Overview of Licensing
FlexNet Publisher is a method of providing software licensing that has two basic components:
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FlexEnabled application—The software application that requires a license. |
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A license—Contains the license rights that define how the software application can be used. |
Typically the license defines:
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What software functionality can be used. Functions provided by the software can be separately licensed. The licensed functions are referred to as features. When multiple features are defined, different versions of the product can be licensed by including different feature sets. For example, the license for the ‘demo’ version of the product could include the feature ‘trial’, the ‘standard’ version of the product the features ‘trial’ and ‘basic’ and the ‘professional’ version ‘trial’, ‘basic’ and ‘extend’ features. |
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What versions of the software can be used. |
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How many copies of the software can be running. |
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The systems on which the software can be used. |
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The period during which the software can be used. |
These and other items in the license define how the software can be used and collectively are referred to as a license model.
The license can be stored:
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In a license file—A text file, file_name.lic, whose contents are protected by signatures that are authenticated by the FlexNet Publisher licensing components. |
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In trusted storage—A secure location whose contents are encrypted. Licenses are stored as fulfillment records. Fulfillment records in trusted storage can be read only by FlexNet Publisher licensing components. |
The FlexEnabled application can obtain a license directly, either from a license file or from local trusted storage on the same machine. Some license models, described as served, provide licenses that are held centrally by a license server and used by FlexEnabled applications connected to the license server across a TCP/IP network.
This document describes how to install and use a license server to provide licenses for FlexEnabled products that use served license models. The basic license model that requires a license server is referred to by several names depending on the context:
Concurrent licenses allow a fixed number of concurrent users to use licensed features at any one time. The license server controls the use of these licenses, which are not normally locked to a specific machine, and float on the network. FlexNet Publisher provides for many variations of this basic license model, for example the use of a set of concurrent licenses can be restricted to a group of users.