Arrgh, reached installation limit and have now to wait for Embarcadero support to increase the installation limit.
Arrgh, reached installation limit and have now to wait for Embarcadero support to increase the installation limit.
Embarcadero urgently needs to provide a quick solution for reviewing the current number of installations and increasing this limit on demand - already before you reach the road block while installing Delphi on a new machine.
Embarcadero urgently needs to provide a quick solution for reviewing the current number of installations and increasing this limit on demand - already before you reach the road block while installing Delphi on a new machine.
Can't argue that...
ReplyDeleteVote for de-authorizing a license feature: https://quality.embarcadero.com/browse/RSP-13415 You should be able to deauthorize/deactivate an existing license in order to move your install to a new machine. (It doesn't solve all the problems, but would be a big improvement.)
ReplyDeletealso got caught out with this problem. had to wait for days before I could reinstall.
ReplyDeleteDarian Miller That's exactly what I need. Or something like what Adobe does with Creative Cloud licensing.
ReplyDeleteI did also have a look at ELISE - the network licensing solution from Embarcadero. But it looks quite complicated and requires some sort of converting the existing licenses to network licenses. And it seems to involve some extra costs.
It should let you install with the warning that this is your LAST install, and notify you that you may need to interact with EMBT to increase your available installation count for the future.
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal That's at least something that could be implemented without a full re-engineering of the licensing process - it could be even included in next Update 2. But this should be only the first step on the way to a more reliable and more flexible solution.
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ReplyDeleteI was hit by this some time ago. It is a direct consequence of reusing the license codes for the new versions. I never had a problem when each update came with a new license code.
ReplyDeleteUwe Raabe They should automatically increase number of activations with each new version released now when code is reused.
ReplyDeleteI've mentioned this before, but JetBrains has a much more user-friendly approach. It not only doesn't phone home, it doesn't need the Internet to install either. You have a license key file. You can install 5,000 times if you want, so long as only one copy is running at a time. It does check if multiple copies are running, but only on the local network, not via the Internet. To top it off, if it does detect another copy running, it will inform you of the other copy and offer to remotely close it for you so you can get right to work without even having to get up out of your seat!
ReplyDeleteJetBrains today seems to have adopted the old "like a book" Borland policy. In fact, when Borland closed a European office many years ago, JetBrains snatched up the former employees, so there's actually some old Borland DNA in the the company. I've got some other examples I've witnessed myself regarding how they seem more like the old Borland than EMBT does today, but that would be off-topic.
I've read about similar problems regarding install from posters here before, including reaching the install limit on a weekend so needing to wait until Monday to install. This is one of the reasons open source is so popular in the development tools segment today. From lots of reinstalls to setting up VMs to getting at internals of software and the OS, developers need to do a lot of things average users don't and being denied access can cost time and money. I've been running desktop Linux on my home machine for six years now and I forget until I read stories like this what it's like to have other people in control of your application software or OS.
Just some ramblings from the top of my head...
ReplyDeleteStarting point:
A license system is only viable if it retains license integrity and enforces license conditions.
A license file is static, and if it is used "offline", enforcing the conditions is not possible.
If you need security, you may not have your development environment online, so calling home is not possible.
Here is an idea - but since I didn't ponder this for days at end, not necessarily ideal or complete.
At the point of installation - or even for set intervals (Yearly, Monthly, Weekly, Daily, or at every launch), the IDE presents a dialog containing a large QR code, which identifies the SKU, the license, and the Windows SID (or something similar which gives a stable installation ID).
On your smartphone, you have a license app, which you use to take an image of the QR (or uses Bluetooth LE to communicate with the IDE), and this license app then "phones home" to the EMBT license servers, and gets back a key, pin or phrase to enter into the dialog - or a new license file, which you can transfer by relevant mechanisms (BT, email, memory stick, etc) to the machine that needs the license.
This gives the user freedom to install and use like a book, and EMBT a certain degree of control of the number of installations - so that really abnormal installation patterns can raise flags.
Whatever the final solution will be ... it shouldn't block me from using the license I did pay for (in this case an Enterprise subscription). I absolutely understand that Embarcadero's licensing scheme has to protect their investments. But as long as it doesn't also consider the protection of MY investments, it's absolutely useless ... for both parties.
ReplyDeleteP.S. I did sent my license limit increasing request yesterday - so far I didn't even receive a confirmation that my request did arrive at Embarcadero - useless to say, I'm still not able to install Delphi.
At some point there was grace period of about 14 days during which you could use unregistered version and get your license sorted out. Unfortunately that was removed later on.
ReplyDeletePerhaps a local license server can be an alternative:
ReplyDeletehttp://docwiki.embarcadero.com/ELC/en/Introducing_the_Embarcadero_License_Center
Matthias Eissing from Embarcadero brought that to my attention when we discussed this issue at Delphi Tage a few weeks ago. Might be worth to be investigated.
Uwe Raabe I already had a look at ELISE. From the description available it seems to be the solution we are looking for. But if I understood correctly, you'll need to upgrade your existing licenses to network licenses - at some extra costs. It's also a little bit suspicious that this still involves accessing resources via the old codegear.com domain - it all looks a little bit outdated and "non-maintained".
ReplyDeleteI did discuss this with Embarcadero support some years ago and at this time we ended up with the result that upgrading our current licenses to network licenses would be too expensive and it would also include losing some privileges like access to bonus packs and getting discounts for add-ons. This may have changed now after we did upgrade to Enterprise edition and being on subscription.
If implementing ELISE wouldn't involve extra costs and would be only a question of investing some extra time for getting the license server running and getting the existing licenses migrated to the server, I would be happy to check this out. I would be happy to assist Embarcadero with testing and documenting a reliable solution for managing Embarcadero licenses on your own server.
In the discussion with Matthias he mentioned that the current licenses can simply be exchanged to license certificates as required by the license server with no extra cost.
ReplyDeleteUwe Raabe Excellent. Looks like I have a new side project now. :) If it really works as expected - at no extra cost - except time - I consider this a reliable solution for my current problem.
ReplyDelete... after more than 24 hrs still no response from Embarcadero ...
ReplyDeleteLars Fosdal It's not a bad idea (if you have a smartphone), but I still can't help but wonder why JetBrains doesn't feel the need to do the same thing as EMBT despite selling the same kind of products. Then I had a lot of time to think today as I spent a long time waiting in a doctor's office, and it hit me... JetBrains isn't charging $1400 USD for an IDE. They also have a startup discount, personal use and academic pricing. And with a new monthly plan available as well as a subscription option that gives you all of their IDEs, it's less hassle to pay for the software than spend time trying to defeat copy protection.
ReplyDeleteMaybe EMBT could cut piracy simply by adopting tiered pricing, and improve goodwill a lot among existing customers in the process with a friendlier DRM. Otherwise there's simply no explanation I can think of why EMBT has a piracy problem but JetBrains doesn't. Come to think of it though, EMBT has the developer edition of Interbase they include in the box shut down every few hours. No one on Earth would pirate Interbase when they can get Firebird (or MariaDB, PostgreSQL, etc.) for free. Heck, even an MVP said that publicly once when he learned about the DRM in Interbase.
Maybe they're just paranoid then?
After reading this:
ReplyDeleteI wonder where I can see the number of activations that my license have? (on embarcadero/idera of course)
How can I deactivate an illegal or legal activation running in another computer? (Or maybe I need to reinstall that crappy windows 10 that commit seppuku after an update that erase my partitions or simply my vm was nuked)
And what if someone copy my serial code from the license manager on my computer, then use it to install it without I notice in their computer?
Worse, if someone use a keygen and by luck obtain my serial; that will be a nightmare.
Joseph Mitzen "Maybe they're just paranoid then?"
ReplyDeleteOr stuck in an old business model.
... and still waiting ...
ReplyDeleteand 2 minutes later I receive my license limit increase notification :) Finally.
ReplyDeleteFred Ahrens You would think the process would be automated, wouldn't you?
ReplyDelete