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TechTalks Event

Software Licensing Strategies and Approaches

with guest expert Bob Callaway

November 29, 2001

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How would you like access to an expert who has spent the last several years devoted to understanding and implementing software licensing strategies at higher education institutions? Howard and Judith interviewed that expert - our guest, Bob Callaway - on November 29.

Guest Expert

Bob CallawayBob Callaway has been a member of the information technology staff of the University of California, Berkeley, for the past twenty years. Originally his area was academic computing, where he dealt often with software vendors.� In 1989, he was given campus-wide responsibility for the review and approval of software acquisition agreements.� In 1993, he became an originating member of the Technology Acquisition Support Group for the University of California system. His current role is Manager, Strategic Vendor Relations, in the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Systems and Technology.

Over the years, Bob has acquired software and related services for every level of machine from the desktop to supercomputers.� He has dealt with products for instruction, research, and administration. He has negotiated many site licenses and volume purchase agreements.� He has spearheaded the development of campus standards for information technology RFPs and contracts.� During the past five years, much of his work has been devoted to acquisitions for key administrative systems.� For the past two years, his focus has been the e-Berkeley Initiative, a major campus effort to re-organize how web-based applications are developed, designed, and funded. His work on this initiative has required a substantial amount of attention to new technologies and new vendors, and to the business, policy, and legal issues surrounding web applications.

Co-Hosts

cohosts Howard Strauss (above, left), Manager of Academic Applications at Princeton University, is TechTalk's Technology Anchor.

Judith Boettcher is the Executive Director of CREN.

Together, Bob and Judith will ask the really tough questions—and relay the questions you email to them at expert@cren.net.

Background & Resources

MIT's Software Licensing Discovery Project and its Report constitute a very comprehensive institutional look at licensing issues and strategies. Very useful!

The Committee on Institutional Cooperation is a consortium of the Big Ten and the University of Chicago. Its Licensing Task Force has significant online resources to share.

The best single place we've found for useful current information on this topic is the EDUCAUSE Software Licensing Constituent Group. In addition to brief summaries of face to face meetings of the group at recent EDUCAUSE conferences, you can join a discussion list. Or, you can simply browse and mine the discussion list archives, which are public.

A search on the phrase "software licensing" in the EDUCAUSE Information Resources Library yields four hits, including . . .

A 1997 CAUSE/EFFECT article by Glen McCandless entitled Are Software Publishers in Touch with Higher Ed Needs?

Another useful Web resource which touches on related issues is the archives of the CNI Copyright Forum.

Here are some resources from Bob's institution, the University of California, Berkeley and its system:

Bob Smith, of Florida State University, shared some recommended online resources with us: Here are some additional institutional software licensing information pages: