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From: jbn@wdl1.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.micro
Subject: Re: software protection - dongles & othe
Message-ID: <586@wdl1.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 5-Aug-85 01:31:19 EDT
Article-I.D.: wdl1.586
Posted: Mon Aug  5 01:31:19 1985
Date-Received: Tue, 6-Aug-85 12:23:26 EDT
Sender: notes@wdl1.UUCP
Organization: Ford Aerospace, Western Development Laboratories
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Nf-ID: #R:brl-tgr:-22500:wdl1:1400059:000:1782
Nf-From: wdl1!jbn    Jul 30 11:42:00 1985


      Dongles are this year's solution to last year's problem.  What do I do
with our network of SUNs?  Most of them are diskless and run off a common file
server.  Now that we've got a file server (as opposed to the old disk server) 
all the stations are functionally interchangable, and you can sit down at any 
one that's free and use your files.  It's just like having one giant 
time-sharing system.
      Except for the licenced software.  Ideally, if we buy N copies of an
Ada compiler, we should be entitled to do N Ada compiles at once, anywhere
on the net.  But no one has a good way to enforce this, so vendors want to tie
the programs to the CPU serial number on the CPU board.  This destroys
the interchangability of the stations.  Yet we don't want to buy everything
for every station; our user community has very diverse needs.  Some people
are reducing instrumentation data with DataViews, others are drawing structure
charts with SCE, some are designing ICs, others PC boards, and some want to 
do Ada compiles.  There are lots of packages worth having one or two copies 
of, but only a few of general applicability are justified for every station.
And you can't move them around at all with CPU board serial number oriented 
protection.
      Apollo deals with this by offering a ``network licence'' for most
packages; such a licence typically costs about 7x the single unit price and
covers up to 100 stations on a single net.  SUN hasn't dealt adequately with
this problem, nor have their third-party vendors, and needs to.
      One minor misery; if you ever have to replace a CPU board, it may be
WEEKS before you get all the software updates needed to bring all the
purchased software up on the new board serial number.
      Any good ideas?

					John Nagle