For the past six years OIT has paid for a license covering Apple operating system upgrades. Apple has ended that license, however, and replaced it with the new Apple Education Licensing Program (AELP) for institutions of higher education (see http://www.apple.com/education/licensingprogram/ for details).
Under AELP, the cost per “seat” (including iLife and iWork, which are required) is much higher, and the agreement would require us to cover every seat at Duke. Moving from our existing agreement to the AELP, even if we covered only faculty and staff, would raise our cost in the first year 338 percent, with costs increasing each subsequent year as the number of Apple machines at Duke rose.
Weighing the increased cost of this agreement against the relatively low cost of the new OS 10.7 ($29.99), which is normally not incurred for all machines immediately upon release of a new version and never incurred two years in a row, the OIT Software License group and Duke’s Software Licensing Committee have agreed not to pursue an AELP agreement for Duke.
This means that, as of July 8, 2011, OS X upgrades will no longer be covered by a campus-wide license. The license for the current version of the operating system on each machine (as well as any installed software covered under our current license) will remain valid; departments and individuals will have to budget for future upgrades on a case-by-case basis.
We sincerely apologize for the short notice, but we are making details available to you as quickly as we get them from Apple. Over the coming years, we will continue to track usage, and we will share what we learn and review this decision annually. In the meantime, please feel free to contact us if you have additional questions about this decision.
