[X4U] OSX and sharewhere programs

[Joe Tinney]

-----Original Message-----
From: x4u-bounces at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
[mailto:x4u-bounces at listserver.themacintoshguy.com] On Behalf Of Ed
Gould
Sent: Friday, May 08, 2009 12:23 AM
To: A casual user.
Subject: [X4U] OSX and sharewhere programs

I am sure this not is new issue but I stumbled on it today and was  
curious how others are addressing the issue.

I have purchased a sharewear program so when I tried  to use is on  
another logon it prompted me for a serial number.

This to me is a bit of a folly as I though sharewhere was licensed to  
a cpu. While I cannot follow there legal rules I think common sense  
is that if it prompts each user  for a serial number it seems (to me  
anyway) that you do not want to give the user this type of  
information. So how do individuals and companies handle this situation?

Ed
----------------------------------------------
Ed,
	Licensing is typically unique to your application and has to
evaluated as such. 'Shareware', 'freeware', 'commercial', etc. are just
logical groups people lump applications into and speak to very general
attributes of their licensing. Application owners may choose to license
them how they wish: per user, CPU, time of day, day of the week, etc. A
review of the licensing agreement sounds to be in order and you may be
able to discern if this behavior is expected or not by reviewing the
Terms of Use or some other similar heading the describes the manner in
which you may install and use the software in question.
	I have on one occasion encountered a bit of software (commercial
software, FWIW) that behaved like you describe. The issue there was the
application was launched for the first time (in this case, this is when
it wanted the serial number) by a non-admin. The user could input the
serial number and the application would function fine. However, upon
reboot or if another user tried to use it they were prompted to do the
same. I resolved this by running the application as an Administrator and
entering the key when prompted by the application. This gave the
application the permissions required to store the key for everyone's
use.
	That may or may not be the case or situation for this app but
thought it may be worth mentioning. I've not encountered any pay for
apps that behave as you describe intentionally.

HTH,
Joe