max (de)activations per day/week/month?

[nschloe]

I would like to allow users to activate/deactivate their own machines, but to avoid licenses being passed around indefinitely, I'd like to restrict the number of (de)activations a user can perform per day, week, or month. Any hints?

[ezekg]

Currently, this isn't possible. The only way to limit number of activations/deactivations is through license tokens with a max activation/deactivation limits, but in order to "reset" the count e.g. weekly, you would need to generate a new token, since tokens are immutable. There are plans to add configurable rate-limits to these actions, but that's not a high priority feature at the moment. But contributions are welcome.

[nschloe]

Just that. I'd like to allow users to use different machines, e.g., when buying a new computer or using one in a new lab. Without limiting this is in time, one license could service many people if they activate before use, deactivate after. That's why I'd like to have a time-constraint on it.

[ezekg]

The best way to prevent that would be to activate processes in addition to machines, which will ensure concurrency is enforced. E.g. if a machine is deactivated while the application is running, current processes will be killed and you can exit the application or show a warning, etc. You could, for example, limit each machine to 1 process. This will ensure sharing is impossible.

[nschloe]

I didn't catch this. Would that prevent user A to run her program from 9am to 10am, deactivate, forward her license to user B, and he runs it from 11am to 12am? Then ping-pong the license back and forth until the license expires?

[ezekg]

It would not prevent that, no. It would only prevent concurrent usage. You would need to implement your own rate limiting logic for now until that previously mentioned issue is tackled.

[nschloe]

Edit: Solved by adding to each license an activation token with a limited number of allowed activations. Tokens auto-updated every so often.