[c-nsp] Unified IOS (15.x) and feature based licensing model

Tim Franklin tim at pelican.org
Wed Mar 24 07:43:52 EDT 2010


> What do others think of this new paradigm?

I think the enforced licensing is going to give me a whole lot of operational pain.  Installing CPE in volume (and not even *real* residential-type volumes, I'm only talking tens per week) seems like it's going to need a big manual addition to the process to generate license keys and get them installed on the *right* CPE.

I haven't even looked into the ifs and hows of revoking them or transferring them to another box in the event of a hardware failure / swap-out.

To me, it looks horribly similar to the entertainment industry.  "We're not making enough money" leads to "someone must be taking something without paying, or we'd make as much money as is in our business plan", leads to "let's do X to ensure everyone pays".  The user experience for *legitimate customers* gets worse, and the people who are prepared to resort to illegitimate means, or get their products from somewhere else still don't hand over the "missing" money.

Regards,
Tim.


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