From: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Subject: Re: SunPro/Tech software licensing... (long)
Reply-To: rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu (Ruth Milner)
Organization: National Radio Astronomy Observatory, Socorro NM
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 22:38:09 GMT

In article <1992Dec19.162637.4175@nobeltech.se> ppan@nobeltech.se (Per Andersson) writes:
>
>If, for example SUN, were serious about this, the licence manager would
>be included in the system, and for FREE. So every vendor didn't include
>thei own licence manager, a little bit different than the other. 

What makes you think that, even if Sun did supply such a thing, every vendor 
of software for Suns would use it? They wouldn't, of course. They would want
a license management program that would work on every platform they sold their
product for, and one that they could make modifications to. Can you see Sun 
selling this hypothetical licensing product to IBM/DEC/SGI/HP etc. etc., let
alone IBM/DEC/SGI/HP et al. buying it from them? Not likely.

>And as
>for the one SUN uses, it has a smallest timeframe for how long you allocate
>a license, which is 15 or 30 minutes. 

This is a restriction SunPro is putting in. The license manager they are using 
(Highland Software's FlexLM) is actually about as close to a "standard" as you 
can get, in the sense that numerous software products from various vendors 
running on different platforms use it. While FlexLM *allows* specification of 
a minimum linger time, it doesn't *require* a rock-bottom minimum >0 . We have 
several products that use it, and none of them has a minimum linger time 
configured. When someone exits the program, that license is available essen-
tially immediately. 

>Who has a compile that take 15 minutes ?

Actually, we have some in-house packages that take 15 *hours* - or more - to 
compile. Sure, this is multiple routines, but it still requires that much time 
to complete all the necessary compilations. And there are some individual
modules that *do* take longer than 15 minutes. Needless to say, we don't 
compile the whole thing very often :-). The point is, don't assume that 
everyone's application requirements look just like yours.

That said, however, the problem with the 15-minute linger time is that it
doesn't start at the *beginning* of the license invocation, it starts near
the *end*. So your compilation sequence actually takes ~n+15 minutes instead
of the n it used to. If all your compilations are >>15 minutes from start to
completion, this isn't such a big deal. If they tend to be short, however, it 
is.

The reason most often quoted in defense of the 15-minute minimume is so that 
a developer compiling many routines (i.e. a make of some reasonable size) won't
suddenly be left hanging in the middle because s/he can't get the license that 
time around. This is, of course, a very good reason, but there are ways around 
this. Linger time is only one of them, and most users seem to agree that 15 
minutes is far too long. Compilations in Makefiles follow hard on each other's 
heels, not 15 minutes apart, and many applications need more than 15 minutes' 
testing and modification before compilation is done again. In the meantime, 
someone else could be using it. 

Another way, much better IMHO, is to reserve a license for each of your key 
developers, or a certain number of licenses for a group of them (FlexLM has
the capability to allow this). Sure, this means no-one else can use them, but 
if some of your most vital staff do a lot of compilations and would basically 
sit around twiddling their thumbs if they had to wait for a license, then it's 
worth it. You should supply an adequate number of licenses for them anyway.

The 15-minute mandatory linger time interferes with one's ability to tune
license allocation by artificially changing the behavior of the compilation 
environment. Regardless of how stupid Sun thinks it is, I should be given the 
choice of making people wait a few minutes for a compiler license. I shouldn't 
be prevented from shooting myself in the foot *if I consciously decide to do 
so* :-). By all means pick a default that seems reasonable, but don't make it 
mandatory.

>all vill be running VMS on Alphas soon. At least VMS works, and has the
>basic tools needed included. And it even works in clusters.

Assuming you can afford it, that is. Maybe this has changed by now, but the 
last I saw, you had to buy a Fortran/C/whatever compiler license for *each* 
VMS machine you wanted to use it on. Period. Around here, that translates to 
a lot more licenses - and a *lot* more money - than Sun's floating license 
scheme. Thanks, but no thanks.
-- 
Ruth Milner                          NRAO/VLA                  Socorro NM
Computing Division Head      rmilner@zia.aoc.nrao.edu