License Screen - Specifying License Attributes

To specify attributes for a new license or change the attributes for an existing license you can use the following control groups.


Product Group

This group allows specifying product and products' attributes for which a license is being issued:


General License Information Group

This group allows specifying general license attributes:


License Expiration Group

This group allows specifying license expiration attributes:


User Licensing Group

This group allows specifying applicable Licensing Model to which the generated license will adhere:


Uncounted

With Uncounted Model any number of users can work concurrently with the license regardless of the license's "number of copies" value.


Floating

With Floating Model only a certain number of users can work concurrently with the license according to the license's "number of copies" value. Actual usage check is done using the network broadcast facility. The following options are available:


Named

With "Named" Model only a certain number of users can work with the license according to the license's "number of copies" value. This is done via the activation and/or activation-and-lock facility

The activation radio buttons allow specifying whether Activation Support is enabled. The goal of license activation is to reduce a form of piracy known as casual copying or 'soft-lifting'. Casual copying is the sharing and installation of software that is not in compliance with the software's end user license agreement and is estimated to contribute to half of all pirated installations. Protection! Licensing Toolkit provides an Activation support to assist software developers/publishers and help them ensure that each license is installed in compliance with their protected software's end user license agreement and is not installed on more than the limited number (usually one) of computers. Activation Support provides two options - "Activation" and "Activation and Lock".

Protection! generates an activation key on the user's computer based on the parameter(s) that the developer decided to use (e.g., MAC address, Host Name, Number of CPUs, etc). Protection! uses its own proprietary algorithm to generate the activation key.

When either the activation or activation-and-lock requirement is specified then there is always a round trip...

In general steps could be as follows - for GUI application (example only):

  1. Vendor generates a license that requires "activation" or "activation and lock";
  2. Vendor provides such license to the customer;
  3. The customer copies a license file to its appropriate location manually or starts protected application and uses the Licensing Assistant to specify license file location;
  4. The customer gets the License Activation Assistant prompting him/her to activate the license. If off-line activation is chosen then he/she should provide Activation Key shown in the Assistant back to the vendor (e.g. via e-mail or phone). If the on-line option is chosen then the Protection! Backend Application must be used and it would be responsible to license activation, generation and delivery of activated license back to the customer;
  5. Vendor re-generates license turning on activation and lock and places supplied by customer Activation Key in the 'Activation Key' field in the Protection! Control Center;
  6. Vendor provides activated license back to the customer (if lock option is used then such license will also be locked to a user's system).

Note: If Protection! Backend is used then steps 5-6 will be automatically handled by Protection! Backend.

The following options are available:


Floating - Licensing Server

Only a certain number of users can work concurrently with the license according to the license number of copies value. Actual usage check is done by contacting the Licensing Server and acquiring the license lock. The following options are available:


Named - Licensing Server

Only a certain number of users can work with the license according to the license number of copies value. Actual usage check is done by contacting the Licensing Server and acquiring the license lock. The following options are available:


Features Tab

This tab shows the list of license features presented in the license and allows changing features' enabled states if needed.


Properties Tab

This tab allows specifying unlimited License Custom properties. These properties represent name-value pairs that could be embedded into a license and used by the application during license reading/validation.


Customer Tab - Sales Pro!

This tab allows specifying Customer information. If specified, then this information could be used:

It is possible to specify that customer attributes should be cleared during license operations:


Custom EULA Tab

It is possible to include a Custom License Agreement via the "Custom EULA" Tab. Protection! can handle several License Agreement types. One of them is a "Custom EULA". This license agreement is only for a TRULY custom license agreement. The user should only use custom license agreement in situations when he/she needs to create a special agreement for one customer, for some special case only!

Note: If Custom License Agreement via the "Custom EULA" Tab is used then this Custom License agreement is encoded into the license key. Therefore if the custom license agreement is large then the generated license key would also be increased in its size.

The "Include Custom End User License Agreement" check box specifies that the Custom End User License Agreement will be included in the generated license.