Disclaimer: All statements are a layman's interpretation of the IBM OS
licenses valid in the German-speaking part of Switzerland. The US may
have other licensing restrictions (though i highly doubt that).
On Sat, Jul 11, 2009 at 14:41, Steve Richter<stephenrichter@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I dont think it is so clear that IBM places a restriction on its
licensees that they cant reload the OS for another 70 days of trial
use.
There is no trial use of IBM i OS itself, just for licensed programs
which have an additional charge. There is a 70-day grace period for
entering the IBM i OS license key. This grace period, however, exists
purely for technical reasons - it does not constitute any kind of
license for usage of the OS.
Of course, a license is not needed to actually run the OS - just like
you don't need a drivers license to drive a car. It's just illegal.
I am sure it is technically possible to store the number of reloads in
hardware and then shorten the trial period. IBM chooses not to do
Yeah, and? I can start a car without a drivers license, and it will
work. Does that mean i'm allowed to drive without a license?
that. ÂDoes the license agreement say you cant reload?
If you haven't bought a license, there is no license agreement which applies.
You're making the same mistake as many other technical people - you
confuse technology with contracts/license agreements. But there is
almost no overlap between these two fields. License keys are a
technological issue, but they have almost nothing to do with the
actual licensing scheme that's in place.
For example, the user priced Power machines allow you to create an
unlimited amount of user profiles. Does that mean you're allowed to do
that? Yes - of course - but that's just because licensing is based
upon amount of concurrent users - even if you only use a single user
profile, but 50 flesh-and-blood people work on the machine, you'll
still be in violation of the license agreement.
So, the number of user profiles has nothing do with licensing, even if
the system issues a warning when creating more user profiles than
concurrent users bought, and you'll see that amount of users in the
license management console.
midrange.com
