[X4U] OSX and sharewhere programs

[Lars Bertelsen]

I don't see the issue...
This is no different from any software in any company:
- Either you purchase a number of single user 
licenses and install them on the individual 
users' machines with a separate serial number for 
each, or you buy a company wide license and 
install that on all thge users' machines with the 
same serial number, whether you ask all the users 
to type in the same serial number or you 
distribute an installation with an embedded 
serial number to each machine.

Same thing here; the vendore decides wheter to 
install his settings in /Library/Application 
Support or in 
/Users/<username>/Library/Application Support
One would suspect that if it was the latter, then 
the idea is that this license is meant for one 
user only.

As far as I can see, the fact that several users 
may be sharing the same physical machine is 
neither here nor there in this context.

Oh and "per CPU" may be out of date, but I think 
you may take it to mean "per phisycal machine" in 
almost all cases...

Lars Bertelsen


>On May 12, 2009, at 11:00 AM, Joe Tinney wrote:
>>
>>----------------------------------------------
>>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
>>
>
>Joe:
>
>Thanks but I was guessing a little of what you 
>said. One of the items that I think people have 
>indicated that is probably a little out of date 
>is the statement "per CPU".
>While in the past that may have been valid in 
>todays processors that is (IMO) incorrect. 
>INTEL, AMD and others have come out with 
>multiprocessors which contain more than one CPU.
>
>One of the main differences between the micro 
>processors and others is that OEMs have serial 
>numbers attached to each processor. So a program 
>has to be aware any and all cpus that it could 
>essentially run on at execution time. This stops 
>"theft" of programs as it will only run on a 
>specific CPU. Which I guess is great for the 
>owners but a PITA for users. As every time you 
>add processor(s) you have to essentially get a 
>new key. I know one manufacture that has (last 
>time I heard and it may have increased) 50 
>CPU's. Of course in a cloud computing 
>environment it could be 100's or thousands (or 
>more). BTW each new processor you add it costs 
>more money (at least that is the environment I 
>am aware of).
>
>Which brings me back to the original question 
>which got sort of way laid. Since software 
>vendors keep the licensing information in the 
>preferences each new user will have to key in 
>the serial numbers. This might be OK for a small 
>situation (one or two users say) but what 
>happens if it goes to 100's or 1000's. Do you 
>really want outside users having access to that 
>type of information? It means (to me) that say 
>you have a vendor and they charge (take a 
>number) X and say X is a healthy number say 
>$1,000.00 (US) so if that program is useful 
>outside of the environment (work lets say) what 
>is to stop the user from using the unlock key in 
>other environments (say home)? The legal issues 
>would alone be a nightmare for a company.
>
>Ed
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-- 
Lars Bertelsen
Salviehaven 14
4330 Hvalsø
Denmark
"I may have made a tactical error in not going to a physician for 20 years"
Warren Zevon (deceased)