Kemp@dockmaster.ncsc.mil (Dave Kemp) (06/30/89)
We just received SunMathematica, and discovered that it is licensed for a
*single* CPU; you call Sun with the hostid of a machine, they generate a
password, and the software runs only on that host.
Now I have the problem of deciding which machine to license it on. I
don't want to walk to someone else's office to use it, and I don't want
people coming in to sit at my desk to use it either.
For a company that advertises the advantages of networking, licensing
software on other than a network basis (a la FrameMaker, Publisher, etc)
strikes me as disengenuous. I'm considering returning the software sight
unseen and just using it on one of the Macs, which at our site do not sit
on people's desks.
What a crock.
Dave Kemp <Kemp@dockmaster.ncsc.mil>TS36@uunet.uu.net (07/06/89)
> We just received SunMathematica, and discovered that it is licensed for a > *single* CPU; .... >Now I have the problem of deciding which machine to license it on. Run X11 and start your SunMathematica on a remote server. Be sure to get the latest version. SunMathematica grafics was buggy on early versions. (I hope it is doing well now)
scs@itivax.iti.org (Steve C. Simmons) (07/11/89)
Kemp@dockmaster.ncsc.mil (Dave Kemp) writes: >For a company that advertises the advantages of networking, licensing >software on other than a network basis (a la FrameMaker, Publisher, etc) >strikes me as disengenuous. I'm considering returning the software sight >unseen and just using it on one of the Macs, which at our site do not sit >on people's desks. I strongly suggest you do it, but please inform both Sun and the Mathematica folks *why* you are doing it *in writing*. A reasonably secure (ie, as secure as most PC copy protection) floating licence server is implementable in a few weeks (I know, I did it). But a real licence server takes one hell of a lot more than that. Consider some of the needs of floating licences. Let's say you bought four licences at $10,000 each for a CAD/CAM package. You find your engineers cannot use it because a secretary is doing his homework on it. Should your licence server be able to: 1. Report on who is using the product? 2. Restrict usage to given hosts? 3. Restrict usage to given users? Take some other possibilities. User A is running the package. His machine burns up. How do you free up the licence usage? If you let the customer do it on site, he can use that capability to break your licencing. There are some fairly decent solutions, but they require fairly hefty (intrusive) mods to the product source. What's your choice, modify the product or leave the hole? Now you get into a classic proprietary/open problem. If Sun implements a licence server, they are effectively dictating a solution to all Sun customers and software vendors. If this solution conflicts with other vendors (DEC, Apollo, etc) you've got problems in a heterogenous network. If the software vendor does his own, as Frame did, your customers now have to deal with multiple licencing schemes and have lost the capability of interacting with vendor-supplied solutions. Floating licences sound wonderful. We know they *can* be done because they *have* been done -- there are at least three independant implementations (Frame, Apollo, Schlumberger Technologies). But none is really satisfactory, and none were easy. If you are in Mathematicas shoes, where do you put your effort: into improving the graphical interface to SunView, which will radically increase your sales/income, or the licence server, which will leave it roughly the same? Steve Simmons scs@vax3.iti.org Industrial Technology Institute Ann Arbor, MI. "Velveeta -- the Spam of Cheeses!" -- Uncle Bonsai
chrstnsn@uxe.cso.uiuc.edu (Steve Christensen) (07/12/89)
Before you send our Sun Mathematica back, I suggest you get all the facts. Sun no longer sells Mathematica. If you send it back and later decide you want it on a Sun, you will probably pay A WHOLE LOT MORE than you paid to Sun since you will be buying it from Wolfram Research. Further, the performance of Macs is so slow compared to most Suns, you may not be able to run a large application. If you have Mathematica for the Macs, you can run the front end on the Mac and the kernel on a Sun. Finally, like a great deal of software sold by workstation vendors, the vendors must license the programs in the way demanded by the software distributor and have very little control over such matters. Steve Christensen Beckman Institute University of Illinois
rvk@cbnewsh.att.com (Robert V. Kline) (07/14/89)
In article <4220@kalliope.rice.edu>, Kemp@dockmaster.ncsc.mil (Dave Kemp) writes: > We just received SunMathematica, and discovered that it is licensed for a > *single* CPU; you call Sun with the hostid of a machine, they generate a > password, and the software runs only on that host. > > Now I have the problem of deciding which machine to license it on. I > don't want to walk to someone else's office to use it, and I don't want > people coming in to sit at my desk to use it either. > you're partially correct. you can remote login to the Sun that has Mathematica, and use everything but the graphics. graphics is supplied in the form of ASCII plots, which gives about the quality you'd get on a dumb terminal. depending on what you're doing, of course, this might be adequate. another concern is that Sun will no longer support Mathematica. I called WRI in an attempt to find out what happens with updates, but never got a response. In any event, the licensing arrangement is not Sun's decision, but WRI's. Sun was only a second source for the software. r. kline att!twitch!rvk