License Machine Locked?

• 
  Agreed. I have no problem paying $35 for a personnal Reflector license, as long as I don't have to fight with licensing restrictions every time I use it on a different machine.
  
  I use different virtual machines depending on the project on which I'm working, so managing the Reflector licenses on all these virtual machines would be a *huge* pain.
  
  Note that a floating license that depends on a central licensing server is also *not* a good option, because I can be connected to different networks (or VPN) depending on the project on which I'm working.

  ckarras February 03, 2011 13:01

  - 0 +
• 
  Ian, ckarras Thanks for your questions guys.
  
  Reflector 7.0 will be licensed per user and not per machine but there is a limit on the number of activations each user has at any point in time. In the case of Reflector Pro this is currently 2 activations per user but you can request more by filling in a form on our website that is accessed from inside the tool. You can also deactivate and reactivate machines using our deactivation tool. We plan for the standard version of Reflector to work in the same way once we start charging for it.
  
  More information can be found here:
  
  http://www.red-gate.com/supportcenter/L ... 0Reflector
  
  I would be curious to know how many activations you think you would need so that licensing does not get in your way too often?

  Greg.Tillman February 03, 2011 14:40

  - 0 +
• 
  Hello Greg,
  
  first let me express how disappointed I am that redgate breaks the promise. (Yes, it was a promise - I looked up the definition of the word in the Oxford dictionary and reread your statements of 2008! Please don't waste our time by trying to deny that.)
  
  Our company has strict security policies and we developers have no adminstrative priviliges on our machines. Everything has to be approved and installed by our domain admins. So we use virtual machines a lot, especially for evaluation of new software. And they are reverted to the original state or thrown away and rebuild frequently.
  
  I think I can convince my manager to approve a licence for every developer. But only if it is not too expensive (35$ for every developer is too much for a mid sized team) and installing is easy. If there is an annoying licence activation hassle then you are out.
  
  BTW: Choosing an obfuscating solution is planned for May. Guess what direction smartassembly went in my provisional ranking today. My managers are very concerned about vendor lock and bad vendor reputation.
  
  Regards
  
  PS: Did I mention how disappointed I am?

  Gigiwig February 03, 2011 16:08

  - 0 +
• 
  Greg,
  
  I did actually discover the license stuff in the main Reflector forum the other day from someone else asking a similar question.
  
  Honestly I'd probably expect to have a couple of permanent activations for development. And then have 1/2 other activations floating around for use on other machines where I need (I don't want to visit a client site, think "I can debug this with reflector/deblector" and realise I don't have an activation spare to run the software).
  
  One thing that would concern me slightly those is what happens if you revert back to an old VM snapshot, forgetting to deactivate the license on that machine. Does that loose you an activation?

  IanWright83 February 04, 2011 03:07

  - 0 +
• 
  @All
  
  I’ve just posted some more information on this topic on the following thread:
  
  http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/vi ... hp?t=12702

  Greg.Tillman February 05, 2011 11:57

  - 0 +
• 
  Gigiwig
  
  Thanks for posting your feedback here and I hope we can come up with a solution that works for you as discussed in the thread I posted to @all above. For more information on pricing please also see the following thread:
  
  http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/vi ... hp?t=12718
  
  I do hope you will continue to consider SmartAssembly for your obfuscation needs. SmartAssembly really has revolutionised the way we develop software at Red Gate and with the new feature reporting functionality it just got even better!

  Greg.Tillman February 05, 2011 11:59

  - 0 +
• 
  Ian
  
  Thanks for your reply Ian and my apologies for the delay in my response. Please see the first thread I posted to @all for more details on the way licensing will work. I can assure you that we will cover your situation as standard. As a thank you for starting this topic I’d be happy to work this out for you on a current license of .NET Reflector Pro for just $35. By purchasing .NET Reflector Pro now you’ll also get an upgrade to .NET Reflector VSPro free of charge and qualify for the 3 years extra support and upgrades we are giving away to all Reflector Pro customers at the time of the upgrade to V7. I’d be really happy to work this out with you via email if you like.
  
  Thanks again for kicking of this topic here.

  Greg.Tillman February 05, 2011 12:02

  - 0 +
• 

  Greg.Tillman wrote:

  I would be curious to know how many activations you think you would need so that licensing does not get in your way too often?

  
  Greg.Tillman Typically, I work on ~5 different projects per year. For some of these projects, there's a need to test on different environments.
  I also have 2 physical machines (laptop + desktop)
  
  So I would say I need my personal Reflector license to be active on 12 different machines within a year. Or, maybe 5 different machines within a month (since I'll be working at most on 2 different projects within the same month).
  
  Another case is when I'm debugging a problem at a customer's site or on a QA or production server. For this case, it could be useful to have a temporary "floating" license that I can carry on a USB key. For that case, a single license that can be moved between computers (but never used concurrently on multiple computers) would be enough.
  
  Now, there's also the issue of limited connectivity (for example when working on a VPN) that would prevent reflector from contacting an activation server.
  
  The solution I would see for that would be to:
  - For licenses that are meant to be active on multiple computers at once (all belonging to the same person), contact the activation server once every 2 weeks. If, within the last 2 weeks, the same license has been used to request activation on more than 5 different computers, deny the activation request. Otherwise, accept it.
  This way, there's no need to continuously deactivate licenses on old VMs. I would only have to ensure the VM is connected to the Internet once in a while.
  
  - For the "floating" license, generate a one-time authorization key that only stays valid for 1 day. Have a way to send this one-time key by email (so I can receive it on my phone if I don't have internet access on the computer on which I need to use reflector)

  ckarras February 07, 2011 16:18

  - 0 +
• 
  ckarras
  
  Thanks for your suggestions and explaining your situation. We are already looking at something very similar to your suggestion that will make it easier to activate your license temporarily on other machines without having to worry about constantly managing the deactivation manually. I will continue to post updates as we have them here: http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/vi ... hp?t=12702
  
  I’d also like to reach out to you now in the same way we did for Ian above. Are you happy to discuss this via email? I am sure my colleague Hannah can get you set up with something that will work well for you right away.

  Greg.Tillman February 10, 2011 07:38

  - 0 +
• 
  As far as i got it Reflector 7.0 license is not free. I wonder what is the charge for one per user?

  mySunSet October 11, 2011 04:44

  - 0 +
• 
  Hi mySunSet,
  
  You should be able to find all the information you need at www.Reflector.net. Please let us know if you have any questions via the new forum.
  
  Greg

  Greg.Tillman October 11, 2011 05:07

  - 0 +

Add comment

Please sign in to leave a comment.