*RANT* Ridiculous EDA software "user license agreements"?

In my experience the 'after hours' time I spend on these tools is either 
because the SW is buggy/poorly documented and I couldn't get the job 
done during office hours, or I am trying to extend my skills, ultimately 
reducing my need for support. Heck, the only support available after 
hours (sometimes during hours too) are these public forums anyway, so 
what is the vendors cost? Unless of course, the users are finding lots 
of bugs and pressing for fixes. But hey, this is just one of those 
unpaid services we users provide.

rickman wrote:

> tns1 wrote:
> 
>>license_rant_master wrote:
>>
>>>I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
>>
>><snip>
>>
>>With a standard cable or DSL connection, VNC works pretty well. I don't
>>think it could violate any license since it only virtualizes the
>>interface, and that part at least, should be fully owned by the user.
>>Overzealous license agreements that try to impose what you do with your
>>hardware should be slapped down by the courts, but the increasing
>>virtualization /globalization blurs the 'site' definition. Interesting
>>stuff.
>>
>>If VNC really does not work for you, there must be a way that your
>>vendor can extend/change the license to one or more node locked seats
>>(tied to a removable NIC, say). Node locked seats should never be
>>restricted by distance from the license server. Rant on dude. We should
>>all have the right to use every legitimate seat 24/7, no matter where we
>>are.
> 
> 
> I can tell that this is going to be one of those long threads that have
> a loooong life.  
> 
> Software companies charge with two principles in mind.  One is the cost
> of doing busisness.  If you buy three licenses for a given location the
> vendor can expect an average level of support that they will need to
> provide to that site and others like it.  If they allow you to use the
> same license at other locations, their revenue will not go up, but the
> level of support required will likely increase.  Many vendors allow for
> this by selling more expensive licenses which are authorized company
> wide.  So you will just need to pay a bit more.  
> 
> The other issue that software vendors consider is the one that users
> consider, value.  Let's face it, like other products, the price is not a
> function of what it costs to make it unless that cost sets the minumum
> price.  Non-commodity products are sold at a price that reflects the
> value to the customer.  A node locked license has less value than a site
> license which has less value than a company wide license.  Support costs
> not withstanding, the value here sets the price paid.  
> 

The whole is solved by a notebook being the work machine at
the expense of reduced performance.

But yes, the whole is a bit silly.

Rene


license_rant_master wrote:
> I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
> Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
> servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations.  Launching
> sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
> but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
> slow over an WAN/internet connection.  In the past, I
> haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
> restart them, then logout.  Now, I find the need to do some
> interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
> etc.)
> 
> So I thought, ok, I'll just install Linux at home and check
> out a license remotely from the company.  The system
> administrator told me "NO!" this is forbidden, due to the license
> agreements of just about every EDA-tool vendor.  According to the
> language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
> is tied to a physical location called 'site.'
> 
> There are minor differences among the 'site-radius', but the
> end-result is the same ... no executing the tool on hardware outside
> of the radius:
> 
> Cadence : 1 mile radius within licensed machine-node
>           (Sysadmin told me this...didn't double-check myself.)
> 
> Synopsys: 5 mile radius within licensed machine-node
>           (couldn't find the agreement, but found this on Solvnet.)
> 
> Model/Mentor: 800 meter (0.5mi) radius within licensed machine-node
>           (Download the user's manual for any Modelsim product.)

[snip]

> /RANT OFF
> 
> Any comments?

Rene Tschaggelar <none@none.net> writes:

> The whole is solved by a notebook being the work machine at
> the expense of reduced performance.

I don't think his company is too happy about spending multi $100,000
for licenses exclusively to a single users notebook... 


Petter
-- 
A: Because it messes up the order in which people normally read text.
Q: Why is top-posting such a bad thing?
A: Top-posting.
Q: What is the most annoying thing on usenet and in e-mail?

In comp.arch.fpga bko-no-spam-please@ieee.org wrote:
> license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> writes:
> 
> > I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
> > ...  According to the
> > language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
> > is tied to a physical location called 'site.'
> 
> Here's a hint: like a lot of things in life, these restrictions are negotiable
> if you are a big enough customer.

The trend of "unless you are going to fork us over some more megabucks and 
are a large company anyways we will disallow doing resonable things" in 
software licences is rather disturbing.

-- 
	Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

license_rant_master wrote:

 > Since I can't use the company's tools on *my* home machine, I
 > started investigating various low-cost Verilog simulators to run
 > under Windows.  (I can't use Icarus because it fails to compile a
 > lot of our company's Verilog RTL.)

Hve you filed bug reports? I know the Icarus Verilog bug database
is getting pretty large :-(  but it does get looked at and worked
down.

-- 
Steve Williams                "The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
steve at icarus.com           But I have promises to keep,
http://www.icarus.com         and lines to code before I sleep,
http://www.picturel.com       And lines to code before I sleep."

Ever hear of VPN?


"license_rant_master" <none@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:SGMEc.2916$486.1576@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com...
> I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
> Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
> servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations.  Launching
> sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
> but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
> slow over an WAN/internet connection.  In the past, I
> haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
> restart them, then logout.  Now, I find the need to do some
> interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
> etc.)
>
> So I thought, ok, I'll just install Linux at home and check
> out a license remotely from the company.  The system
> administrator told me "NO!" this is forbidden, due to the license
> agreements of just about every EDA-tool vendor.  According to the
> language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
> is tied to a physical location called 'site.'
>
> There are minor differences among the 'site-radius', but the
> end-result is the same ... no executing the tool on hardware outside
> of the radius:
>
> Cadence : 1 mile radius within licensed machine-node
>            (Sysadmin told me this...didn't double-check myself.)
>
> Synopsys: 5 mile radius within licensed machine-node
>            (couldn't find the agreement, but found this on Solvnet.)
>
> Model/Mentor: 800 meter (0.5mi) radius within licensed machine-node
>            (Download the user's manual for any Modelsim product.)
>
> ...
>
> At this point, I think, well alright, most of these EDA tools
> are $100,000 USD and up, so it's reasonable for the vendor to impose
> these terms.  EDA companies don't want 1 company buying a huge site-wide
> (100+) licenses, then randomly 'renting' them out over the internet.
>
> I mentally used this analogy to convince myself this is ok:
> I buy broadband internet service for my household.
> It's "unlimited" for my household -- not my neightborhood or someone
> driving by on a WiFi laptop.  Fair enough...
>
> Since I can't use the company's tools on *my* home machine, I
> started investigating various low-cost Verilog simulators to run
> under Windows.  (I can't use Icarus because it fails to compile a
> lot of our company's Verilog RTL.)
>
> /RANT ON
>
> 1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
>     as their premiere Modelsim/SE.
>
> "Mentor Graphics
> grants to you, subject to payment of appropriate license fees, a
> nontransferable, nonexclusive license to use
> Software solely: (a) in machine-readable, object-code form; (b) for your
> internal business purposes; and (c) on
> the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license fee
> is paid, or as authorized by Mentor
> Graphics. A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800 meter) radius."
>
>     *RIDICULOUS*  If I were a design-consultant, and my laptop were
>     my primary compute platform, how am I supposed to comply with a
>     'site' radius?  By their language, I can't run Modelsim
>     if I drive more than 0.5mi from my home-residence/business?!?
>
> 2) ok, so next I move on to Cadence's "Verilog Desktop"
>
>     Wow, same story -- the language of their license agreement brings
>     me to the same conclusion.  Install on laptop -- automatic
>     non-compliance with their agreement (unless you 'lock down' the
>     laptop with a 1-mile chain.)  Funny how their salesman now use
>     x86-laptops for nearly *all* customer-site product demos?!?
>
> 3) I may investigate Verilogger Pro or Simucad, but I figure why bother.
>     I'll probably just end up getting angrier...
>
> ...
>
> /RANT OFF
>
> Any comments?
> What pisses me off the most, is those Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor
> "travelling salesman."  They come to our company-site, armed with
> laptops and LCD-projectors -- then show off how a small x86-laptop
> now runs jobs faster than a low-end Sun/IBM RISC workstation.
> These EDAs need to be sued for false advertising.  At a minimum,
> someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
> for products aimed at 'personal' use.
>
> For now, I've simply told my supervisor 'project schedule slip.'
> And I've given up on doing real work at home (now mostly just
> catching on documentation and inline RTL-comments.)
>

JJ wrote:
> 
> Ever hear of VPN?

I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest.  If you mean he should run
the programs on an office machine using interface software from home,
that is what he wants to get away from.  If you are talking about
checking out the license over the network, that is what is forbidden by
the license.  

What are you suggesting?  

-- 

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design      URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave                               301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110                 301-682-7666 FAX

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 19:21:28 +0200, Lasse Langwadt Christensen
<langwadt@ieee.org> wrote:

>I think some companies (big ones) can a special license, I know one that share
>worldwide and I would think they have a pool of licenses

This was certainly the case when I was at Agilent.  We had three
license server triads (three each in Germany, US and Singapore) that
served the company's global license needs.

It sucked a bit that we were in Melbourne, and the closest server was
several thousand km away.  The time taken to acquire a license was so
long that some users would simply not close the gui (e.g. in Modelsim)
and use up a license all day even when they didn't need to use the
tool.

Regards,
Allan.

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:
> The whole is solved by a notebook being the work machine at
> the expense of reduced performance.

UMMM *NO* the original-poster mentioned somewhere in his rant that
the license terms of Mentor, Cadence, and Synopsys
are *tied* to a physical site.  Actually the software license is bound 
to 3 specific items:

a) authorized hardware (license node/server)
<AND>
b) physical site (company location, with defined 'distance radius')
<AND>
c) the party/persons/company named on the purchase-order

That's *AND* (not OR.)  Change any 1 of the above, and you have to 
contact the vendor to renew/re-validate your license. (This doesn't
automatically mean you have to *repurchase* the software...)

(b) Buying a laptop, taking it on the road, and using it to run the
EDA sofware falls under 'running the software outside of the
physical site.'  All you've done with your laptop, is place
both the license-server and execution-machine in the same
machine (your laptop), instead of just taking the execution-machine

  The physical-site limitation is so restrictive, that technically
speaking, if a customer merely relocates its office more than a
few miles, their software-liense is invalidated.  Obvioualy,
no EDA-vendor requires the customer to repurchase the software.  They
merely update the license contract with the customer's new (street)
address.

(c) If the customer is acquired (purchased) by another company, the
EDA-software is non-transferrable.  Thankfully within industry, the 
standard practice is for the vendor to permit the ownership transfer, as
long as the new owner continues to pay the maintenance/support contract
obligations.  This is cheaper for the new owner, because they don't
have to 're-purchase' the licenses (large one-time non-recurring 
expense), rather merely pay the quarterly/yearly support-fee (smaller 
recurring expense.)

Here is my solution...

I use ModelSim PE.  It's relatively cheap and works well on my PC.
The license is controlled by a dongle, so I can legally run it on any
machine I please - including my home computer.  I presume the same
approach will work with ModelSim SE.  The dongle works with Windows
platforms - not sure about Linux.

If you prefer Cadence or Synopsys, you can explain your situation and
ask them for a waiver.  I'm pretty sure they would agree - if you
asked before you purchased it.  Once they've got your money, it's
another story.

I think you can get a free version of ModelSim from Xilinx.  I'm not
sure if you have to buy anything or not.  In anycase, your Xilinx FAE
should be able to set up a free demo.  I guess ModelTech will do the
same with ModelSim.  

Hope this helps.

BTW, is it possible to buy a "used" VerilogXL license from someone?
There must be thousands that are no longer being used.  I have one.

Marko





On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 04:46:42 GMT, license_rant_master
<none@nowhere.net> wrote:

>I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
>Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
>servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations.  Launching
>sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
>but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
>slow over an WAN/internet connection.  In the past, I
>haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
>restart them, then logout.  Now, I find the need to do some
>interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
>etc.)
>
>So I thought, ok, I'll just install Linux at home and check
>out a license remotely from the company.  The system
>administrator told me "NO!" this is forbidden, due to the license
>agreements of just about every EDA-tool vendor.  According to the
>language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
>is tied to a physical location called 'site.'
>
>There are minor differences among the 'site-radius', but the
>end-result is the same ... no executing the tool on hardware outside
>of the radius:
>
>Cadence : 1 mile radius within licensed machine-node
>           (Sysadmin told me this...didn't double-check myself.)
>
>Synopsys: 5 mile radius within licensed machine-node
>           (couldn't find the agreement, but found this on Solvnet.)
>
>Model/Mentor: 800 meter (0.5mi) radius within licensed machine-node
>           (Download the user's manual for any Modelsim product.)
>
>...
>
>At this point, I think, well alright, most of these EDA tools
>are $100,000 USD and up, so it's reasonable for the vendor to impose 
>these terms.  EDA companies don't want 1 company buying a huge site-wide 
>(100+) licenses, then randomly 'renting' them out over the internet.
>
>I mentally used this analogy to convince myself this is ok:
>I buy broadband internet service for my household.
>It's "unlimited" for my household -- not my neightborhood or someone
>driving by on a WiFi laptop.  Fair enough...
>
>Since I can't use the company's tools on *my* home machine, I
>started investigating various low-cost Verilog simulators to run
>under Windows.  (I can't use Icarus because it fails to compile a
>lot of our company's Verilog RTL.)
>
>/RANT ON
>
>1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
>    as their premiere Modelsim/SE.
>
>"Mentor Graphics
>grants to you, subject to payment of appropriate license fees, a 
>nontransferable, nonexclusive license to use
>Software solely: (a) in machine-readable, object-code form; (b) for your 
>internal business purposes; and (c) on
>the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license fee 
>is paid, or as authorized by Mentor
>Graphics. A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800 meter) radius."
>
>    *RIDICULOUS*  If I were a design-consultant, and my laptop were
>    my primary compute platform, how am I supposed to comply with a
>    'site' radius?  By their language, I can't run Modelsim
>    if I drive more than 0.5mi from my home-residence/business?!?
>
>2) ok, so next I move on to Cadence's "Verilog Desktop"
>
>    Wow, same story -- the language of their license agreement brings
>    me to the same conclusion.  Install on laptop -- automatic
>    non-compliance with their agreement (unless you 'lock down' the
>    laptop with a 1-mile chain.)  Funny how their salesman now use
>    x86-laptops for nearly *all* customer-site product demos?!?
>
>3) I may investigate Verilogger Pro or Simucad, but I figure why bother.
>    I'll probably just end up getting angrier...
>
>...
>
>/RANT OFF
>
>Any comments?
>What pisses me off the most, is those Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor 
>"travelling salesman."  They come to our company-site, armed with
>laptops and LCD-projectors -- then show off how a small x86-laptop
>now runs jobs faster than a low-end Sun/IBM RISC workstation.
>These EDAs need to be sued for false advertising.  At a minimum,
>someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
>for products aimed at 'personal' use.
>
>For now, I've simply told my supervisor 'project schedule slip.'
>And I've given up on doing real work at home (now mostly just
>catching on documentation and inline RTL-comments.)