The 'phone home' is an interesting idea but would have to be via a secure 
communication protocol (we do not allow non-secure FTP but do support secure 
FTP).  Some shops wouldn't allow the 'phone home' so there must be an allowance 
for those customers.

Ideally some vendor could open source such a technology and make it an industry 
standard to encourage use.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------
Lionel B. Dyck 


-----Original Message-----
From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf 
Of Wendell Lovewell
Sent: Friday, April 21, 2017 9:20 AM
To: [email protected]
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Re: Vendor Licensing Frustrations

I work for a vendor, so I understand the necessity of making sure that licensed 
products are used properly.  But I also understand the inconvenience for both 
the customer and the vendor of managing software keys.   

I’m wondering what the list’s response would be toward implementing a system 
that automatically managed the keys by allowing the software to “phone home” to 
update them.  My thoughts are that each time the software was started, and 
perhaps periodically, it would report its own key (to identify the customer), 
CPU id, MSU and/or whatever licensing metric was used.  If a verification 
response could not be obtained, either because of license expiration or 
communication errors, a grace period of “n” days would be allowed.  

There would obviously be encryption, high availability, and possibly even 
customer firewall considerations.  But it seems like a fair trade to me.  
Opinions? 

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