Volume Licensing
A "volume purchase" is a purchase agreement where the rights are acquired to duplicate and distribute a fixed number of copies of a software application. It is similar to a site license, except the number of authorized copies is limited to a set number. Pricing is based on the number of copies licensed.
Frequently, a vendor will reduce the cost per license, as the number of ordered copies increases. Another name for "volume purchase" is "quantity discount." These can be very valuable, though single departments are often not in the position to generate enough interest to make use of such pricing. Thus, COSL will periodically coordinate volume purchases between departments as a means of reducing the unit cost for all interested users.
Site Licensing
A "site license" is a purchase agreement where the rights are acquired to freely duplicate and distribute a software product over an entire site. In our case the "site" usually refers to the UCSB campus: all faculty, staff and students. Because these agreements are usually very costly and payment commitments are difficult to arrange, this campus does not have many site licenses.
Currently, UCSB has two site licenses: Mathematica and SPSS.
Mathematica for Faculty and Staff: to learn more about receiving an activation key to use Mathematica, please contact Help.
Undergraduate Student Licenses.
SPSS for Faculty and Staff: To learn more about obtaining a license and using SPSS, please fill out the license request form found on the Information Technology at UCSB, website. You will need to log in with your UCSB NETID and password. The login button is in the upper right corner of the website. Once you have filled out the short form, you will receive an email with a code andi a link to download the software.
Policies
Intended Use
Campus Office of Software Licensing (COSL) is provided for the use of University faculty and staff for business/academic services. Our billing is handled using the University accounting system; therefore we can accommodate only purchases made through University departments. When individual faculty, staff, and student licenses are available, they may be made under the auspices of their host department using their department's account numbers. Students may purchase personal copies of most software titles at the UCSB Bookstore.
Purchase Approval
Purchases made through the COSL's coordinated licenses will require approval of the appropriate departmental budget controller for each account.
Orders that have been approved by your budget controller and placed may not be canceled or returned. COSL is not a retail store and we have no guarantee of being able to return all items to a reseller or the manufacturer.
Purchase Records
Your purchase order records constitute proof of your right-to-use the software you've acquired from our office. COSL maintains historical records for purchases made through the Software Depot order management system archived records. Records of participants in site licenses and volume purchases are also maintained. However, as time passes and personnel change it may be difficult to track such records. Although we will always make a best-effort attempt to locate order records, we strongly encourage you to carefully manage and maintain your license records locally.
Any purchases made through the Gateway system are not maintained by COSL. The Purchasing Department is the office of record for any software purchases made through Gateway.
Technical Support
COSL does not provide technical support for any of the products we manage. For computing support contact your departmental technical support staff.
Your Responsibilities and a Disclaimer
COSL is pleased to provide software service and coordinte large licenses. However, neither COSL nor the University of California make any warranty as to the fitness or usability of any software products available. Refunds will not be issued if a user determines after the purchase that a product does not perform as they expected. It is the user's responsibility to research and purchase the correct software needed for their particular computer system.
Additionally, please note that it is entirely the responsibility of the user to read and understand the terms of a license agreement (the "end user license agreement"). COSL accepts no responsibility for the actions of any user who might abuse a software license through misuse, over-installation, illegal copying and distribution, misunderstanding of laws and regulations, etc. All users accept full responsibility for their usage of software products including understanding of the software license guidelines.