[X4U] OSX and sharewhere programs

[Ed Gould]

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that I think people have indicated that is probably a little out of  
date is the statement "per CPU".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