Among the more-advanced and capable of the features we've
put into RLM is "Token
Licensing".
If you've ever wondered how to provide a license model
to your customers that allows you to:
- define product rights in terms of relative value
between your products, or
- allow a user to consume a mix of your products up to
a pre-determined level of value, or
- let a user consume a more-expensive alternative
license when a more-common product is unavailable,
then token licenses may be what you need.
To start using token licensing, simply implement the RLM API
as you would for any supported license model. If this is
already done, great! No need to create a second version of
your product just to support token licensing - it's built
in.
Now, think of how you want the value of your products to
relate to one another. You may want to create a hierarchy
of products, with lowest value to highest ("lite", "basic",
"pro", "guru", etc.) Or, you may wish to use a notion of
"product units" against which all token-licensed products
are ranked by relative value.
Then, enable token licensing via the license files you give
to your customers. Specify a LICENSE in terms of another of
your company's products (or "product_units" or other
surrogate for value):
LICENSE software_co sample 1.0 permanent token sig=xxxx \
token="<product_units 2.0 5>"
Be sure to also include in the customer's license file the
appropriate amount of "product_units":
LICENSE software_co product_units 2.0 permanent 100 sig=xxxx
In the above example, the customer will consume five "product_units"
for each instance of "sample" that they run, up to a
concurrent limit of 100 "product_units", or two concurrent
instances of "sample".
There are obviously many more examples we could provide;
hopefully this conveys the rudiments of an approach to using
tokens.
Feel free to contact us via
info@reprisesoftware.com should you wish to discuss the ways
in which RLM could help you bring your products to market with a
token licensing scheme.
