mystone@mondo.engin.umich.edu (Dean Yu) (03/27/90)
LaunchBreak: The Official Release
As with any organisation that supports public labs, the University of
Michigan's Computer Aided Engineering Network has to worry about maintaining
software for hundreds of Macintoshes in several students labs and department
offices. Retaining control over such a large environment posed quite a few
legal problems. Piracy is always a problem, and when we moved from check-out
disks to AppleShare servers, we had to come up with a way of ensuring that
we weren't running more copies of our software than we bought.
LaunchBreak was written to solve these problems. It has been under
development since the summer of 1989, and version 1.0 is now available to the
not-for-profit educational institutions.
Features:
o LaunchBreak monitors the usage of applications on an AppleTalk network,
and enforces an upper limit to the number of copies of an application
that are in use at once. This upper limit is settable by the system
administrator based on the number of copies of the licensed program
purchased by the site.
o Applications running under LaunchBreak are rendered useless outside of
a site's network, thus hindering software piracy. The encryption
scheme used by LaunchBreak is not easily reversible, so there is no
worry of applications being "un-LaunchBroken".
o Applications running under LaunchBreak can be located anywhere on the
network. They can be on a file server, on a hard disk, or on floppy.
They can also be freely copied, although the copied program is still
subject to control of LaunchBreak. Thus, LaunchBreak doesn't interfere
with legitimate copying of programs for backup, or having multiple
copies of the program on the network to enchance performance.
o The license server can run as a foreground application on an AppleShare
server, or on another machine on the network.
o Remote administration of the license server is possible with the
LaunchBreak Admin program. This allows the license server to continue
running, thus allowing network activities to continue while the
information on the license server is being updated.
o LaunchBreak keeps statistics about every transaction that has occured.
These statistics can be gathered through the Admin program, then
plugged into your favourite number cruncher.
o LaunchBreak clients have their clocks synchronised automatically with
the license server when a machine boots. (This was a freebie I tossed
in on a lark. We don't do anything with this feature yet. Automatic
re-loading is a possibility.)
System Requirements:
o System 6.0 or newer
o The license server and Admin programs require the AppleTalk Data Stream
Protocol. We'll be shipping ADSP with LaunchBreak eventually, but the
lawyers aren't done with the paperwork yet, so you'll have to order it
from APDA.
o The INIT which runs on LaunchBreak clients takes about 10K of RAM.
The license server and Admin can work in 256K partitions each.
And now a word from the lawyers:
LaunchBreak is currently only available to not-for-profit educational
institutions, and is free to them if they can retrieve it over the
Internet. Otherwise a nominal distribution charge is made.
Availability to commercial organizations is currently under
investigation. Commercial availability will probably not occur until
release 2.0.
This is how the distribution is going to work: Anyone who is interested
has to print out the legal form at the end of this article, fill it out,
sign it, and mail it back to CAEN. We will send you the account and pass-
word you can FTP it from. Sites without FTP can send a $100 check with the
signed agreement, and we will mail you a disk with LaunchBreak along with
printed documentation. Checks MUST accompany orders. Purchase Orders
are NOT acceptable.
We now return you to our regularly scheduled posting:
Isn't legal speak fun? While I have to play along with the rules, I'm
willing to bend them a little. If you want LaunchBreak, you can e-mail me
your request. I'll e-mail the account and password to you when the front
office gets the agreement.
Additionally, I'll put the documentation up for anonymous FTP on
freebie.engin.umich.edu, and anyone can get at these.
---- Cut Here ----
Agreement between the
Regents of the University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
and
(name and address of educational institution)
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
_____________________________________
Software package: LaunchBreak version 1.0 and associated documentation
This package is Copyright (C) 1989, 1990 The Regents of the University of
Michigan
User agrees to reproduce said copyright notice on all copies of the program
made by recipient.
All Rights Reserved. Permission is hereby granted for the recipient
not-for-profit educational institution to make copies and use this software for
its own internal purposes only. Recipient of this software may not
re-distribute this software outside of their own institution. Permission is
only granted for use by not-for-profit educational institutions. All other
uses are prohibited unless authorized in writing by the Regents of the
University of Michigan.
This software is offered without warranty. The Regents of the University of
Michigan disclaim all warranties, express or implied, including but not limited
to the implied warranties of mechantibility and fitness for any particular
purpose. In no event shall the Regents of the University of Michigan be liable
for loss or damage of any kind, including but not limited to incidental,
indirect, consequential or special damages.
Agreed:
Institution Name:__________________________________
Authorized signer:_________________________________
Title:_____________________________________________
Date:______________________________________________
Completed agreement should be mailed to:
LaunchBreak Distribution
Computer Aided Engineering Network
229 Chrysler Center
2121 Bonisteel Dr.
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109
---- End of Form ----
_______________________________________________________________________________
Dean Yu | E-mail: mystone@caen.engin.umich.edu
Mac Support & | Real-mail: Dean Yu
Self declared License Czar | Rm 145 Chrysler Center
University of Michigan | 2121 Bonnisteel
Computer Aided Engineering Network | Ann Arbor, MI 48109
INCLUDE 'Disclaimers.a' | Phone: (313) 763-3070
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