone the cost would be ~£14K pa - an increase of ~50%. For FoNS as a whole ~£20K - so this is definitely a non-starter. Similarly all of college would be ~£30K which is more than £10K more than we are already spending.
- I promised to get back to Wolfram with the expected ratio of single machine to network licenses.
- Wolfram are keen to sell us unlimited access and so the gentleman from Wolfram suggested that he "might be able to [me] do a deal" which brings the cost down once we know the ratio of fixed to network licenses i.e. how much we expect to pay next time around in our current circumstances.
- If we were to get an unlimited license, it would have to be negotiated on an annual basis and would not be part of a three year deal.
- If physics do buy unlimited access then all the students would have a single shared key, whereas academics would have to apply for individual keys. It is almost as though Wolfram would be encouraging students to share it against the license agreement, especially with students in other departments.
- If physics where to get an unlimited license it could change (increase) the pricing deal for the rest of college as there would be fewer licenses overall in the comprehensive pot.
- As well as Mathematica College also buy 16 licenses for WebMathematica which allows Mathematica to be run through a webportal (it was assumed that these are used for teaching).
There were a few other subtleties but that was the bones of the meeting and your feedback would be most welcome. I expect to meet the chap from Wolfram again on the 25th of this month.
Now for planning the next meeting ...
The promised Doodle poll for the next meeting can be found at http://www.doodle.com/6n2yqscddaatep4n
we have a visit from the grants panel on the Friday 27th of April and so that is out for me.
Best, david
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