From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!hplabs!sri-unix!Mishkin@YALE.ARPA
Newsgroups: net.works
Title: Re: Apollo Software Blues
Article-I.D.: sri-arpa.1287
Posted: Fri May  6 06:01:57 1983
Received: Tue May 17 19:52:56 1983

From:     Nathaniel Mishkin <Mishkin@YALE.ARPA>

    From: harpo!floyd!cmcl2!philabs!sdcsvax!noscvax!jim @ Ucb-Vax
    Subject: Apollo software blues

    Many software vendors take "full" advantage of this PID check by
    selling an individual copy of their software for each workstation.
    As long as the workstation is used as a stand alone computer this
    marketing policy works.

    But, when one considers a large network of workstations served
    by a common file server, the whole picture changes...

    Assuming you have only one or two copies of some vendor's software
    to be shared by a number of people, what do you Apollo users of
    the software do about this?  Should I forget Apollo and buy SUNs
    instead?

This sure is a problem.  However unless you're assuming that SUN 3rd
party vendors are going to be inherently more generous than Apollo
3rd party vendors, I'm not sure why the problem should be a factor
in a Apollo vs. SUN purchase decision.

The 3rd party world is in a state of flux.  Their "per-CPU" pricing
policy is not quite right for the new distributed world.  Given that
(for all the reasons you cite) people are not going to be too keen
on being forced to use a particular workstation in order to run some
program, I suspect that if a vendor doesn't come up with a creative
solution to the problem, he may find a dearth of buyers.

I believe Apollo is working on system support for 3rd part vendors
to allow more flexible usage control.  I don't know what can be
done to make things absolutely secure (from the vendor's position).
I suppose the point is just to raise the level of difficulty to
subvert "unauthorized" usage high enough to make tampering not
worth the effort.

                    -- Nat
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