"We've recently started receiving calls from Business Objects wanting to know how many people receive reports via email from our Crystal Reports Enterprise Server," a reader wrote. "It seems they have cooked up the idea that each person who receives a report -- whether it be in PDF or Excel or CSV -- needs a license. They have even mentioned that their Office of Compliance may need to get involved if we can't supply the number. What if we e-mail it to one person and they forward it? Do those people count? What kind of extortion is this?"

The reader subsequently had a conference call with Business Objects officials to get the licensing situation clarified. "It does appear in the Crystal version 9 license that you are limited to 10 users that you can e-mail to for every concurrent access license (CAL) you have," he reported ruefully. "This was not disclosed when we were evaluating Crystal Enterprise two years ago. Of course they will sell you a Report Distribution License for $45,000 plus $9,000 annual maintenance, just to be able to send your data to your employees in .PDF format using your Exchange server. Or you can buy additional CALs at $4,100 each -- compared to the bundle of five we bought initially at $6,200 total. Like I said -- extortion."

The reader says his company would have never even considered Crystal Enterprise had the restrictive licensing been made clear. "We've begun to explore other tools for scheduling reports," he wrote. "We don't need all of the functionality of Crystal Enterprise. We just need a scheduler, and not a $100,000 solution."