Talk:Discount-Licensing

Full disclosure

In the interests of full disclosure I would like to state that I am a customer of this company and that I have communicated with its owner in the course of purchasing licences. This is not the reason I am writing about them. I had to satisfy myself that what they were selling was legal before I could make the purchase so I read up on them and found the company's business model to be interesting and to raise general issues about the nature of software licences as business assets. I have not communicated with the company about this article and do not intend to do so. I don't think this constitutes a conflict of interest but I thought it fair to mention it. --DanielRigal (talk) 22:16, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

More players

Apart from UsedSoft are there any other competitors or players in this market? Are any of them notable enough for an article? --DanielRigal (talk) 11:27, 22 July 2009 (UTC)

Notability

i fail to see how this one company (despite the excessive citations) achieves notability for reselling microsoft software over any other company that does the same. lacking any substantial objections, i'd like to nom for del. Impasse 16:03, 9 February 2010 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Impasse (talk • contribs)

The business model is entirely different from the standard Microsoft reseller model. Only a tiny number of companies sell second hand MS licences in this way and this was the first one to do so in a way that Microsoft acknowledges as valid. I think notability is clearly demonstrated and the coverage is good RS. The references are not excessive. They provide full verifiability for the content of the article. If there were other significant players in this market then I would be inclined to recast this as a single article about them all, but there are not. I see this article as eventually forming part of a group of articles about Microsoft Licensing, which is a a topic we cover appallingly badly at the moment. If you are interested, I have it sketched out in very rough terms here: User:DanielRigal#Microsoft licensing.

If you really want to send it to AfD then you can, but I will vote Strong and Speedy Keep (and I am a Deletionist by inclination). I really can't see it having any problem surviving an AfD. --DanielRigal (talk) 13:36, 10 February 2010 (UTC)

Transparency

Both Noel Unwin and Jon Horley have been in contact with me. You can read the correspondence on my talk page. (Look in an Archive if it is no longer there.) I have also received an email from Noel. For transparency, here is the response I sent him:

Anything that is demonstrably inaccurate can and will be corrected. The business model is a bit complicated and what I wrote is based on my understanding of the press coverage so there are two levels at which misunderstandings may have crept in. It is a pity this wasn't raised before.

Rather than email accuracy issues to me, please put details of the inaccuracies on the article's Talk page. That way we can deal with them in a transparent way. It also means that other Wikipedia editors can get involved. The article isn't my property and other people may want to jump in and deal with issues faster. Feel free to suggest alternative wordings.

Please do not ask anybody else to edit on your behalf in a way that is not transparent. It would be likely fall foul of the policy against using "meatpuppets" and could get you and your customer blocked from Wikipedia which wouldn't do anybody any good. If you have concerns about my editing then you can look into Wikipedia's dispute handling procedures. The Request For Comments process would be a good way to get several impartial editors to look at the article and its issues.

As regards Jon, I am still considering what to do with the mention of his company. I may well decide to move it down the article a bit, as suggested.

I did not edit uncritically on Jon's behalf. He made some suggestions and I put them in, with some modifications, because they seemed OK to me. I am trying to be fair to everybody and also keep to the Wikipedia rules on content and impartiality. I wasn't expecting to get caught in the middle of a situation which seems to have an element of personal animosity. It has all become a bit difficult. I am not looking to take sides or make enemies of anybody. My principle objective is to improve the coverage of MS Licensing issues in Wikipedia.

Don't worry. I am sure we can get to a point everybody is happy with.

Regards,

Daniel.

(I meant "principal" when I said "principle" but it I can't change it now.) --DanielRigal (talk) 09:10, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

I have now moved Volume Licensing down a bit so that all the competing companies are discussed in one go (as suggested by Noel). I dropped the sentence about Jon leaving Discount Licensing. It is a legitimate element of the company's history but it isn't well covered in reliable sources and it isn't vital information that it would be irresponsible to omit. In the end, the reason I decided to take it out was that it didn't seem right that Jon got mentioned twice when Noel got mentioned only once. I have also added links for all the competing companies to the external links and fixed the Microsoft link (as suggested by Jon). I hope this is acceptable and deals with these issues. If so, that just leaves Noel's the accuracy issues to work through once they are clarified. --DanielRigal (talk) 09:33, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

ECJ asked to rule on re-sale of software licences

{{request edit}} On 3/2/2011 for the first time, a case relating to the sale of second-hand/preowned software licences has been referred to the European Courts of Justice (ECJ). CIO Article The majority of press articles state that this will set a precedent for the trading of used software licenses throughout the European Union and the legal status of individuals who have purchased used licenses.

The case dating back to 2005 has gone through the German Courts before being referred to the ECJ. The case was brought to court by Oracle against UsedSoft. There are press releases from UsedSoft and Microsoft relating to this referral. I can find no confirmed comments from an Oracle source or a press release from them on this case.

I would suggest an entry onto the main page as the outcome of this case is directly relevant to the market as a whole. Given my potential conflict of interest as a director of Value Licensing and former director at Discount-licensing.com, I am suggesting a new section rather as per the Wikipedia guidlines.

The suggested section, titled "ECJ asked to rule on re-sale of software licences" is as follows: On 3 February 2011 a German court has asked the European Court of Justice (ECJ) to clarify whether or not a company can sell second-hand versions of downloaded business software in a case involving software company Oracle[1]. It is expected that the decision will be within 2 years and should clarify the legal status of individuals who have purchased used licenses as well as the market in general. [2]

Here is a translation of the specific referral from the German Court to the ECJ

(Jonhorley (talk) 11:21, 9 March 2011 (UTC))

I don't think it really pertains to discount-licensing.com -- Microsoft is apparently happy with your company, right? So, whatever happens with Oracle, I don't really see how it would affect discount-licensing.com unless Microsoft isn't actually happy. Banaticus (talk) 11:49, 10 March 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for taking the time to look at this. The links on my original edit didn't work referring to various supporting articles on the web. I've fixed them now. For the record I am from Value Licensing which is in the same market but I have not been connected with Discount-Licensing.com for many years (maybe this should be made clear on the main page?). Microsoft have never publicly said anything about their relationship with discount-licensing.com.

If you look at this press release from Microsoft quoting their head of legal in Germany, although it's a translation, they are saying that it will impact on the market generally. It seems clear from the press release and Microsoft's court cases with UsedSoft, that they don't have a positive view of the market as a whole.

That the whole market is affected is also backed up by the original referral to the ECJ. Again this is a Google translation but the 3 questions referred to the ECJ relate to the market in general rather than specifically to Oracle.

Microsoft have commented directly about the case and the questions referred to the ECJ look to clarify the status of the market as a whole for the first time. Given that this market is covered only within this page about discount-licensing.com it seemed the appropriate place to put it, given the importance of the case. I hope that helps put the proposed edit in context.(Jonhorley (talk) 17:29, 10 March 2011 (UTC))

The ‘Oracle v Usedsoft’ court case relates to a business model and software licence product, under which Discount-Licensing.com does not operate. This German court case also relates to a different set of software manufacturer’s Terms & Conditions and as to the referral to the European Court of Justice, it is imperative that the ‘Exhaustion Rule’ is understood, how the ‘EU Software Directive’ was argued and why this particular case was referred to the ECJ. The outcome of this case will not ultimately decide the fate of the ‘entire [secondary software licence] market’ and an article of this nature on this particular Wikipedia page would potentially misrepresent what Discount-Licensing.com does, namely because Discount-Licensing.com simply does not rely upon the Exhaustion Rule/Software Directive.

It really is not the best practice to regurgitate statements from press releases that we all know can be ambiguous in content and always avoid Google translations of German court cases in order to understand German legal disputes. Note that Microsoft is also not taking Usedsoft to court as implied in the last comment and such an article relating to a German court case between Oracle & Usedsoft would be more relevant on the ‘Oracle’, ‘Usedsoft’ or ‘Exhaustion Rule’ / ‘First Sale Doctrine’ Wikipedia page. (Noel Unwin (talk) 17:35, 4 April 2011 (UTC))

It was clear the translations were from Google and it aimed to give an overall impression of the current situation. The press release by Microsoft shows that they clearly take a keen interest in the outcome believing that this is a key decision which may affect the market as a whole.

Given that Microsoft has a vested interest in the case and that Discount-Licensing.com deal in the Microsoft market, anyone seeking to gain information about secondary licensing may well be interested to know about this case. Whilst I may agree with Mr Unwin’s perspective, any readers can then make their own mind up about how important this case is if it is covered in the article.

Would it not be more sensible to have a general article about the secondary market as a whole? That way anything relevant to the market can be included with an overall perspective rather than focusing on one company in the market. (Jonhorley (talk) 15:06, 4 May 2011 (UTC))

I've cancelled out the 'edit request', because this is beyond the remit of what that can do; we can deal with "Please change XXX to YYY for ZZZ reasons" - that is all; beyond that, we need to see clear consensus/discussion; I'm posting this to the NPOV noticeboard.  Chzz  ►  04:50, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

I sort of like the idea of a new article about the secondary market. Putting this pending legal stuff in the D-L.com article, when it probably won't have any impact on their current business, seems wrong. Brmull (talk) 07:02, 22 August 2011 (UTC)

Conflict of interest

RfC: I'm Jonathan Horley a co-founder of Discount-Licensing who has set-up a competitor company called ValueLicensing in 2009 therefore I openly state I have a COI. The latest changes are by Noel Unwin who is a director and part owner of Discount-Licensing. I understand that Noel Unwin should not have edited this article as it contravenes the COI rules. Should his changes be removed?

The other contraventions of Wikipedia policy in terms of putting in an article on pre-owned software licensing, purporting it to be independent, when in fact it was written by Noel himself, wouldn't have happened if a request for edit had been used instead. You can see from our user pages that neither Noel nor I use wikipedia that much so I'm sure its just an oversight on his behalf.

Whilst we both clearly have a conflict of interest, any edits should be done by someone independent.

In terms of the future edit, from my point of view it should be clear that I currently own and run ValueLicensing and that I am nothing to do with Discount-Licensing any more. I'm sure Noel would want that clarified as well as getting his new company name amended. (Jonhorley (talk) 12:22, 20 January 2013 (UTC))

• In general COI editing is discouraged, however there is nothing to be done about it unless the edits themselves are significantly improper. Since he has disclosed through his username, we assume he is trying to do the right thing and I hope he will follow the tips I've placed on his Talk page in the future. I presume the dispute is regarding his removal of your company's name. This edit should have been requested using {{request edit}} to avoid the appearance of washing competitors off the page, but I believe it was a completely appropriate removal. CorporateM (Talk) 13:35, 20 January 2013 (UTC)

I'm uh, not quite sure what's meant to be getting commented on here. if the matter is on COI then by all means you can edit with a COI in place as long as you follow the rule of backing up anything you put with a reliable source. Just add a source that meets source criteria if you put something into the article your COI is on and as far as i'm aware you'll be fine. MIVP - (Can I Help?) (Maybe a bit of tea for thought?) 18:56, 9 February 2013 (UTC)

Neutrality and COI

Without digging much further one issue I have found is that the company may not have been 'founded as Disclic Ltd in July 2004 by Noel Unwin and Jonathan Horley' but rather Date of Incorporation: 26/07/2005 that's my first red flag. It seems more of an advertisement and less about the actual company which should contain elements such as; employees, market cap/annual revenue, equity/assets, HQ location...etc. It doesn't seem like a valid Company article to me (coming from a business owner myself). More like a statement by the initial editors in a tit for tat of who thought of it first and how proud a thing it is. All this information can be found on their website as it is anyway. Imho it just needs to be re-written, which if done properly, would render COI irrelevant. The people involved are obviously the experts on the 'business model' and are entitled to discuss such a thing but is this to be an article about the company or about the perceived ground breaking avenue? My vote is [delete] and sandbox a rewrite for assessment. Geremy.Hebert (talk) 00:06, 12 February 2013 (UTC)

External links modified

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