Apple is well beyond capable of doing things that are not easy. I don't think any lawyer or developer would describe the iTunes Match program as "easy". Also, I think the application developers would be much more agreeable to this type of thing. Businesses have become used to buying a piece of software that they control. When making the decision to dismiss an employee it has never entered my mind how much software we have invested in them, unless we get some more control over installation and ownership that is gonna become a factor in the process.
Granted most developers give you another avenue to purchase software from them. But what about Lion, Pages, Keynote, FCP, Motion, Aperture, and all of Apple's other great titles. It looks like Apple won't be sailing boxed copies soon. They don't need to create a license agreement with a third party to create that kind of functionality with there own titles. I'd be fine if there were an opt-in option for developers to participate. It'd be easy for us to lobby developers to opt-in.
With the exception of a handful apps everything we use is available in the public app store. Example: We have instructional designers who may move into administrative positions. It would be nice not to buy another copy of FCP for the new designer when someone gets promoted.
The biggest issue for us (State School) is that we are in line to spend large amounts of money on applications that will belong to the employee and not the State. We don't have a massive turnover problem but it's significant enough to create concern. As a taxpayer that is a real problem for me. Does the employee have to claim those purchases as part of the compensation package, do they need to pay income tax on the amount? Etc...
Like i said in an earlier post. We have lawyers looking into it, but i'd rather pay developers and Apple (i'm a share holder 🙂) than the lawyers.
I cannot disagree with your points, your motives and your business needs, but Apple has effectively taken the normal seat licensing that comes along with regular desktop software out of our hands on the mobile level, and now they are beginning to do the same on the desktop level.
On the desktop the employee leaves, the company/institution owns the machine it stays, and the software license remains with the company - as it should. But, nine times out of ten the clients we deal with don't own the phones, tablets or laptops of their employees - they just allow them to coexist in their infrastructure. This seems to be the case with the educational institution you work for.
There to me lies the problem and the only solution I see to that would be an addition to the volume purchasing program to revoke the application privileges for devices that are no longer members of the organization/company. As someone who does this for a living I can respect that as revocation on one device allows for the license to be used on a different device/new employee, but I do not believe Apple even has close to the infrastructure it would take to handle that for their regular business/education consumers who are not enterprise developers themselves/using their own internal applications. We are more than capable of doing this on an internal level with our application we create ourselves because we are able to manage their deployment ourselves. You're in a cumbersome position.
In terms of the general Mac App Store for desktop applications I can only give you my advice as someone who builds software for enterprises and that is stay away from it. It isn't tailored at all to the needs of businesses/education in terms of what is required for purchasing seats of software and you're always going to be better off going straight to the developer in terms of licensing. You are in effect making a license agreement with two parties at once upon purchase, Apple and the development company. Unless of course as in what you mentioned before (FCP) that's directly from Apple to begin with.
The Mac App Store is also one gigantic crapshoot at this time. If they push the issue too hard and slowly start to cut off access to software by other means your school may be a Mac mobile shop, but you won't remain a Mac desktop shop. Love for a company slowly wanes when the cost to do business becomes cost ineffective and the business/institution loses too much control. Even someone who is invested in Apple should realize there is a tipping point for businesses/educational institutions.
You tax question is fairly simple. To even participate in volume purchasing you need a credit card tied to your school. You are in effect purchasing seats and therefore the tax liability and how you would amortize or write off those purchases is all in your favor. You're simply SOL at this time if the person leaving is taking the hardware with them as there is no revocation from afar for third party applications.
These things also should have been ironed out a long time ago with Apple's policies... but hey - what can you do?
