BorlandTalk.com

Christopher Burke · Guest

Here is my idea to solve the registration issue, whilst still allowing
Codegear to maintain control over their property.

Here are some of the requirements:
1. A customer needs to be able to use their software on an appropriate
number of machines, now in my experience - 3 is about the normal limit
for that... a home, an office and a portable device.
2. A customer needs to be assured that they can use their software in
the case of the licence server being off the air for technical or
business reasons
3. Codegear needs to ensure that people don't just wildly pirate their
software willy nilly.

So here is the rough idea:

1. Codegear supplies a registration client (which is updated frequently,
and thus can't be hacked too easily), the purpose of this client is to
allow an end user to connect to the licence server and get a cache of
licences (e.g. for me, I need 3 D2007, 3 D4PHP and 1 BDS2006) and store
them locally. It then decrements a counter (so I always know how many I
have used AND how many I have left). The other purpose of this software
is described a further down.
2. Each of Codegear's software installs expects and uses up one of these
cached files (i.e. if you install on laptop, home and office, they each
use a different one).
3. This licence cache has heavily encrypted details of my serial
numbers, my name, codegear licence details - lots of personal stuff,
maybe even my credit card. Fundamentally, these files are things I get
to back up, but they have information in them which whilst encrypted -
clearly identify me as the owner of these licence files.
4. Each of Codegear's software uninstalls returns a licence to the
cache, and the codegear registration client can return them to licence
server byu incrementing a counter (i.e. I no longer use my Delphi 2007
on a home machine, I return the licence to the cache).
5. The registration client can in the future (if you have lost your
cache, or changed your machines often enough) get a new cache upto a
preset limit (probably 10-12). The disctinction here is that the licence
caches are able to be saved and restored, so there is less dependence on
them.
6. If Codegear goes belly up sometime down the track, and the licence
server is no longer available - then the registration client would be
able to verify that Codegear's licence server is non-operational (via
appropriate connectivity tests, DNS and registry checks) and give out a
new cache based upon an end of life facility.

This sounds way more complicated than it is... but it fundamentally
removes the dependence on manual processes to be able to use my
software, it allows fully supported backing up of my licence cache - and
removed the end of life dependency from persons who may find this a problem.

I know it would have solved my problems alot faster...

Christopher Burke

Ivan Pastine · Guest

I agree with everybody, I would really hate a dongle -- definitely wouldn't buy if one were
required. But, an OPTIONAL dongle might help with the due diligence problem. Under normal use you
would just use activation. But if for some reason the activation servers were unavailable the
dongle would work.

Loren Pechtel · Guest

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 12:36:04 +0100, "Paul Scott"
<paul.scott (AT) removethis_infmansys (DOT) com> wrote:

Loren Pechtel · Guest

On Fri, 20 Apr 2007 09:40:51 +0100, "Peter Morris"
<support (AT) NOdroopySPAMeyes (DOT) com> wrote:

Scott Woods · Guest

Sounds like a good plan

email: swoods80 (AT) gmaill (DOT) com
"Christopher Burke" <borlandng (AT) craznar (DOT) com> wrote in message
news:46281869 (AT) newsgroups (DOT) borland.com...