On Mon, 26 Dec 2011 16:11:02 -0500, zMan <zedgarhoo...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >OK, I gotta ask -- what's the problem you're trying to solve? You >don't trust your customers? In over a quarter century in the mainframe >software business, I've come across ONE customer running software on >an unlicensed box, and it was an oversight -- and a nice full-price >bluebird for the sales rep. I don't believe "CPUIDs" are worth the >hassle. Obviously the point of view of someone who doesn't make a living by selling their software. I can tell you from personal experience (one of my clients) who I helped write CPU protection for about 10 years ago that there were many instances of unauthorized use and in at least one case I know about the abuse was rampant. I know a lot of the unauthorized use wasn't intentional, but a lot of it was also or shops just didn't care since there was no checking. Some of the companies that used this software outsourced their IT, and ended up using it on different machines than those that were licensed. Or the outsourcer copied it to other machines / environments / clients. My client must have lost hundreds of thousands of dollars in licensing / maintenance fees and fees from related litigation. In my own personal experience as a sysprog, I know some of the same things have happened unintentionally. Consolidations, moving LPARs around, creating / cloning new LPARs can lead to this and when the software doesn't check it's easy for the "techies" to make mistakes since they often (usually?) don't know the T's and C's of all the software contracts. So even though it can be a pain, I actually prefer that any vendor that cares, checks the CPU id for authorization. If the software has a "site license" option, then have a method for a non-cpu specific key to generate for the client. Provide an easy way to change the key and a grace period that won't put the shop's business in jeopardy because of a missing / wrong key after a CPU upgrade or engine add. Regards, Mark -- Mark Zelden - Zelden Consulting Services - z/OS, OS/390 and MVS mailto:m...@mzelden.com Mark's MVS Utilities: http://www.mzelden.com/mvsutil.html Systems Programming expert at http://expertanswercenter.techtarget.com/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
