Re: *RANT* Ridiculous EDA software "user license agreements"?

In comp.arch.fpga license_rant_master wrote: : I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me. : Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's : servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching : sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless, : but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully : slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I : haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs, : restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some : interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing, : etc.)

Look at NX. It what LBX (Low Bandwidth X ) promised, but NX delivers. Probably not to easy to set yet, but worth a try.

Bye

I've heard that this is to prevent on-site consultants from sharing their personal license (or more likely, the consultant's company's license) with their customer. Otherwise only ASIC consulting companys would be buying the $500K licenses.

Here's a hint: like a lot of things in life, these restrictions are negotiable if you are a big enough customer.

or an america and european company could get together and share licenses, with a 7-8-9 hour time difference they wouldn't need the licenses at the same time

I think some companies (big ones) can a special license, I know one that share worldwide and I would think they have a pool of licenses

-Lasse

I'm glad you did speak up ! I wish more people would - preferably not anonymously ...

Here is another free Verilog simulator, you might find it will run the more serious verilog jobs:

Runs on Linux ...

Good Luck !

Best Regards, rudi ======================================================== ASICS.ws ::: Solutions for your ASIC/FPGA needs ::: ..............::: FPGAs * Full Custom ICs * IP Cores ::: FREE IP Cores ->

The trend of "unless you are going to fork us over some more megabucks and are a large company anyways we will disallow doing resonable things" in software licences is rather disturbing.

I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest. If you mean he should run the programs on an office machine using interface software from home, that is what he wants to get away from. If you are talking about checking out the license over the network, that is what is forbidden by the license.

What are you suggesting?

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

snipped-for-privacy@XYarius.com Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL

This was certainly the case when I was at Agilent. We had three license server triads (three each in Germany, US and Singapore) that served the company's global license needs.

It sucked a bit that we were in Melbourne, and the closest server was several thousand km away. The time taken to acquire a license was so long that some users would simply not close the gui (e.g. in Modelsim) and use up a license all day even when they didn't need to use the tool.

Regards, Allan.

(Disclaimer: IANAL) Site wide licenses definitely are licenses and the two companies involved can agree basically on any ridiculous licensee term that they can up with, but this might not be the case for a personal edition.

For example if you can manage to buy modelsim PE in a shop or order it online without clicking through the license agreement than you just made a regular purchase and there is no license agreement involved. Even if you click through the license agreement it is very doubtfull that it is valid. Basically a purchase is a purchase not matter what you call it and the first sale doctrine applies, which means that the rightholder can not control the use of an item after the first sale.

This means that you can move your software around (both from place to place on the same computer, but also from computer to computer) Also, your company can sell the software to you and you sell it back later. There is no way the tool vendor can interfere with that. (for purchased, not rented software) Once you have license files for both computers you can change ownership easily as often as you want. But remember to deinstall the software each time.

Kolja Sulimma

Be careful. License law is a very hard field, especially if different countries are involved. If you download your software, there might be the law of two countries involved, which complicates everything.

In Germany your are right that you could ignore any license agreement, when purchasing a standard programm (enter the shop and buy a CD). But you have to deal with the license agreement, when purchasing a license (or get it free) by downloading a software.

These are two different things, which seem very similar.

bye Thomas

Probably not. By downloading you are receiving a single copy of the software. The process of copying was initialized by the seller. Only the ownership of that copy is transfered, there is no license for copying necessary, the transaction can be handled as a purchase. Also, the buyer probably believes this is a purchase anyway, so that a license contract is likely to be void.

One could argue that the process of copying is performed by the person doing the download, but that view has MAJOR implication on copyright law. Basically it makes P2P downloads legal in many countries. So don't expect that view to be successful.

Again, IANAL,

Kolja Sulimma

IANAL, too. German law is not logical in any ways (as most other laws I asume). Maybe you should google in de.soc.recht.* In short you can't get ownership on software in Germany, but you can get ownership on a CD containing software. For using a software you need the right to use it (Nutzungrecht), often called license. In Germany you get this license either by getting owner of a CD containing the software, or by a license agreement.

bye Thomas

It's easy enough to set up the server (either look at the commercial version from

My understanding of "on the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license fee is paid" is that it can be either used on different computers at the same site *or* on one computer at different locations, i.e. a portable computer. Am I wrong?

Paul

..and of course entirely unenforceable in practice, unless they insist you have a GPS receiver on the machine.... How is anyone ever going to know where you physically are when you use it ?

Too bad its not easy to setup a server in FreeBSD ( i know, totaly OT )

Like others will most likely point out, something like TightVNC would support compression, and is even easier to setup then NX..

With SSH, He is actually half way there, just forward port 5900 and install VNC.

But with VPN the license is still checked out only on the machine at work. VPN only allows you to see your work desktop at home, so technically it's probably legal since the tool is not actually running on your home machine at all (your home machine only acts as a terminal).

Phil

I have a company modelsim dongle, which I have always assumed I can move around and use on any machine the dongle is currently plugged into. By definition I can only be using it in one place at a time ...

Surely this is allowed ??

/MikeJ

p.s. sorry I mailed you Hans, hit the wrong button :)