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I just had to deal with this on Wednesday when installing our first copy of Acrobat 8. I found their site very confusing, with instructions in different places that contradict each other. It does say there is a "one-year transition period, starting in November 2006, during which you may opt out of e-licensing". I decided I might as well set it up now, and muddled my way through the process for my one license. We then installed the one copy and it successfully retrieved its license from Adobe. The next day I got a lengthy email message telling me that "The pool of Acrobat Professional 8.0 e-licenses your organization selected to host at Adobe is empty and the system is now issuing overdraft e-Licenses for all incoming requests." The message was addressed to me and [log in to unmask], which is a person I don't know. I followed the instructions in the message to go to their web site and view a report about my licenses. It showed me one license with my serial number, but strangely showed three seats purchased and three licenses issued and no seats available, even though I only bought one license. I submitted an inquiry to them about this, but haven't received an answer. Today I went and looked at the report again, and now it shows 93 seats purchased, 4 issued, 89 seats available and one overdraft issued. (It also displays the warning "Some overdrafts in use. Purchase additional licenses.", which seems screwed up when just below it says 89 seats are available. Either I'm not interpreting it right, or their elaborate new system is buggy.) So, I'm starting to think that everyone at MSU is sharing one instance in Adobe License Manager, which is going to make it pretty useless. If this is the case, one person could install more copies than they purchased and others would be denied their licenses. I hope someone from the Computer Store can look into this and tell us what's going on. > -----Original Message----- > From: MSU Network Administrators Group > [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Stephen W Asman > Sent: Thursday, December 07, 2006 5:06 PM > To: [log in to unmask] > Subject: [MSUNAG] Adobe License Manger > > We were getting ready to start installing Adobe Acrobat Pro 8 > on several machines that we support here. We've been buying > the licenses for a couple of weeks now and just received the > installation media. When I logged on to Adobe license site > to get our licenses keys there's an extensive notice > about "Adobe License Manager" (ALM). Everything seems to > indicate that > this is a requirement now. The choices are basically that > either we let Adobe monitor our license compliance, or we > need to set up an ALM server to monitor it ourselves. I have > several problems with this: > > 1. We are in the process of setting up an asset management > system that will monitor our license compliance on all of the > software that our unit supports. I see no need to set up a > separate service just to accommodate one vendor. > > 2. Will we soon need to have ALM like products for each major > software title we support? > > 3. What sort of information does this thing send out and receive? > > 4. Could Adobe turn off our Acobat 8 licenses when they > decide not to support it any more? > > Could go on but I don't want to rant for too long. Am I way > off base here or does this thing bother anybody else? > > --------------------------------- > Stephen W. Asman > Microcomputer Hardware & Software Coordinator Health > Information Technology Room A536C East Fee Hall Michigan > State University East Lansing, MI 48824 [log in to unmask] > (517) 355-6531 >