We have our products tell how long they are licensed for (how much time is left) on each startup. When it gets within 45 days we make it highlighted (but still rolls off the screen), then at 15 days it stays on the screen. Then when it expires, we still have a "grace" period, that varies with the product and the site. It's a little more work, but only has to be done once (when it starts up) and then sets bits that can be checked periodically for the "always up" products so that they don't have to do anything but compare once a day or so. The overhead is extremely minimal, and we have not had complaints about the intrusiveness of the messages.
We don't like having that code at all, but unfortunately have been bitten in the past with sites that "forgot" to pay and ignore our requests for payment. there are two of them are still running the code from over 8 years ago (for free) and one of them actually asked us for a "update" to the newer version, but didn't want to move to it because it had the built-in expiration. I guess that you could consider it a "lost" sale, but the alternative is that they just continue to run the old code (which is far less capable) for free. So, while most sites are honest and would never consider running unpaid code, there are some (although very few) that don't care. The sad part is that we price our code low enough that any site can run it and save a lot of money over the cost of IBM's or CA's (etc.) code, and we even offer a further discount for the IBM-Main and Share members, but we still get calls from sites that are upgrading their OS and find that they are running our code and did not know it. Sometimes it's carried there by migrating sysprogs, and sometimes the code was zapped to get around the checking. Normally, they become customers, but sometimes (when we send them information on the cost) they simply disappear. There are sites paying tens of thousands to run IBM's or CA's automation products and don't blink at the cost, our customer base is more concerned about the overall cost and feature sets (we have more features at a MUCH lower cost, on the order of 2% to 5% of the cost for "theirs"). Those sites tend to tell us they are expiring soon (well before the 45 day reminder starts), and it works out well for all involved. We have moved to 100% electronic delivery of invoices, and we were able to reduce our product costs even more because of the savings in people costs. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to lists...@bama.ua.edu with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
