After more thought, I do see both sides of the equation. For instance, with servers, you must buy licenses for either users or workstations. So, for instance if you have a call center with ten computers but 30 employees, it makes more sense to buy per computer.
However, if you have a doctor's office with 20 computers and eight users, it makes more sense to purchase per user license.
There is other software such as Microsoft Office and Adobe, etc. that requires a license for one or two computers and must be activated. The big difference as Al suggests is they are not accessing a database.
Therefore I tend to like Al's model which look at one database on the server with multiple licenses. An office could make a choice as Microsoft allows. In other words, a clinic with six computers and 12 half time NPs, may wish to license the six computers while an office with 20 computers and five users may wish to license by the user.
My recommendation given this seems to be such a hot topic (and we all appreciate Jon's letting us give input) would be to form a committee of four or five, hopefully with a mixed group of solo practitioners and those like Aldo above who has a completely different need.
I would propose that the committee meet a couple of times via a phone conference and then meet with Jon a couple of times two. This would at leave give Jon information that he would be able to use. I think any decision he makes would be a better one if he has a good idea of what the users are thinking.
For what it's worth, while there are some upgrades that give a user a chance to move to the next version at less cost, I do not think it is a good idea to let "grandfathered" in users continue at a cheaper cost. If the price changes, I think it should apply to all and be done with.
