Licence Types

The Solid Fluid licensing scheme allows for a variety of licence types, when purchasing our software. This inherent flexibility affords us as the creator, and you as the user or system administrator for the software, the best possible range of options for cost and benefit.

Licenses come in four different types;

•  Not licence
•  Standard
•  Professional
•  Net Server
•  Net Client

 Not licence

This type of licence is purely informational. Our e-commerce server integrates the capacity to sell goods other than software, as well as the electronic licences we sell for use with our applications. This licence type is used for such goods to make it as clear as possible to customers that no electronic licence is purchased.

 Standard

The standard licence is typically a budget single instance licence, offered for use with our applications. The purchase of a standard licence requires that the customer provide an "Instance Id" obtained from their prior installed instance of the application.

This Instance Id allows us to tie the licence to a particular installation, or instance, of the application. Typically if the software is reinstalled the licence will no longer be valid. Overall we are committed to the idea that the software should be valid for the customer on their machine for the period of the licence, no matter if they re-installed the software or not. We keep records of the licenses we sell, so it is possible that we may issue a new licence with a new Instance Id for the remainder of the period under the old licence. We reserve the right to refuse re-issuance of a licence in such circumstances. This re-issuance, cannot be performed online. To get a licence re-issued you must contact us directly.

A standard licence is subject to a validity period which is clearly stated by us at the time of purchase. After this period, the licence must be renewed through the homepage for that application on the website.

A standard licence may be available in different "flavours" for a single application. Each flavour may allow or disallow certain features of the application it licenses. In general the more features that a flavour of licence allows, the greater it's purchase price will be. Where licence flavouring is available, it will be clear what features are available under each flavour.

 Professional

The professional licence type can be considered to be the "Full Licence" from the perspective of "grace". The professional licence will typically be found to be considerably more expensive than the standard licence.

The Professional licence operates in a similar manner to the standard licence. It is still subject to a validity period and flavouring, but not an Instance Id lock.

By means of our terms and conditions the licence is only valid for a single instance of the software, and in any case for the specified period of validity with features associated with the licence flavour.

 Net Server

The net server licence is quite different from the standard and professional licence types. The net server licence is aimed at economic volume licensing in a corporate environment. It works in conjunction with the net client licence, where the net server is responsible for monitoring validity period, user count and Instance Id locking.

The basic principle of the Solid Fluid net licensing scheme is that a disparate group of users, each of whom has an instance of an application, check out a licence from a central licence server whilst they use an application. The core assumption is that many fewer instances of the software will be in use, than are actually installed.

The net server licence requires the use of some computing resources in a central server machine, with TCP/IP access to the corporate network. The net server licence acts through software that we provide for free and serves licenses on the central server, up to a maximum seat count. The Instance Id locks the net server licence to the server machine.

 Net Client

The net client licence is the "other half" of the net server licence. It too is aimed at economic volume licensing in a corporate environment. The net client licence is responsible for flavouring.

A net client licence cannot be used on it's own, but since it is not instance locked, and does not expire, it can be used with more than one instance of an application with impunity. Typically different net client licenses for a single application will vary only by flavour. Where it is necassary to buy more than one net client licence, it would only be necassary, to enable a corporate customer to control costs. The net client licence allows a system administrator to set up classes of application user with differing capability.