It's fair when the vendor assumes the risk. It's not fair when the customer has bee left holding the bag. "product keys are just any other license enforcement" is not even close. If I license, e.g., a copyrighted song for use in a movie, it doesn't matter what equipment I use to play the song or to record it in the movie. The enforcement is via legal proceedings that the vendor does not invoke capriciously, but only when he has good reason to believe that I am in violation of the license terms.
Software keys, OTOH, can and have caused problems for legitimate users. Some are more reliable than others, but I see nothing wrong with a shop refusing to use a product because they are not willing to assume the risk. If you are really confident that there is no risk, add an indemnification clause to your contract and I'll take your confidence seriously. If you don't trust it enough to have such a clause, why should a potential customer trust it? -- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf of ITschak Mugzach <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, February 26, 2018 12:37 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Product license key program Shmuel, Vendors are busy in developing products, not in tracing/tracking their clients. product keys are just any other license enforcement (eg. electricity, water and any product that you pay per use. Capacity is just another way to limit q measure usage. Sound fair to me. ITschak On Mon, Feb 26, 2018 at 7:11 PM, Seymour J Metz <[email protected]> wrote: > And vendors using keys sometimes victimize honest customers. BTDT,GTS. > > For all of you vendors: it is a fact of life that most vendors have > competitors and that some shops will give their money to the vendor that > does not treat them like criminals. Of course, if you are willing to sign a > contract with big penalty clauses for a malfunctioning key checking routine > or key delivery system, that will help to reduce the competitive edge, but > I won't hold my breathe. > > > -- > Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz > http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 > > ________________________________________ > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List <[email protected]> on behalf > of Charles Mills <[email protected]> > Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2018 12:47 PM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Product license key program > > As the author of such software, let me confirm what others have said: each > vendor does things its own way -- or perhaps not at all. CA has a central > "server" program for administering licenses; the software I am responsible > for has the licensing embedded in the program itself. > > The exact technology is proprietary and a trade secret. To say "we do X > and Y and Z" would be to facilitate its defeat by a dishonest customer. > > [And please, let's not start the whole "to key or not to key" discussion > again. Vendor keys are a fact of life. Yes, they can be a PITA. Most > customers are honest -- beyond honest to the point of paranoia -- but a few > are not. And honest customers sometimes make honest mistakes.] > > Charles > > > -----Original Message----- > From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On > Behalf Of Peter > Sent: Sunday, February 25, 2018 3:55 AM > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: Product license key program > > Generally which assembler macro or program sets the expiration ? > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, > send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN > -- ITschak Mugzach *|** IronSphere Platform* *|* *Information Security Contiguous Monitoring for Legacy **| * ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
