All Mgrs Mtg-2006.11.01-Unix Soft Licensing Mgmt

Unix Software Licensing Mgmt by Martin Cuma, CHPC For non-widely used software (for CHPC users). Two different ways they do licensing. Many of the licenses are for highly specialized, computational software. Example 1: Buy the program, then you have to know what you're doing. No buyers' protection. Example 2: own license servers - CHPC has a dedicated license server machine for proprietary licenses - accessible thru CHPC IP space. Most CHPC licenses use a management software package called ""FlexLM"" which is more primitive than the KeyServer package Richard presented (no GUI interface, etc.) The right to use the license server is included with the software license fee so there is no additional fee to run the License Manager. One example is Matlab. If you buy a single user license or full network license it must check for the FlexLM license. When starts up, it checks for the license file either installed on your local machine (single user license) or it points to a server where the license is checked (full network license). In the case of the full server license, FlexLM keeps track of all licenses used (concurrent use). This works well for specialty applications rather than widely used software (Windows). Network pooling could be applied at a campus level. In the case of Matlab, the network license is much cheaper than the multiple individual single user licenses because they may be shared. FlexLM is command line oriented. When they buy new software, they just add the license info to the license file and restart the server.