licences (software)

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gazzer
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licences (software)

Post by gazzer » Fri Aug 25, 2006 3:00 pm

Is there a way to have a program installed on more than one machine, but checking that other copies of the software arent running at the same time on the network, so that the concurrent usage stays within the limits of how many licenses you have for that piece of software?
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Post by Shotokan101 » Fri Aug 25, 2006 4:26 pm

Depends on the O.S you are using - for example Windows Xp Professional allows you to set a concurrent user access limit on a network share - so you could use hortcuts to point to the .exe on the share and restrict access like that..... :?

....boring old XP Home version doesn't seem to allow you to set the value though..... :cry:
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Post by Martyn » Sat Aug 26, 2006 7:56 am

I have come across software that could do that. The routine was built in tothe main app. Unfortunately this was a heavyweight app. £10k for the program and one licence, £7k for additional licences. Needless to say we only bought one licence. The licence was exported to floppy and then installed on a different machine.

I tried various things but could never get more than one copy to run. (NT4 based)
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Post by SyBorg » Sun Aug 27, 2006 5:07 pm

At work most applications are delivered (and if a desktop run) from network shares. Access to the applications is given by NetWare group membership which allows for maintainance of total license numbers. Doesn't help with concurrent license issue though. From memmory we have solved this issue by having a commercial agreement with the vendor - an agreed proportion of all users that are likely to be concurrent at any given time.

The real nightmare in this area is SAP. The licensing strategy must have been devised by a bunch of drunk monkeys that had read everything MS have written.
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Post by gazzer » Tue Aug 29, 2006 10:34 am

Well the way it goes here is every program is installed on each machine, not run from a share on the network. Things such as MSOffice are used with commercial licenses, ie. an agreement that we can install and use it on up to however many the licence covers (I'm not sure how many). The program I'm talking about is rarely used, albeit for one or two people to make reports and a slightly larger number of people to view the reports. We only have 2 licences for it, so I was hoping there would be an easy way of checking about concurrent usage, but the chances are that at most two people will use it at once anyway.
The reason I'm asking is that as I am replacing the old machines with new ones in this building, and people who didnt have this software are all suddenly requesting that it is installed on their machine, and as such we have preinstalled it on the image we are copying onto each new machine before rolling it out.
So we're a teeny weeny bit wary of the licenses issue haha. Ah well, it's not on my head if it goes wrong so.... :P
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Post by Kieran » Tue Aug 29, 2006 12:29 pm

There are a number of ways of doing this, but none that are really possible to implement on a pre-existing and pre-compiled piece of licensed software. It is usually something that the author will include with a licensed piece of software upon release if they want to actively enforce a number of concurrent instances of the running software.

While the fact this feature is not included should mean that there won't be a problem with concurrent usage in your organisation is DOESN'T mean that the licensing restrictions don't still apply and indeed that the license agreement will be broken if more than two instances are run at the same time.

The main way to keep things under wraps is not to simply pander to requests. Only provide the software to those that *NEED* it. I know this sounds obvious, but removing access from those that might need it in favour of enabling access for those that definitely do will help reduce the number of possible installs that can be running at one time.

I know this is far from an ideal solution and indeed still doesn't enforce the license restriction but it should help to bring the new situation more in line with the current one in which there rarely or never seems to be a breach of the license.
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Post by Shotokan101 » Tue Aug 29, 2006 12:43 pm

One thing you relly should check is whethet the software in question actually allows concurrent useage.

I my experienec a lot (and I do mean a lot) only allow named people or named machines to use the software.... so if the software in question only allows this form of licensing then you could be breaking the law by installing it on every machine.....

No w wher is it that you are working ? (and does anyone know the curren FAST helpline number :twisted: ) :?
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Post by gazzer » Tue Aug 29, 2006 3:39 pm

lol! leave me aloooooone :P

At the end of the day, I am a mere minion and I do as I'm told - if anything goes wrong I'm not facing the music for it so I don't really mind hehe. I was just asking in case there was a way. Apparently there is a network version of the software that does enable checking for concurrent usage but when we only have 2 licenses then it probably hardly seemd worth it, especially considering that this is something stupid like £350+ for one license.
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Post by Kieran » Tue Aug 29, 2006 4:03 pm

What I still don't really understand is how you can reliably administer a network that doesn't manage software and file storage centrally; it must be a nightmare - I don't envy you one bit :P
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Post by eMuNiX » Tue Aug 29, 2006 8:40 pm

gazzer wrote:especially considering that this is something stupid like £350+ for one license.
drats cheap, CAD software that I have used (last job) is about 18K per license (plus about 10% per annum for support, this is a basic package all the bells and whistles will double the price), extra if you want to have a commutable license. Normally nodelocked. Gets more tricky in my old company because the central license servers reside in Denmark so having a commutable license also means that it can't cross borders too.
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