License service fallout

[obeth]

I am (again) having trouble getting the license service to work. I have due to problems a couple of months ago moved a dongle from our license servere to the machine I'm working on. It has been working ok until yesterday when it started falling out randomly. Nothing has changed in my steup. Latest WIBU drivers installed vray ADV 1.5 SP1.

Before I get off on this rant I will for the record state that I have no cracked software on my computer and have no intention of getting any. Everything is paid for....

With that said I think I spend way too much time with license issues (vray and other programs). In my opinion alot of software developers are annoying their paying customers in a unsuccessful effort to keep people from cracking their software. Imagine for a moment you buy a car and the key sometimes simply stops working. Your neighbour on the other hand stole his car and simply starts up with a trusty old screwdriver each morning and drives off laughing. I think when you have paid for a license it should run without any problems whatsoever and it should never be easier to simply use a cracked version. If that isn't the case then the people who did the licensing system need to get back to the old drawing board.

End of rant.

[vlado]

You can try to use the license server from SP2 (even if the V-Ray version itself is still sp1) and see if it makes things any better.

Best regards,
Vlado

[MikeHampton]

I will second that. Not just at vray, but at all developers.

ANY copy protection should be:

1) so easy you don't even need documentation on it. IE.. plug in dongle into usb port... that is all, or type in code that is generated automatically. You shouldn't have to contact anyone to get the code.... DONE. Nothing more frustrating trying to get a code that you have to contact someone who's 12 hours different in timezone than yourself.

2) Should be easily transportable. I don't even want to think about how much time and effort is wasted in just upgrading a computer and having to contact everyone and their brother to get new codes, etc. for moving everything over to the new computer... and then the copy protection isn't working so you spend dozens more hours just trying to get YOUR software to work.

Quit punishing legit users!!!


But also.. I think that every developer should have two versions of their software. One being the full commercial version that they have now.... and another version being a non-commercial version that is only 1/10th or less the price. This is the version people could buy to use as a second copy (meaning the commercial version they use for work, but could have a consumer copy to hobby around with or experiment with at home). Or people could buy it just as hobby software or to learn how to use. No time limit on it.. no limited features on it.. no water marks on the output.. it's a full version.. just priced for non commerical use.

Of course maybe the non-commerical software doesn't have phone support.. only email or forum support or whatever. Now I know the argument would be from the developers would be "But then people COULD by the non-commerical version and use it for commercial purposes". My answer to that is.. yes they could.. and they already are. Now they are getting it for free by pirating it. I'm willing to bet some of those pirates would pay the 1/10 price to get a "legit" copy of it even if they arn't following the licencing agreement... but even more than that, how many of the existing user base would buy secondary copies of it to play around with away from work, and how many hobbiest that can't afford a commercial version of a software package would also buy it if there was a non-commerical priced version?

There's a reason that blender is currently the most downloaded 3D software on the planet.. IT'S FREE!! How many kids are downloading and playing around with blender right now... that in 10-15 years.. that will enter the industry and THAT'S the software they are goign to want to use? My advice to developers is you better start thinking about that now.. because if you don't.. in 10 years it may be too late. And to the rest of us.. if the developers keep things the status quo.. we better start at least taking a look at blender (and any other free open source programs) now.

[mcvltd]

My license server still cuts out on a regular/random basis (sp2) it also happened with sp1. The solution I've found to work is - 1) leave it for a couple of mins and it will usually kick back in OR 2) kill license server, restart and then do the same to max. Pain in the a*$! It could be a max 2008 issue though, I'm hoping that a move to max2009 will sort it.

I had a dongle for use with Lightwave, never had any problems with it, ever!

[mcvltd]

max2009, sp2 and still the license server drops out on a regular basis....

[joconnell]

I had a similar issue on a dell xps (ick) which was quite flakey - the machine has since been replaced with another xps (ick) which has a far more stable motherboard and i've had no license server dropouts. Have you tried any other ports on your machine?

[mcvltd]

mmmm... got dell precisions here..there could be a link. Will try out alll the usb slots and see what happens.

[andrewjohn81]

I get the same problem here and Also have Dell precisions. Mine is a 670 that has problems.

I go over to the computer with the license and it looks to be running, until I put my mouse over it and it disappears. I open it again and it's all fine, until next time.

Not a big deal if it happens when I'm here, but if it happens when rendering over the weekend we're screwed.


I wonder if there's a vbs script someone could write that says, every X amount of time run: if server running do nothing, else run server.
That doesn't sound hard. That would be a big help for us Dell users who are having that problem until the actual problem is realized and fixed.

[Nickh]

we get it here on hp machines. maybe they have same flaky usb ports as dell

[JeffG2]

There's a reason that blender is currently the most downloaded 3D software on the planet.. IT'S FREE!!

It's free because they couldn't find enough people interested in purchasing it.

[mcvltd]

Well, have moved my dongle to a different port and it seems to be running fine now Thanks joconnell!! And to think I've been cursing vray and the wibu key all this time.... <hangs head in apologetic shame>

[iwilkinson]

I've been having a lot of trouble getting Vray to work at all... when I try to start the license service, I get a message that it is already running or I don't have admin rights (I know that second part is not the case). Then, when I try to render using Vray, an error pops up stating that the license service is not running.

Frustrating.

The machine sees the dongle as a WIBU stick, so I stongly doubt that it is a bad USB port. It has to be something with licensing and security issues.


I agree that there is no good reason to punish ligit users with such a convoluted process to get the thing to work. It's not like Vray is some sort of nucelar technology!

Vray email assistance has been very attentive, however- I just got another message with some things to try to get it to work. I'll post back here when I get it working.

[ene.xis]

other then another bad usb port i had absolutely no problems with vray license server.
and ofcourse some obscure bugs user errors!

[RErender]

I agree that there is no good reason to punish ligit users with such a convoluted process to get the thing to work. It's not like Vray is some sort of nucelar technology!

I see no reason for people to pay you for your work if they don't want to, not like it is the Mona Lisa...

[andrewjohn81]

I don't think we have to get like that now. I understand their frustration as well. Since some people steal, the rest of us suffer the consequences with some software.

Some of the software vendors I use just trust us with their software. Some make us use hardware dongles. Although I am generally happier with the ones who just give us a universal password for the software, simply because it's so much easier for me to install, I do understand why they wouldn't all want to do that.

I think in order for the trust to be there, like Microsoft has with us, it needs to be a large enough company to have auditors they can periodically send out. And of course, we'd need to buy enough of the software to make it worth it for them. I still can't get Rhino to give us a single license code, and we have over 100 copies here. Makes it a HUGE pain in the butt to do upgrades too. If it were one license I could run them using Altiris like we do most of our software. Adobe is another that just lets us use one license for as many copies as we want. Although, they Do run frequent audits.