license server

Hi everyone,

is there any license server out there providing licenses on a 'per-use' base?

we have several licenses in house, mostly node-locked, some floating but in our FPGA design flow a great deal of the time is spent on a stupid editor (vhdl/verilog) with very little use of the license itself.

We were wondering whether exists some services which 'lend' the license on a 'per-use' base and is charged for the amount of *actual* time the license is used.

Any comment/idea/suggestion is appreciated.

Al

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alb
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Most vendors have a so called term license, that is you purchase a license for several month. This is relative expensive but might be a solution for you.

If you spend most of your time with an editor then get 1 license and share it amongst your engineers. You can install the license on a server and VNC into it, share a dongle etc.

Hans

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HT-Lab

On Mon, 10 Mar 2014, HT-Lab wrote: Hi Hans,

I was aware about this, but it does not solve the issue. The amount of projects we work on is sufficient to require a 'continuous' access to the licenses. Nevertheless the amount of sharing can be greatly optimized if there was a service which charged on per-use base.

sharing a dongle is something we do already (manually). Even if this is the case and the users were using it throughout the whole working day (which is not true) a dongle is grossly underused.

Maybe we should think about lending *our* licenses when we do not use them and make some profit out of them :-).

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A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text. 
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alb

Hi Alb,

If a per-use scheme would bring in any extra money then I am sure the EDA (or any other) industry will adopt it. Trying to get something supported which will bring in less money is never going to be easy ;-)

You can share a dongle over the network, not sure how legal this is.

Even if this is

You will find yourself quickly in court.....

Regards, Hans

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HT-Lab

yeh I seems to remember year ago someone tried to start service licenses sharing. With people in different time zones that would be pretty smart

It was quickly shot down, can't remember what big eda tool it was but I think there was something about not being allowed to use a license more than a mile from the company that bought it

-Lasse

Reply to
langwadt

On Mon, 10 Mar 2014, snipped-for-privacy@fonz.dk wrote: Hi Lasse,

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Damn it I think you are right! I used to have access to Cern licenses' pool but the maintainer warned me about using it only within the site /thanks/ to a clause mentioning some physical distance between the user and the license...

And what if I'm travelling around the globe but still want to have access to the license that I legitemely paid?

In a world where everything is connected I find these type of clauses a threat to individual's freedom. Imagine if you buy a pair of shoes that you can only wear within a single city, or a cup of coffee that you can only drink within 2 blocks from the coffee shop...

Reply to
alb

He is right, the distance clause is there to prevent company A from sharing its license with company B next door.

I just checked my Modelsim license agreement which states:

A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800meter) radius. Customer may have Software temporarily used by an employee for telecommuting purposes from locations other than a Customer office, such as the employee's resi dence, an airport or hotel, provided that such employee's primary place of employment is the site where the Software is authorized for use.

So you are OK to use it on your travels (assuming you use Modelsim). I suspect that most EDA tools have a clause like this. Just make sure you have your dongle insured in case you loose it.

If you want to use licenses globally you have to pay for a WAN license.

Regards, Hans.

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HT-Lab

or "worse" company A, B and C in Asia, Europe and the US

-Lasse

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langwadt

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