Node-locked licensing, also known as a single use license, device license, named host license, or machine-based license, is a
software licensing
A software license is a legal instrument governing the use or redistribution of software.
Since the 1970s, software copyright has been recognized in the United States. Despite the copyright being recognized, most companies prefer to sell lic ...
approach in which a license for a software application is assigned to one or more hardware devices (specific nodes, such as a computer, mobile devices, or IoT device). Typically any numbers of instances are allowed to execute for such license.
[{{Cite book, last1=Cai, first1=Jian-ping, last2=Qiao, first2=Li-ping, title=2009 First International Conference on Information Science and Engineering , chapter=Research and Application of the Floating License Management Strategy , date=2009, chapter-url=https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/5455642, location=Nanjing, China, publisher=IEEE, pages=1797–1800, doi=10.1109/ICISE.2009.889, isbn=978-1-4244-4909-5, s2cid=17429089 ]
This form of licensing is used by software publishers to ensure the license is only run on particular hardware devices.
Every node is identified by a unique hardware ID (
device fingerprint
A device fingerprint or machine fingerprint is information collected about the software and hardware of a remote computing device for the purpose of identification. The information is usually assimilated into a brief identifier using a fingerprint ...
) which needs to be obtained or entered during the pairing process (usually product setup or first license validation).
See also
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Software metering
Software metering is the monitoring and controlling of software for analytics and enforcing of agreements. It can be either passive data collection, or active restriction.
Types
Software metering can take different forms:
* Tracking and maintai ...
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License manager
A software license manager is a software management tool used by independent software vendors or by end-user organizations to control where and how software products are able to run. License managers protect software vendors from losses due to ...
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License borrowing
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Floating licensing
Floating licensing, also known as concurrent licensing or network licensing, is a software licensing approach in which a limited number of licenses for a software application are shared among a larger number of users over time. When an authorize ...
References
Software licensing