Supported License Models And Parameters
Flexibility, Customizability (Professional Edition Only)
How EasyLicenser Product Licensing Works
Prerequisites, Supported Environments, System Limits
The purpose of this document is to enable you to fully benefit from EasyLicenser by acquainting you with its benefits, features and supported environments.
EasyLicenser is a software license management product that enables Independent Software Vendors (ISV’s) to effortlessly license-protect virtually any Java, C, C++ or (using EasyLicenser 2.0 runtime libraries) Visual Basic 6 based product based on virtually any licensing policy using software license keys.
EasyLicenser consists of:
A License Manager graphical user interface program that you use to interactively generate keys for your products and customers. The License Manager includes a database for managing products, customers and license keys.
A set of target-language-specific run time library API’s for use by your license-protected application at your customer site. You embed or otherwise distribute the API libraries with your license-protected application.
EasyLicenser is also used to generate license keys for the companion Orion network license server which is used to provide product activation functionality as well as meet complex licensing needs of networked and distributed applications. Orion provides its own run time libraries for embedding into your application and an Orion-enabled application does not use the EasyLicenser run time libraries unless it is simultaneously enabled for EasyLicenser.
EasyLicenser is available in two flavors: a base professional edition referred to as EasyLicenser Pro, and an Orion-enabled professional edition referred to as EasyLicenser Pro - Orion-enabled. The base edition is appropriate if your requirement is limited to license protecting applications with the EasyLicenser runtime library. The Orion-enabled edition provides the added capability of generating license keys for the Orion server, and is required if your application is license protected with Orion.
Both editions provide eCommerce capabilities, which enable you to automate license key generation and email transmission at a JSP-based eCommerce-enabled web site.
The key business benefit to you of using EasyLicenser is increased revenues from your product sales due to:
Enhanced Revenue Through Improved Compliance
Of ISV Product License Agreement Terms By End Customers
Although most corporate customers
are honest, distributing a product that is not license protected is equivalent
to leaving money on the table: sooner or later, someone will “borrow”
it because it’s there, and forget to return it. The problem is particularly
acute in consumer environments. Statistics show that software piracy
accounts for lost software sales ranging from 30% to 90% depending on
the geographic region.
EasyLicenser reduces the barrier
to license protecting software by enabling you to effortlessly license
protect
your products with minimal development effort and at minimal
cost. At the same time, one-click facilities are provided to enforce
operating system checks of the user and host information embedded in
the keys, should you choose to do so. EasyLicenser also provides the
capability of enforcing deferred time limited licensing and deferred node
locking that do not require your end customers to communicate their
node locking machine parameters or other information to you. And the extensible framework enables
you to implement and plug in virtually any hardware or operating system
based enforcement policy.
EasyLicenser also includes facilities
that enable you to inspect license keys obtained from audits of your end
customers’ computer systems.
Enhanced Acceptability
Of ISV Products By End Customers
Existing license protection schemes
are onerous, particularly to the ISV’s end customer. In order to
meet the ISV’s licensing requirements, the end customer is required to
install and administer a license server, or lock a software product installation
to a particular hardware or network. When the ISV’s product incorporates
one or more OEM products, a multitude of license keys is required to be
installed by the end customer when the OEM products are themselves license
protected. This increases the end customer’s cost of ownership and
dampens ISV product sales when alternatives exist in a competitive marketplace.
EasyLicenser strikes a happy medium
between the extremes of no license enforcement and draconian licensing,
and allows you to minimize disruptions to your end customer while protecting
your revenue stream. Your
end customer is not exposed to any administration overhead beyond what
is intrinsic to your product itself. Further,
the default "soft" key enforcement mechanisms that are included with
the
EasyLicenser run time do not force an end customer to lock your product
installation to a specific machine or network card. As a result,
end customers are by default free to reconfigure their hardware and
network
environments without being required to contact you and request new keys.
Notwithstanding the above, you have the option to implement
or utilize optional built-in rigid enforcement should you choose to do
so, as discussed above. If desired, node locking can be achieved
without imposing the burden on your end customer of collecting and
reporting node locking information, with the deferred node locking
capability.
Trial licensing is also simplified using EasyLicenser's deferred time
limited licensing functionality: you can distribute a single binary for
anonymous installation by evaluators, who are automatically constrained
to a fixed trial period that automatically begins upon installation,
without any interaction between you and your end customer.
When your product incorporates license protected
OEM products, you have the option of embedding the oem license keys into
your product key so that your customer sees a single license key.
When your application is license protected with Orion and EasyLicenser is used
to generate Orion's server license keys, you realize the dual benefit of
providing your end customers with unconstrained flexibility by either not locking them
to specific machines or automating the node locking process, and at the same time you are reliably protected from piracy
by virtue of Orion's flexible licensing models and comprehensive security features.
Flexibility And Adaptability
To Changing Requirements, Environments And Circumstances
It is impossible for a license management
sytem vendor to accurately predict all possible requirements and environments
in which their solution may be deployed. Often, the only license
management alternatives available to an ISV are to either hand-craft a
custom solution or accommodate the fixed functionality of existing license
management solutions, even if these are not a perfect fit for the ISV’s
requirements.
EasyLicenser is a flexible and extensible
solution. A wide range of commonly used licensing models is built
into the product. In addition, extensibility mechanisms that are
available with the product enable you to define arbitrary licensing models
and embed arbitrary information into your keys.
Built-In Sales Opportunity
Management Capabilities
Your product license keys are
a potential gold mine of information on your customers as well as current
and future product sales. EasyLicenser’s database maintains customer and
product information that is correlated with generated license keys, and
provides facilities that enable you to produce reports on your products
and customers.
Most likely, you provide evaluation
copies of your products to prospects. EasyLicenser not only enables
you to produce evaluation license keys that can subsequently be replaced
with production license keys without your customers being required to
reinstall your product; it enables you to increase the conversion rate
from prospects to paying customers by alerting you to customers whose
evaluation keys are expiring or have expired.
A single EasyLicenser product distribution provides all features. The features are enabled according to the EasyLicenser product license that you initially or subsequently purchase from Agilis.
Single-user License Model:
Named User: the named user may be a logical identifier or a combination of node-locked operating system user and machine.
Machine: the machine may be a logical identifier or a host name.
Server License Model:
The server license model is used to define limits on entities that either act on
a server are used by the server. The server itself is optionally node locked.
The server model is not related to the Orion license server.
Named Role Limit: a named role typically represents a grouping of users according to an application-defined role.
Concurrent User Limit: a concurrent user typically represents a login session or active request against the server application.
CPU Count
CPU MHZ
License parameters:
Time Limited: time-limited licenses may be absolute or relative to first use.
Metered: license metering can either be managed directly by the protected application or automatically managed by the EasyLicenser runtime library.
Product Options: product options are name-value pairs specified by the ISV. Any number of options may be specified, subject to overall key length limits.
Custom Cookie: the custom cookie can be used by the ISV to embed information into license keys for later introspection during an audit. For Orion licenses, the custom cookie is reserved for internal use by EasyLicenser and Orion.
Custom License Key: the custom license key can be used to embed arbitrary information for processing at run time by corresponding custom code that is developed by the ISV and plugged into the runtime library for extensibility. For Orion licenses, the custom key is reserved for internal use by EasyLicenser and Orion.
The Orion-enabled edition additionally supports the generation of Orion server licenses, which consist of a User license model and an Orion server license type. The above license policy parameters can be specified, with the exception that the custom key and cookie are reserved for internal use, and additional Orion-specific parameters "service" and "Orion user limit" are specified, as described in the Orion product documentation.
Database of customers, products and generated license keys.
Import / Export of customer / product / license key in XML, comma-separated-value, tab-separated-value, formatted-text, property-file and raw formats.
Comprehensive data search facilities.
Transaction management
Protection from system failures
Protection from disk media failures and file system corruption
Automatic generation of multiple keys
The ability to clone keys in order to effortlessly generate keys that are similar to previously-generated keys.
Hassle-free on-the-fly recharge and upgrade of EasyLicenser license
API-based programmatic key generation
Protection of time limited application licenses from changes to system clock.
Protection of application licenses from spoofing of license management run time library.
Protection of application licenses from spoofing of application calls to license management run time library.
Detection of tampering of EasyLicenser (and application) libraries.
Protection of application licenses from use by other EasyLicenser-enabled applications.
Protection of application licenses from viewing, altering or cloning by customers.
Secure and automatic management of application license state such as current metered consumption, deferred node locking and relative time limited licenses.
Ability to embed custom “cookie” information into generated keys, and subsequently retrieve such information for auditing or other general purposes.
Ability to embed custom licensing information into generated keys, and subsequently process such custom information at the end customer site, for example to supplement or replace licensing policies that are built into EasyLicenser.
Ability to embed custom application state information into activated licenses at end customer sites, and subsequently manage such custom application state, for example to maintain and update application usage statistics.
Ability to embed OEM license keys into generated keys in order to combine multiple keys into one.
Ability to perform one-click operating system based enforcement of user and / or host names embedded in the license key.
After you initially download EasyLicenser, and when you run it the first time, you enter the EasyLicenser key that you obtain from Agilis. The key defines an initial quota of License Units based on your subscription agreement. A License Unit represents a unit of license key generation by you. Whenever you generate a key to license protect a copy of your product, your quota is decremented by a number of License Units that depends on the type of key you generate and its parameters. For example, when you generate a concurrent-user server license, the license units consumed from your EasyLicenser license will increase with the concurrent-user limit that you specify for your license key. The specific relationship between license units and the parameters for the keys that you generate is encoded in your EasyLicenser key.
At the time of renewal of your term subscription, or inbetween, you will receive additional EasyLicenser keys from Agilis, which you use to recharge your EasyLicenser installation. The process of recharging an installation with a new key updates the expiration date, quota limits and options of your installation.
License Manager: Java Runtime or JDK 1.4.2+.
Run Time Library: Java Runtime or JDK 1.3.1+.
Any Windows, Macintosh, Linux or Unix platform that supports Java 1.4.2 and above.
Product Installation And Java Run Time:
Any hardware supported by Java 1.4.2 and above.
Product Installation Only:
Minimum 600 MHZ CPU, 256MB RAM. 20MB Hard Disk space. The CPU speed, amount of memory and disk space will affect the number of keys you can keep active in your license key database as well as the number of keys you can import or export at a time.
Display resolution is a minimum of 1024x768. The recommended display resolution is 1280x800.
Windows: Windows 98, Windows NT 4.0, Windows 2000, Windows XP, Windows Vista.
Linux: 32-bit Linux-Intel distributions based on kernel 2.4 and above.
Solaris (separate download): Solaris-SPARC 7 and above, 32- and 64-bit mode
Between 10,000 and 100,000 depending on CPU, memory and disk space availability. No limit on total combination of exported and active keys. No limit on number of active keys maintained in external database when using programmatic key generation.
Between 10,000 and 100,000 entries depending on CPU, memory and disk space availability for a single export file. No limit on the number of export files.
Java: 4096 characters. C/C++: 1000 characters.
Java: 3072 characters. C/C++: 600 characters.
Java: 3072 characters. C/C++: 600 characters.
Java: Key size limit. C/C++: 375 characters.
Visit the Setup, Management And Deployment Guide for instructions on setting up and configuring EasyLicenser. To obtain an understanding on how EasyLicenser works and how to use it, view the Concepts documentation.