GS wrote:

GS wrote:

No, developers of Excel-based solutions do not ship Excel with their
program; - users MUST have MS Office installed on their machine to
use Excel-based programs.

Part of the turnkey cost is the customer buying Excel. When a customer
buys device that employs a commercial OS, they don't care and probably
aren't aware that they are buying the OS license. There are tons of
cash registers using embedded Windows, but the grocery store or
corporate business office doesn't care that part of the cost was to get
a Windows license. They bought a product, not its parts.

OSes can be licensed to devices as OEM distributable; - Excel must be purchased
for personal use and/or volume licensed for corporate use.

That does not conclude, though, that MS Office comes with Windows. When an
Excel-based developer creates solutions, Excel is used to do that. By
attrition, users of that solution MUST have Excel installed on their machines
prior to using Excel-based solutions. Excel itself is NOT distributable by said
developer(s) and so machines that don't have Excel can't use Excel-based
solutions!

The rep comes to the customer, installs the software solution, and
leaves. Why can't the rep also install Excel? Anyone can buy licenses
to Excel, but who registers it becomes the license owner. The rep
simply registers the Excel he installed to the customer that paid him.
Hell, I can buy a copy of Excel with its candidate license, and install
it on a friend's or family's computer for them to use, and I register it
as them being the licensee.

While the example of cash register mentioned the OS, that's just the OS.
Some POS software must also get installed for that cash registry to do
its job. I've not gotten into POS (Point Of Sale) software to know what
is its typical licensing model.