[Info-vax] VSI Subscription Licensing Exchanges

[Tad Winters]

On 5/25/2021 11:29 AM, Phillip Helbig undress to reply via Info-vax wrote:
> In article <s8jeuu$air$2 at dont-email.me>, Simon Clubley
> <clubley at remove_me.eisner.decus.org-Earth.UFP> writes:
>
>> Arne has suggested paying for additional years up front (and therefore
>> getting those licences early as a result).
>
> How would that actually work?  Presumably the goal is to have, say, 5
> years after VSI goes bust to sort out some sort of alternative, and
> presumably VSI doesn't want to sell licenses with no expiration because
> they would rather have a steady revenue stream.  Just having it expire
> after 5 years wouldn't work if VSI goes bust after 4œ years.  Perhaps
> one could buy a 5-year license every year.  However, that would mean
> that a customer would then have several valid licenses, and apparently
> VSI is also concerned about too many licenses being in circulation.
> (Unloading and deleting the old one won't cut it, since people have
> backups.)


Not that I have any interest in this topic at this point.  I'd suggest
an update to the LMF so that it could support license extensions,
similar to the way VMS-USER licenses are additive.  You could simply
purchase a license extension, specifically to extend your original
license.  When the system starts it would load the base license and all
matching extensions.  Each extension license could have a date range for
which it the system licensed, and could be specific to the original
license (or not.)  This scheme could be applied to more license types.

This does not mean I endorse the way VSI is issuing licenses, but rather
a problem calling for a solution.