Which licenses do I need?

[Khalil Hesam]

Someone told me that he's bought more CPUs and required licenses for the HP-UX. He asked me to watch the installation process and it was the first time I was going to watch CPU installation and was eager to see how those licenses work! But the expert installed the CPUs (the original system had 2 and now have 16) and did not do anything and the HP-UX just recognized the CPUs and started using them! I can't understand what the licenses are good for! there are other licenses for HP-UX which are same as I checked, like replication on HP-UX which it seems the OS didn't really need a license!

[Torsten.]

"I can't understand what the licenses are good for!"

There is no "technical" background, but legal.

[Kapil Jha]

OS does not need licences , but licences put a restriction so that only services which are listed in contract are used.
Nothing more nothin less.
Its all about money honey !!!!!
Plus third party licemces are required for same purpose only.
BR,
Kapil

[Khalil Hesam]

So there's nothing like serial numbers or activation codes with those licenses and they're just legal papers? I can't understand why you should buy a license when you are buying the hardware!

[Duncan Edmonstone]

Well I can walk into a shop, pick up a candy bar and walk out without paying - but that doesn't mean its legal! I can copy a DVD too - that's also illegal!

It's simple - you should buy the licenses because not to do so would be illegal. That's the way the license scheme works - its common practice across the software industry - Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and many otherse license their software 'per CPU' or 'per core'.

HTH

Duncan

[Torsten.]

"I can't understand why you should buy a license when you are buying the hardware!"

You can even ask this to any other vendor - if you use something that is not for free you have to pay for it - otherwise you run into a legal issue and get in contact with law, judge, lawyers ...

[Kapil Jha]

One more points...I agree that licences are necessary.But I have seen people copying one licence file to several machine , ofcource not in production system.
But is there a way we can track this????
BR,
Kapil

[Khalil Hesam]

I don't say that why should I pay for a software or hardware! I just say that why should you pay for a license when I've payed for a hardware, it's like buying a candy, then buy a license to eat it, isn't it?

[Dennis Handly]

>I just say that why should you pay for a license when I've paid for a hardware

It depends on whether the software, HP-UX, is bundled with the hardware and requires more licenses.

If you were buying the HP C/aC++ compiler bundle, it is licensed by the number of CPUs.

[Duncan Edmonstone · Accepted solution]

...and today's lesson is that "what's fair is subjective".

HP want to make money selling HP-UX, so they sell it in a certain way against a license model which they think will make them money.

When you buy HP-UX and use the software you effectively agree to that licensing model. Licenses based on number of CPU cores are pretty much the norm for enterprise software. Oracle, IBM and Microsoft all do the same thing - even Red Hat & SUSE want more monet off you if you have > 4 or 8 cores in your Linux box. Sun might not charge for their OS any more, but I'm willing to bet they charge more to support Solaris on a system with 16 CPUs comapared to a system with 2 CPUs.

Anyway whether you like it or not - that's the model and I doubt it will change significantly in the near future.

HTH

Duncan