Dual-core Processors Challenge Licensing Models

ffub writes "Changes in hardware (such as dual-core processors and virtualisation) are making software licensing increasingly difficult for software firms. Companies still prefer the per-seat one-off license, while subscription models are favoured with software firms. But neither model reflects well the way software is used these days. The Economist looks at the situation and briefly touches on how Open Source could benefit from the muddle."

Comments

Re:Maybe

[inode_buddha]

I would bet that the "per CPU" license model dates back to a time when CPU's were much more expensive; it could reasonably be assumed that there would be many users using one CPU. In other words, the business model is a couple of decades behind the technology.

Database Licensing and the Web

[inmate]

This won't be the first time that licensing has faced such a crises.

In the early days of the web, I worked on a web-based project which connected to a MS SQL-Server database. The licensing issue was very confusing since the information in the database would be made available to anyone who came to site (and we expected a few hundred regular users), but technically everything would be accessed by through only one account (the webserver!).

I called the local MS office and they confirmed that we only need one licence for this model.
Based on this information, we rewrote a major internal application to be entirely browser based - and then dropped all our seat licences bar one.

Needless to say, MS had a absolute fit!

About a year later we received an incredibly confusing document outlining license-requirements for internet and intranet applications.