[ale] Open-source software license manager

[Jeffrey B. Layton]

George Carless wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 22, 2007 at 10:24:40AM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote:
>   
>> On Fri, 2007-06-22 at 09:16 -0400, George Carless wrote:
>>     
>>> (All of this talk of license management is oddly incongruous on ALE, btw...)
>>>       
>> Really?   (care to expand)
>>     
>
> Well, license management typically implies restrictions on use which are 
> antithetical to the nature of free software, right?  I can't imagine 
> needing to "manage" GPL-licensed software in this respect, for example.
>   
After I sent the email, I immediately thought, "that sounds really
stupid." But let me explain a bit further.

I'm not sure if anyone is familiar with flexlm, a license manager
that is used in a lot of ISV codes (typically engineer or scientific
codes). Flexlm is a real pain in the butt to work with. I've had
this tolerate-hate relationship with it from sometime.

So what I'm looking for is an open-source license manager that
these ISV's can use in their closed code. (It does seem kind of
strange, doesn't it?). The idea would be for ISV's to use this open
source license manager in their proprietary codes. Since it's open
source, we can identify and fix bugs rather then rely on a third
party closed code where the owner isn't too concerned about
improvements/bug fixes and the like - just making money (I can't
fault them for wanting to keep their product and company alive
but I am faulting them for having a crappy product and not responding
to customers).

Does this explanation help? I know it still sounds weird though.

Jeff