Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 12:57:08 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: nate@mt.sri.com (Nate Williams) Cc: terry@lambert.org, wpaul@skynet.ctr.columbia.edu, jhs@freebsd.org, current@freebsd.org, serious@freebsd.org, commercial@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Licensing Software Message-ID: <199609251957.MAA06526@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <199609251905.NAA12845@rocky.mt.sri.com> from "Nate Williams" at Sep 25, 96 01:05:00 pm
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
> > I specifically referenced IP addresses in my discussion because: > > Neither IP address or ethernet address will work, because of all of the > previous reasons, plus some that haven't been discussed. If I'm a > mobile user, don't punish me for having the ability to be flexible. The only "punishment" is that you can't take all of the site licenses to New Jersey with you when you take your laptop on vacation. > Basically, there is no good solution. My opinion of the matter is to > make it a 'local' file that is hard to hack, and then someone hide it's > location in the FS (inode #????) so that if you copy it to another > machine it won't work. Unless they use dump/restore. > My opinion is that the software should work on *this* disk, and that > everything else is subject to change. :) You simply can not uniquely identify PC hardware, other than drawing an arbitrary line at a configuration value that is not very easy or convenient to change, and which is typically not allowed to be duplicated on multiple machines. Dongles (the only real soloution being a hardware soloution) are simply too damn intrusive to be an acceptable soloution. Anyone who is arguing against a software only soloution is either arguing *for* dongles (an unrealistic argument) or *for* the elimination of licensing (another unrealistic argument). Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199609251957.MAA06526>