Urgent help needed: Licensing snafu following server crash

[Fairlight]

Is it just me, or did Brian K. White say:
> filepro, even with the simple licence file in 5.0.15 not even the licence 
> manager daemon, is functionaly broken for me. I can't use it. I actually can 
> not use it. I can't live with the potential for even 12 or even 6 hours of a 
> box being down due to a broken filepro licence while we wait for filepro's 
> business hours to roll around. Early mornings happen to be my customers 
> highest critical time and losing half the morning until 8 or 9 am astern or 
> central comes around is not tolerable.

It would be aggravating as hell to me, expensive for my clients, but it's
hardly a case of being wholly unsuitable.  I mean, let's be realistic
here...some companies lose tens of thousands of dollars if the electricity
fails for a few seconds--literally.  Does that make the local power grid
"functionally broken" for them on the whole?  Of course not.

I think you're being a bit melodramatic regarding the (unlikely) impact.
I'm obviously no fan of license schemes, every last one of which is flawed
unless program use -requires- an active central server constantly (MMO's
have the -only- real protection that works, and they are really a service
more than the initial software).  That hardly makes everything that has
a license manager (or worse) unusable.  If it does, don't tell all the
CAD users with dongles in play.  And if some prankster walks off with a
dongle, you really think it'll be replaced freely?  How long for shipping?
Comparatively, fP users still have it ok--just not ideal.

I'm sorry, but putting it into perspective, some very busy, very important
companies ate a very large outage on 9/11/01 and for at least a week
afterwards, and in more than their software working, I might add.  I'm
betting 95%+ survived and are still in business.  Let's be pragmatic enough
to accurately call licence enforcement what it is: stupid, a waste of R&D
funds, and annoying.  But it's a calculated risk, like anything else, and a
fairly low one at that.  If it's triggered, it's a cost of doing business
with many major vendors, like it or not.  If a company has no disaster or
emergency plan in place that the could choose to implement or not depending
on perceived loss/exposure, then someone isn't doing their job adequately
somewhere.  Tossing effective software over -potential- license failure is
ridiculous--planning for things that can be anticipated for isn't.  Does it
cost more?  Yes.  But that's the cost of doing business properly.

Now -stupid- is -requiring- a net connection to activate at all.  Like
Adobe and a growing number of others that are alienating people whose
policies may not allow it even if the physical link is present.  Again, fP
doesn't sound so bad by comparison.

mark->