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Most of the products available for purchase at OtsZone.com use the OtsReg licensing system. This system has been custom designed for ease of use. Another overriding goal of the system was that it should never cause undue inconvenience to our most valuable asset, our customers!
Every program requires both a product license and machine license to run. You are issued with a product license after ordering from OtsZone.com. You only ever need one product license for each different product you purchase.
You also need a machine license, and these are issued specifically per machine. It is not possible to use the software on another computer using the machine license that was issued for a different computer.
If you have purchased a product with a quantity of say, 3, then you are entitled to run the software on 3 different computers.
The process for obtaining machine licenses is simple and quick. Machine licenses are issued by the OtsZone.com servers. If the computer you're obtaining a machine license for is connected to the internet, you simply click one button and it's all done automatically and takes just 3 seconds! If you have to use the manual method, because the computer you are installing the software to does not have an internet connection, then it may take you about 2 minutes.
No! This is the case with some other licensing systems, but not with OtsReg. As stated at the top of this page, we never want to cause any undue inconvenience to our customers. If for some reason you can not obtain a machine license, which could be for a variety of reasons -- 1) you do not have access to the internet at the time, 2) your account has been mistakenly disabled, 3) our server is down -- you can STILL use the software, in its full form. The OtsReg system supports the concept of a 7-day temporary machine license. This gives you seven days to sort out whatever issues are preventing you from obtaining a true machine license.
Again, the purpose of OtsReg is not to prevent you from doing anything that is fair and reasonable. If you have a single-workstation license, then you are entitled to use the software on one computer. If you get a new machine, it is fine to use it on this new machine providing you first remove it from the other machine. If you have a 3-workstation license, then you may have the software installed on three computers at one time.
The licensing system does not directly prevent you from doing anything that you would reasonably do, with respect to replacing computers, repairing components in computers, etc. And if for some reason your account is disabled and you are unable to create a machine license when you rightfully believe you should, you are able to immediately obtain a 7-day temporary machine license, giving you time to email us and sort out the issue.
No. Once the software is successfully installed on a system and a valid product license and machine license is installed, the product will run forever until a) something changes in your computer, ie. a major hardware change, or b) you install a new version of the software. If you do not do either of these things the software will continue to run without any further interaction with the licensing system required.
Our old licensing system was always only a temporary solution. It basically allowed anyone to do anything once they had a product key. Although we appreciate that most of our customers are honest, the sad reality is that some people will not bother to buy the right number of licenses that they are actually using unless they have no easy alternative. This hurts all customers, as it deprives the software developer of sales, which in turn means slower development of the software and a longer time for customers to wait for upgrades and new features.
We wanted to create a fair and equitable system that provided sufficient motivation for people to "do the right thing", without adversely inconveniencing all customers with complicated and difficult licensing procedures. We believe we have struck an optimal balance. No one should be inconvenienced by the OtsReg system. Everyone will benefit however from software development speed increasing as we are able to channel additional dollars from sales into the development department.
Great question! Glad you asked!
If you're still not sure about the OtsReg system, consider some of the various methods that other serious software developers use, and then contrast these with OtsReg.
Hardware dongles. You physically can not run the program on a computer unless the dongle is plugged into the back. You buy a one-user license, you get one dongle, you can only use the software on one computer. It's easy to drive off to a gig and realise you've left the dongle at home, then you can't use the software at your gig :(
Also, hardware dongles are expensive to manufacture (comparitively speaking), so this obviously adds to the price of the software you have purchased.
Magic code. You need to call the company to get a special number each time you wish to install the software. Calling costs time and money. You may wait in a telephone queue. It may be outside of office hours and so you may not be able to even get the code at that time. If you're moving the software from one computer to another before a gig, you may have to run a special program on the first computer to prove that you've uninstalled it. If the first computer died and you can't run this program, you may have to pursuade the person at the company that you are genuine in your intentions, and all before a gig just to get the system working.
Often these systems are accompanied by special operating system hooks that restrict what you can do. For example you may find that doing a "defrag" on your hard disk totally invalidates the program's license! Why? Why should you not be able to defrag your hard disk just because you are using some company's software?!! In addition, often these systems add bloat to the program (because they attempt to do all sorts of weird protection things), having a negative impact on system performance. Is this really what you want?
OtsReg. Does not physically prevent you from running the software on other machines, providing you stay within reasonable terms of your license. Even then, you can always create a 7-day temporary machine license, say, if you're just wanting to try the program on another computer to gauge system performance.
Does not cost time or money to obtain a new machine license. Well, it takes about 3 seconds, and it does send a few bytes over the internet, so that probably costs about half a cent, but you get the point! Has 24-hour access to make machine licenses, not dependent on office hours of any company. If server is down for some reason, you can still make a 7-day temporary license.
Does not add any bloat to the software. Does not negatively impact the performance of the software. Does not prevent you from doing hard disk "defrags" and the like.
Which system do you like best? ... We thought so!