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

license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote in message 
> /RANT ON
> 
> 1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
>     as their premiere Modelsim/SE.
[...]
>   At a minimum,
> someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
> for products aimed at 'personal' use.

(Disclaimer: IANAL)
Site wide licenses definitely are licenses and the two companies
involved can agree basically on any ridiculous licensee term that they
can up with, but this might not be the case for a personal edition.

For example if you can manage to buy modelsim PE in a shop or order it
online without clicking through the license agreement than you just
made a regular purchase and there is no license agreement involved.
Even if you click through the license agreement it is very doubtfull
that it is valid. Basically a purchase is a purchase not matter what
you call it and the first sale doctrine applies, which means that the
rightholder can not control the use of an item after the first sale.

This means that you can move your software around (both from place to
place on the same computer, but also from computer to computer)
Also, your company can sell the software to you and you sell it back
later. There is no way the tool vendor can interfere with that. (for
purchased, not rented software) Once you have license files for both
computers you can change ownership easily as often as you want. But
remember to deinstall the software each time.

Kolja Sulimma

Actually.. I believe they charge you a license fee if you move sites.. for
their time and effort of course


"mx" <mx@mx.com> wrote in message
news:0V4Fc.84714$s25.47872@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com...
> 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.)
>

"Simon Peacock" <nowhere@to.be.found> wrote in message news:<40e60e27@news.actrix.gen.nz>...
> Actually.. I believe they charge you a license fee if you move sites.. for
> their time and effort of course

They even charge if you move from one license server to another when
they are in the same location. Rehosting they call it, and it cost
money even if you have maintenance contract. Milage may of cource
vary.

It is amazing that noone from the vendors have even tried to make
their policies clear. There are enough of them listening on these
channels. Working off-site is very easy with the flexlm license system
since you only need to transfer the licensing info. Most programs
check out license when they start, and then keep it, which is very
convenient on a low bandwidth line like a DSL or modem line.

Working off-site could save a lot of jobs since you don't need to move
where the engineers are, have the engineers telecommute to you.

Just my opinion on the topic.

-- 
Svenn

I'm very happy w/ Verilogger.  I've tried a lot of other stuff.
ModelSim sucks dongle.  Too many menus and submenus
and too many things you just have to know about it.  And
even then it won't give meaningful debug messages at times.
And since you're an ASIC engineer, you won't have to do
any searching for the free license file, so you can keep
those trojans and adwares off your system.  It has all the
bugs worked out, and has all the features you need, and
none of the ones you don't.

BB

"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.)
>

mx <mx@mx.com> wrote 
> (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.  

Synopsys didn't allow us to transfer the license, while our company
was aquired, until we made clear, that this would be a good point to
get rid of all Synopsys software in our company. And in fact it was an
important point for the next software purchase that we prefer any
other company when two tools seem technically equivalent.

bye Thomas

news@sulimma.de (Kolja Sulimma) wrote:
> license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote in message 
> > /RANT ON
> > 
> > 1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
> >     as their premiere Modelsim/SE.
>  [...]
> >   At a minimum,
> > someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
> > for products aimed at 'personal' use.
> 
> (Disclaimer: IANAL)
> Site wide licenses definitely are licenses and the two companies
> involved can agree basically on any ridiculous licensee term that they
> can up with, but this might not be the case for a personal edition.
> 
> For example if you can manage to buy modelsim PE in a shop or order it
> online without clicking through the license agreement than you just
> made a regular purchase and there is no license agreement involved.
> Even if you click through the license agreement it is very doubtfull
> that it is valid. Basically a purchase is a purchase not matter what
> you call it and the first sale doctrine applies, which means that the
> rightholder can not control the use of an item after the first sale.

Be careful. License law is a very hard field, especially if different
countries are involved. If you download your software, there might be
the law of two countries involved, which complicates everything.

In Germany your are right that you could ignore any license agreement,
when purchasing a standard programm (enter the shop and buy a CD). But
you have to deal with the license agreement, when purchasing a license
(or get it free) by downloading a software.

These are two different things, which seem very similar.

bye Thomas

> In Germany your are right that you could ignore any license agreement,
> when purchasing a standard programm (enter the shop and buy a CD). But
> you have to deal with the license agreement, when purchasing a license
> (or get it free) by downloading a software.
> 
> These are two different things, which seem very similar.

Probably not. By downloading you are receiving a single copy of the
software. The process of copying was initialized by the seller. Only
the ownership of that copy is transfered, there is no license for
copying necessary, the transaction can be handled as a purchase.
Also, the buyer probably believes this is a purchase anyway, so that a
license contract is likely to be void.

One could argue that the process of copying is performed by the person
doing the download, but that view has MAJOR implication on copyright
law. Basically it makes P2P downloads legal in many countries. So
don't expect that view to be successful.

Again, IANAL,

Kolja Sulimma

news@sulimma.de (Kolja Sulimma) wrote:
> > These are two different things, which seem very similar.
> 
> Probably not. By downloading you are receiving a single copy of the
> software. The process of copying was initialized by the seller. Only
> the ownership of that copy is transfered, there is no license for
> copying necessary, the transaction can be handled as a purchase.
> Also, the buyer probably believes this is a purchase anyway, so that a
> license contract is likely to be void.

IANAL, too.
German law is not logical in any ways (as most other laws I asume).
Maybe you should google in de.soc.recht.*
 
In short you can't get ownership on software in Germany, but you can
get ownership on a CD containing software.
For using a software you need the right to use it (Nutzungrecht),
often called license. In Germany you get this license either by
getting owner of a CD containing the software, or by a license
agreement.

bye Thomas

mx wrote:

> 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.

The physical location restriction is completely ridiculus.
Upon further thinking about its implications, one could figure that
the software is almost infinitely crappy. The implications are such
that the user of such a software cannot show it on an exhibition.
All the other limitations are dream world stuff. It cannot be legally
proven that the software was used at home beside the pool even when it
is run by the correct user on the correct machine. Nor can be legally
proven that it was shown to a colleage at whatever location.
IMO, a very obvious way to try to keep the software off the public eyes.

I happend to work once with such kind of software, 40k$ per seat, plus 
something per year, and the user interface was such awkward and clumsy, 
that I wished the developpers being beaten up for every minute I had to 
work with. If such feelings spread too quickly and too openly, the 
business would be on the downslope rather quick. Since such software is 
usually purchased by people who will never work with it, the employee
on this software has to be eternally gratefull to be able to work with 
this software and deliver the expected results.

IMO, such restrictions are an indication for crap to be stayed away from.

Rene

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:42:58 +0000, Uwe Bonnes wrote:

> In comp.arch.fpga 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.)
> 
> Look at NX. It what LBX (Low Bandwidth X ) promised, but NX
> delivers. Probably not to easy to set yet, but worth a try. 
> 

It's easy enough to set up the server (either look at the commercial
version from www.nomachine.com, or google for "freenx" or "nxserver") on
linux, and clients are even easier (download free from nomachine).  It is
said to be usable over a modem connection - I have certainly found it
works well over ADSL for most work.  It's definitely faster than tightVnc
(which is also okay for many things - and works well for pretending you
are sitting at your office windows desktop).


> Bye