Development Started

andybot · 28 Jun 2012, 20:39

When's a dongle ever stopped piracy?

I don't think a dongle is about that - it's about not having to host licensing themselves. Less administrative work for them for when users need to change hardware, etc. Currently - you have to send a support request if you need to change your licensed machine. At least that's my basic understanding.

Stinkie · 28 Jun 2012, 20:43

Fair point.

andybot · 28 Jun 2012, 20:45

Nice cudgel by the way tom

Stinkie · 28 Jun 2012, 21:12

I am glad you like my handiwork. Then again, you better ...

thomthom · 29 Jun 2012, 07:44

I need one of them when I moderate this forum once in a while...

Stinkie · 29 Jun 2012, 09:23

Know your tools, Thomas. Moderating requires a cattle prod. You want to, er, stimulate, not maim.

dkendig · 29 Jun 2012, 15:19

andybot is spot on. Our current licensing system in VfS is a pretty big headache in certain situations. Some big companies have some very complicated security setups that prevent them from being able to license via the web, so then we have to juggle offline activation files around, and that gets messy. If you make any hardware changes to your computer, our current licensing will throw a hissy fit and tell you that you don't have a valid license anymore. Transporting a license from one machine to another is a grueling process.... the list goes on. Then on the positive side... you can activate for the first time, as soon as you purchase your license, and there's no extra hardware that you have to connect to a computer. That's about it though.

On the other hand, dongles allow us to still provide floating licenses, so you can have one dongle with 50 seats on it, and serve out those licenses to your whole office, just like the web based licensing allows. They allow you to move from one machine to another without a hitch. They allow you to modify your computer, or reinstall your OS without a problem. You don't have to worry about keeping track of that every so crucial email that has your serial number, like you do with the web based activation. Also, the dongle based licensing runs as a service without a problem from what I've heard.

I'll admit, I wasn't very excited about switching to dongles at first. I was not very fond of the idea of giving up a usb port. When my old development laptop died and I had to get a new one, I saw the value. I was up and running immediately, and I didn't even have to play around with our licensing database! Hooray! When I think of how many emails we get every week, from users that experience a similar situation, and now need us to add an exception to their license so they can re-activate on their machine that they modified in some way to invalidate their old license... I can really see the value. We typically will handle licensing related issues within 24 hours, but instantaneous is much faster!

Anyway, I can see both sides now. It's nice to be able to immediately activate your product, without having to wait a day or two for something in the mail. It's also nice to not have to wait up to 24 hours to use the product that was working fine yesterday, because your IT department modified your computer's hardware. When I really weigh it out though, I think I like the dongle based licensing much more (I never thought those words would come out of my mouth... or keyboard).

andybot · 29 Jun 2012, 17:38

I have a vray dongle already - for the standalone, and it is indeed super convenient. I've not had any issues with installation (um, except for user error ) or running it.

dkendig · 29 Jun 2012, 21:34

excellent, I believe the standalone dongle can hold a VfS dongle license too, so you probably won't be waiting in line with the other beta testers

broomstick · 2 Jul 2012, 13:49

time to put away some more money then...

cuttingedge · 20 Oct 2012, 07:08

any news on the release of VFSU? Or is it waiting for next Trimble release of SU to use it as its base?

valerostudio · 22 Oct 2012, 14:54

The answer to this lies in the Chaos forums. In short, they are very close to a beta. They were at Basecamp showing it off so you know its very very close.

thomthom · 23 Oct 2012, 10:40

@valerostudio said:

The answer to this lies in the Chaos forums. In short, they are very close to a beta. They were at Basecamp showing it off so you know its very very close.

And it's very very cool!

Stinkie · 23 Oct 2012, 20:41

@dkendig said:

We typically will handle licensing related issues within 24 hours, but instantaneous is much faster!

Actually, you're near-instantenous already. I had license issues today. Solved in no time, thanks to the dynamic duo A & K. I was quite impressed.

That said, the Mac version's UI? Needs work.