Allowing license details to be loaded from a properties file

[andy_farlie]

Would it be possible to specify the license details in a properties file, for instance,

com/jidesoft/utils/license.props

that has three keys

companyName=COMPANY NAME
projectName=PROJECT NAME
licenseKey=LICENSE KEY

instead of calling

com.jidesoft.utils.Lm.verifyLicense("COMPANY NAME", "PROJECT NAME", "LICENSE KEY");

[JIDE Support]

Sure. You can set them as system properties. The properties names are verifyLicense.companyName, verifyLicense.projectName and verifyLicense.licenseKey respectively.

Thanks,

[andy_farlie]

Aha. That would be a start, but what I am trying to avoid is having to specify this information directly in the application. I would prefer to not need to explicitly specify the license information, but have JIDE pick up the license information implicitly.

Is that possible?

[JIDE Support]

I thought you can run your application with -D JVM parameters to specify the system properties. If so, you didn't explicitly specify the license information in your application but in your batch or script file. Or I still miss something?

[andy_farlie]

Yes, I could do that. I was trying to avoid having to do that explicit setting because someone will forget about it at a client site and then a fresh round of helpdesk calls starts (that would be our HD calls). Occasionally we have clients that will use some of our panels and I would like to remove the need for them to have to set the license settings or having to add the license verification. If they run with our jar then the license details would be resolved for them.

[JIDE Support]

I see. Is there a better suggestion? I don't really like com/jidesoft/utils/license.props approach because anyone who gets the modified jide jar by accident from your distribution can use JIDE "for free" without knowing that they are violating the license agreement.

Thanks,

[andy_farlie]

Ah, I see what you mean. No, I was thinking that the properties file would be included in our jar, so if you used our jar then you have the runtime access to JIDE. If the client wrote code to use JIDE components then that would be an obvious contravention of the license, but the client would definitely know at that point.

[JIDE Support]

If so, what is the difference with you call Lm.verifyLicense somewhere in a class in your jar? As long as people uses your class, they can use JIDE jars.

Thanks,

[weicong]

But the project name might be different.

[JIDE Support]

Well, I guess I still understand your scenario. Can one of you explain it in more details?

Thanks,

[andy_farlie]

The licensing details are irrelevant to me. They are an artifact of JIDE. If there were a license manager then I would expect JIDE to contact the license manager and verify that there was a sufficient license to run the software. JIDE does not use an external license manager, which is very good, but it is requiring me to do the license management.

If I write a new application then I need to add this line of boilerplate text to run the application in case it makes use of a JIDE component. If a client uses our panels in an application then we need to document that they need to add this line of boilerplate text as well. It would be much nicer if there was a well known location that JIDE looked for license details, and just executed the code.

[andy_farlie]

Can I get back to this? I would like to be able to have a way of supplying the license as part of a jar and have jide be able to pick that up. Is this going to be at all possible?

[JIDE Support]

Can you send support@jidesoft.com your phone number? I'll give you a call so that we can discuss this in details.

Thanks,