Urgent help needed: Licensing snafu following server crash

[John Esak]

Hey Barry,
It's nice to know that you do *not* have to run the license server manager
if you aren't doing anything special like pointing to a different license
server or etc. We don't run fplmserver anymore. The problem we had *was*
fixed, and I think it would work fine, but it is one of those things that if
it ain't broke don't fix it items.  We have a correct license and that is
all that's really needed.

I absolutely agree with whoever said the license manager and licensing in
general have *ultar* value for filePro. There is no argument there. Had it
been in place 20 years ago, this would be one of the major computer programs
running today. The many tens of thousands of Tandy Xenix users alone would
have driven the development along more mainstream channels and with enough
revenue  that things would have been *very* different today. I hope the
licensing does whatever good it can do now that it is in place. 

John


> -----Original Message-----
> From: filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.com
> [mailto:filepro-list-bounces+john=valar.com at lists.celestial.com] On Behalf
> Of Barry Wiseman
> Sent: Tuesday, September 18, 2007 4:02 PM
> To: filePro list
> Subject: Re: Urgent help needed: Licensing snafu following server crash
> 
> Barry Wiseman wrote:
>  > [snip long sorry tale of license management gone south following
> crash/reboot]
> 
> Thanks to Jose, Mark and Brian for offering suggestions, and an
> entertaining rant on
> the evils of license management, respectively.
> 
> For those who may dare the journey to 5.0.15 and beyond, let me report the
> outcome of
> today's adventure.
> 
> I want to thank Ron Kracht for shepherding this issue through channels for
> me, and
> for racking his brain for every helpful suggestion he could think of.
> 
> First he had Lauren provide me a new correct licfp.dat file (no
> explanation at any
> point of how the "incorrect" file worked for over a month).  This gave
> more expected
> output from the licinfo utility, which now showed a correct license number
> and user
> count.  However, dclerk still reported finding a single-user demo license.
> 
> In the end, I was working both with Ron and with Ray in tech support.  One
> or both of
> the following steps (which occurred pretty much concurrently) accomplished
> the fix:
> 
> Ray cobbled up an Even More Correct(TM) license file.  Meanwhile Ron, who
> had logged
> into the user's server, realized that the licfp.bkp file, which needs to
> be an
> identical copy of licfp.dat (who knew?), was instead a copy of the former,
> "bad" file.
> 
> At this point, the 5.0.15 dclerk is happily acknowledging the 64-user
> license once again.
> 
> Here is the portion of Ray's writeup which was emailed to me:
> 
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> Support Incident # 07004406
> License error in 5.6 install that has been running for several months
> 
> rah 09/18/2007 - MAC address previoulsy used as a check value for Linux
> (this no
> longer works). After changing the check value to FQDN with value returned
> by
> hostname, all worked.
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
> -------
> 
> At the zenith of my frustration, I had complained to Ron,
> 
> 	These people have been down a number of hours, for no good reason
> 	(i.e., license management doesn't add any value to the product!).
> 
> Giving the devil his due, here is his response to that thought.  FWIW.
> 
> I would take issue with your contention that license management doesn't
> add any value
> to the product. A minor advantage is that it allows products, feature, and
> user count
> changes merely by downloading a new license file rather than a new set of
> programs.
> The major advantages are that it allows us to devote more of our resources
> to
> improving the product. We now build, maintain, and distribute one set of
> programs per
> platform rather than the multiple sets we had to previously. We also
> discovered
> numerous customers who were running illegal copies of filePro installed by
> unscrupulous consultants. Since the customers were not at fault, and in
> most cases
> had no idea they didn't have valid licensed copies of filePro, we allowed
> them to
> upgrade as though they had been fully licensed. I remember one case in
> particular
> where nearly every office in an office complex was running unlicensed
> copies of
> filePro all installed by the same consultant - who had since disappeared.
> That
> consultant had purchased one copy of filePro and installed it for all his
> customers.
>   In the same way that insurance fraud and shoplifting hurt all customers
> this hurt
> our properly licensed customers.
> 
> 
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
>   Barry Wiseman                              barry at gensoftdes.com
>   Genesis Software Designs, Inc.            Voice: (212) 889-9191
>   55 West 45 Street, New York, NY 10036       Fax: (212) 889-1589
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> 
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