Introduction

LicenseControl is a capability that performs product activaiton/licensing. LicenseControl has some specific goals:

• provide an easy-to-use product licensing system
• provide an "above board" licensing system
• keep the user in control of their software, system(s) and privacy
• provide an effective and secure licensing system
• provide an inexpensive software activation product and service

LicenseControl supports two modes of operation; Trial mode and Licensed mode. Trial mode normally provides a limited-capability operation that is common for products that are delivered in a "try and see" form. Licensed mode is normally used to support full-capability operation for a licensed product.

The Licensed mode is tied to a given product version and the system upon which the product was licensed. Various technologies and strategies (including encryption) are utilized to accomplish the licensing. While the licensing is meant to be secure, it is also meant to be easy to use and to keep the legitimate user "in control" of their own system.

Licensing Overview

Licensing a product involves:

• installing and running the product on the system for which it is to be licensed
• agreeing to a License Agreement (Vendor decides whether this is required)
• supplying a License ID that was received when the product was purchased (from Kagi, in the case of our products)
• obtaining and installing the License (a 1-menu + 1-button operation, via the Internet)

If you are interested, you are able to review exactly what's being supplied to our licensing server. Full disclosure of the information that originates from your system, in order to ensure your information privacy, has been one of the "must have" requirements for our licensing process.

One of the problems with many secure licensing strategies is the loss of control and difficulty of use. LicenseControl puts the user in control by allowing a product to be "unlicensed" by relinquishing a license. A license that has been relinquished is temporarily returned to the licensing server. After being relinquished, a license can then be re-used after the product has been moved to another system.

LicenseControl also allows a product to be re-licensed without having the original License ID, as long as that product was previously licensed on that system and that license was not relinquished. The relicensing often removes the need to "dig out" the License ID when updating or in the situation where a system is being restored after a disk failure, for example.

Finally, LicenseControl supports the concept of license-compatible products. A Vendor can define a version of a product as being license-compatible with a collection of other product versions or even other products. A given License ID can be used to license any license-compatible product. It is common that some updates are "free" updates. In order to support this, the Vendor simply declares these as being license-compatible with the previous versions.

License-compatible updates/products, where the update/product is installed on the same system as the licensed version/product, can be re-licensed without having the original License ID that was received at purchase time.

For more detailed information, please see the Frequently Asked Questions and the Documentation. In particular, detailed information about the content of the information communicated to the licensing server is provided. Furthermore, instructions for capturing and verifying what's actually communicated to the licensing server are also provided ... just in case you don't want to take our word for it (it's OK, neither would we).