Putting a price on a virtual computer

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Metering

There's a move in some parts of the software industry towards self-metering software. The idea is that customers are getting as much from one copy on a very fast machine as they used to get from multiple copies on slower machines, so the vendors are losing out.

The idea is that the software would basically keep track of work done, rather than copies outstanding (or licenses checked out, etc.) In corporate environments the licensee would, per contract, forward the (cryptographically signed maybe) logfile periodically to the vendor for billing. Alternately, the software would come with some number of "hours" on the meter and quit when it ran out.

For individual users, some sort of "call home" feature would probably be used.

Frankly, as annoying as these schemes are I prefer them over some of the alternatives for the professional software I use. If there were competition for home users I suspect that the terms would be acceptable to most users. IMHO the present paranoia regarding licensing and "phone home" derives at least in part from the sense that users are being dictated to rather than having any choice in the matter.

Posted by: Yagotta B. Kidding   Posted on: 07/17/06 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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