Software companies sometimes are confused by the meaning of licensing enforcement versus activation.

To be clear, "License enforcement" and "license activation" have very specific meanings, although they are sometime used interchangeably. The two concepts are very different. Let's define "license enforcement" first.

License Enforcement
License enforcement is the process of checking whether a software application or feature has a valid license available to it at runtime. Licenses are stored on an end user's disk as text files (.lic extension) with an encoded signature to prevent tampering with the parameters that describe the license. A single license file may contain mulitple feature and product licenses.

A license consists of at least the following parameters:
 

• Product or feature name
• A version number
• An expiration date for expiring licenses or demos 
• License count ("uncounted" for single-seat licenses)
• A machine ID or "host ID" to which the license is "locked"
• Encoded signature (sig) to prevent tampering with the license
   

A Sample License:

LICENSE demo Sample 5.7 permanent uncounted HOSTID=00a0d150a3b7 sig="license signature goes here"

Advanced license managers, such as RLM, allow the software vendor to define many other license attributes that further define the conditions that must be met at runtime for a successful license checkout. Some of these other attributes include:
 

• valid time zones
• license sharing parameters
• platform restrictions (eg. Windows only)
• start dates
• demo or beta flags
• soft limits
• named user type
• etc.
   

This license can be local (read directly from the user's file system) or it can be "served" by a license server installed on the customer's network. It is important to note that license servers are only required when you sell concurrent or floating licenses - otherwise, license files are read directly from disk by licensed applications.

The software developer interacts only with the licensing API. It is a library of licensing routines called from within the application to:
 

• initiate a license activation session (see below),
   
• query the available license inventory,
   
• check-out/check-in application or feature licenses, and
   
• query license attributes
   

Every time a licensed application runs, a license "check-out" api call determines whether this application is authorized to continue - in other words, "is it licensed?"  The application developer decides how to handle cases where no licenses are available at runtime for whatever reason.

When a license is not found, the application may try to "activate" itself by trying to obtain a license from an activation server as described below.

License Activation
A Sample Activation key: 6556-5465-8997-0379

"License Activation" is the process of successfully obtaining and installing a valid license file for a licensed application. There are many ways that this can be done, but the simplest approach for the end user might be the following:
 

1. End user installs the licensed application (from media or via an Internet download)
2. End user runs the licensed application for the first time, no valid license is found
3. The licensed application pops up an "activation dialog box" to prompt the user to enter his "activation key" which was sent as a result of the ordering process
    
4. The licensed application connects to a pre-determined activation server URL using an API call (via standard http)
5. The activation key and host id of the local machine are transmitted to the activation server. (Note that this step is done by the activation software, not the user)
6. Activation server validates the activation key, creates the corresponding license, then records the transaction
    
7. The newly minted license is then transmitted to the licensed application where it is permanently written to the user's local disk
8. Subsequent license check-out operations will now succeed. The licensed application is now both "activated" and "licensed"

Activation is typically only done once - when the application is installed. For more information on activation, please click here.

As stated above, there are many ways to transmit licenses to customers. License Activation over the Internet is merely one way of doing it. Other popular ways are based on email transmission.

One of the advantages of using an authenticated license file is that the end user can see (in plain text) what his license rights are. Other licensing systems hide rights in the registry or write to damaged disk sectors or use other mysterious techniques. End users prefer a more open and accessible approach because accurate knowledge of license rights gives them better control over their current license inventory and provides information to help them order more licenses from you when needed.
 

 

 

If you would like to evaluate RLM v4.0, please click here.
 

Craft Animations develops a suite of plug-ins called Craft Director Tools (for Autodesk 3ds max, Maya and Viz). Our software enables 3d-animators to record vehicle and camera animations in a very efficient way. Craft Director Tools is based on a new innovative approach for making 3d-animations. Instead of having an animator make all keyframes manually (a common approach which takes a lot of time and effort), the animator can simply steer the objects in real-time. The animation is automatically generated by an advanced simulator.

Our main customers are from the visualization and entertainment industry. Our products receive a lot of attention in Hollywood and many animation studios are currently using our tools in their workflow. But our products are also used widely by auto manufacturers and defense contractors, as we have very advanced tools for animating cars, helicopters and other vehicles.  Generally, any company that uses visualization can benefit greatly from Craft Director Tools.

Craft Animations was founded in January, 2006 and the first modules of Craft Director Tools were released in March, 2006. But the technology had been in development for several years before and began as a master's thesis by our founder Luigi Tramontana.

A competent professional animator can make approximately 8 seconds of animation per day. Craft Director Tools can produce the same result in a couple of seconds. This is possible because the animator no longer needs to animate each individual component (such as chassis, wheels, suspensions, flaps, rudders) making them all interact with each other, but only needs to steer the object manually. The details and behavior are then generated by the simulation.

Selecting a License Manager
We started out with another license manager which had support for only the Win32 platform.

We support two license types currently: full and demo licenses. The demo licenses are activated by an internal license key and communicate with our master server. Full licenses can either be activated by files or by activation keys. We also plan to support floating licenses in the near future.

When we came in contact with Reprise, we were already looking for a replacement for our license manager. We were planning to port our software to other platforms and our current license manager only supported the Win32 platform. There were also some internal limitations in that SDK which forced us to search for alternatives.

Reprise presented a solution with support for all the platforms we required, and an SDK which gives us a lot of options. The latter factor is what we appreciate the most about RLM. It is very small and requires no external dependencies. It just works. And the SDK is very open, enabling our developers to customize the license manager exactly the way we want it.

RLM appeared to be stable from day one. Due to the company's fast pace of innovation and unusually receptive attitude toward suggestions from customers, Reprise Software offers us an the opportunity to contribute to and even take part in its product development.

RLM fulfilled all of our license manager requirements and we have received good support from both the sales and development departments at Reprise.

We released our new version of Craft Director Tools with RLM in November, 2007.

 

Written in C#, this .Net interface is also available to other languages like Visual Basic and C++. It calls the RLM DLL that ships as a standard part of the Windows releases.

ISVs need only reference the project within their build environment to access the full scope of RLM, including license borrowing, etc.

Please contact Reprise Software to request a test copy.
 

 

The Runge Group, a global mining technology company provides mine planning software and specialist consulting services.  Runge will use RLM in its Mining Dynamics, XPAC, Talpac, XERAS and related mine management software solutions.

 Please read the full press release here.