[CentOS] C7, encryption, and clevis

Valeri Galtsev galtsev at kicp.uchicago.edu
Fri Jun 8 20:06:09 UTC 2018



On 06/08/18 13:48, m.roth at 5-cent.us wrote:
> Frank Cox wrote:
>>>> so if it would work, replace shortname with short and short1?
>>
>> With all of this hokey-pokey surrounding licensing and mac addresses, I
>> wonder if this outfit is actually still in compliance with the terms of
>> their license for this software, whatever it may be?
>>
>> If the software licensed to run only on Machine X and Machine X has now
>> been junked and replace by Machine Y,  then isn't the solution to obtain a
>> license for the software for Machine Y or be out-of compliance regardless
>> of the technical ability to spoof whatever it's looking for?

Frank, I 100% agree with you. The only case with spoofed MAC address and 
license that may have chance to stand in court will be if all below are 
true:

1. the company issued perpetual license.
2. the company does not exist
3. the original hardware died (be it motherboard whose embedded NIC 
license was locked to or network card)
4. single replacement machine (meeting requirements of license; 
sometimes it is number of CPUs/cores, memory, etc) is used to replace it 
[imminently needing to spoof MAC address]
5. fair effort was made to find and notify about the above whoever 
inherited rights of dissolved company

But I bet the lawyer can find flaws in what I tried to say.


On a similar note: one of the companies whose software scientists here 
were using a lot (IDL is a product) changed hand several times, and last 
owner changed licensing terms and stopped signing perpetual licenses. 
With perpetual license you were able to keep upgrading software during 
support period, usually 1 year, and keep using last version later 
forever only you are locked to that older version. They stopped signing 
perpetual licenses, and made it "software for rent" with 1 year rent 
term. When that happened I recommended all our people to avoid using IDL 
in new projects (python was my recommendation as fair replacement - just 
what I know, not that I consider it better than other alternatives). As 
a programmer (former I should say, as I don't put my dirty hands into 
code lately, almost not) I wouldn't invest my time into mastering 
something that I not necessarily will have access to at some point in a 
future...

Valeri

>>
> It's apparently a very good molecular modeling program, and to be real, my
> users tell me that the company that bought the original company wants, and
> I'm not making this up, $15k US to generate a license for a new
> workstation. And there's two? three? workstations that run it.
> 
> And this is a US gov't agency (civilian secrot). Budget? We don' need no
> steenkeen budgets, the Magic Hand of the Market will produce all the
> results we need.....
> 
>         mark "not including building maintenance budgets"
> 
> _______________________________________________
> CentOS mailing list
> CentOS at centos.org
> https://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos
> 

-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Valeri Galtsev
Sr System Administrator
Department of Astronomy and Astrophysics
Kavli Institute for Cosmological Physics
University of Chicago
Phone: 773-702-4247
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++



More information about the CentOS mailing list