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 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------