Dual-core Processors Challenge Licensing Models

ffub writes "Changes in hardware (such as dual-core processors and virtualisation) are making software licensing increasingly difficult for software firms. Companies still prefer the per-seat one-off license, while subscription models are favoured with software firms. But neither model reflects well the way software is used these days. The Economist looks at the situation and briefly touches on how Open Source could benefit from the muddle."

Maybe

[BHearsum]

Maybe this will get rid of licensing models that are 'per cpu'. I've never understood the logic in charging per CPU, anyone care to explain? One computer, one license. Or even better, no licenses.

Article mentions virtual servers

[putko]

I had not thought about the problem of virtual servers.

E.g. suppose I have a big-ass mainframe that emulates a few PCs, just to run Excel now and then (for legacy reasons). Once a month, we reconfigure the mainframe just for a batch job, so that some of its resources are used to simulate 10 PCs.

How do you price that? A mainframe license? 10 separate PC licenses? What about the fact that I'm only doing it now and then, and not using it regularly (8-10 hours a day)?

I just wish the article had used the term "price discrimination" -- that really explains it all.

Q: How much does it cost?
A: "How much ya got?"

Re:Maybe

[Tim C]

I'd imagine that it's partly due to how much harder it is to write good multi-threaded code that scales well with increasing numbers of CPUs.

Yes, you're running the same code whether you have 1 CPU or 8, but if you do have more than one then you're actually benefiting from the additional effort (design, development, testing, etc). I imagine that the rationale is that it was harder and more expensive to write, why not charge more for it?

On top of that, the vast majority of multi-CPU users are business users, which tend to have more money and be prepared to spend it; you charge what the market will bear.

Robber Barons

[forq]

The software industry has gotten away with robbery for too long. Year over year they astound us with their skyrocketing costs, and as computing complexity goes up, they find more and more excuses to not deliver the support you're paying for. "We cannot support you because of X." X being any reason they can find. Upgrades, new hardware they don't have in their support matrix, virtualization. Whatever the reason, the very first order of business for those support folks when you call for help is to find a reason to not support you. And now they want more money. To pay the outsourced first level support folks that know all about how to determine if you're unsupportable, and nothing about how to support the products.

Ridiculous.

Re:We've heard this before...

[Snocone]

Am I missing something?

Yeah, a fair bit actually. If you're doing professional press work, digital photography, or video, you need the best true-to-life colour fidelity achievable on your monitor, and that means (very expensive) CRT, not LCD.

Also, I don't think any LCDs can match the pixel response time of CRTs, so the hardcore FPS gamer might notice a difference enough to prefer a CRT. My idea of a good game is more along Nethack lines, so I wouldn't personally know.

License by transaction rate

[Anonymous Coward]

License by the maximum number of transactions per second that the database can perform. This can be enforced by the database. That pretty much covers everything and you don't have to worry about number of cpu's, number of users, number of accounts, etc... Move the database to a faster machine with more cpu's? No problem as no license change is required. But if you want to increase the rate from the old maximum to the maximum rate the new machine can handle, then you will need upgrade the license.

This is so obvious given that databases are benchmarked in transactions per second, one has to wonder if something else is at work. Most likely just simple greed.

per-thread

[rhythmx]

Why don't the software companies license by something that they can control? A "number of threads" model would be more fair. Or at least, the license can't assume that all the hardware is there for it to use and profit from.

If I had an 8 processor server running an existing application that I also wanted a low-end DB server on, I could just buy a single thread license instead of an 8 cpu one. Later, if the DB server couldn't handle the load, I could simply upgrade it to a 2 or 3 thread server.

Re:Maybe

[TheCaptain]

Or even better, no licenses.

That is a really oversimplified and dangerous line of thought, IMHO. Even Linux and BSD have licenses...

Re:Maybe

[Spoing]

Maybe this will get rid of licensing models that are 'per cpu'. I've never understood the logic in charging per CPU, anyone care to explain? One computer, one license. Or even better, no licenses.

Where do you draw the boarders between one 'computer' and another?

If the licence were based on a per-metal-box basis, some clever folks would buy systems that are really clusters but are contained in a single box. Good for them, though it causes problems if you are the seller and supporter of the sofware.

One license per-disc and shut the hell up ?

[billcopc]

I love capitalism. No really, I love watching people test just how hard they can screw each other in the ass for money without getting shot. Here's how I see it:

Company ABC invests X money into developing product. They estimate sales of Y quantity. Divide X by Y to get a per-item cost, mark it up for profit and a support allowance, then sell it.

The fact that I might run their software on multiple CPU's, or that it might be accessed by Terminal Server, doesn't change a single thing for the developer. They don't need to work harder, they don't lose sleep at night, their kids won't end up on Springer. It doesn't matter whether I use it to index my MP3 files, or run a Fortune-500 business with it. They did their work, and they get paid for that work. What happens afterward is not their problem, and more importantly none of their goddamned business.

When people learn to take just compensation for their efforts, and give up the "fight" for riches, we'll wonder how we ever survived through capitalism. There is a set amount of monetary value in the world, the more you have, the less someone else has, and the more that person is likely to do nasty things to make up for the loss. So why don't you just be happy to eat every day and give me a goddamned break with your license gouging.

Re:Maybe

[IntlHarvester]

Per CPU licensing was a simple metric that allowed software companies to scale their pricing so that it was fair to both the entry level and high end customers.

Which works as long as the hardware companies scale their prices with # of CPUs. Historically, going from 2 CPUs to 4 often quadrupled the price of a server, and going to 8 quadrupled it again.

The issue is that Intel and AMD are currently breaking this model. There isn't a substantial price difference between today's dual core system and yesterday's single core. But yet some software costs have doubled.

It's only a year or so until even laptops have dual-core chips, and $3000 Xeon/Opteron servers have chips with 4 or more cores. The whole assumption that 4 CPUs = Big Expensive System is going to have to change.

Re:How about per cycle?

[Tablizer]

As part of load testing, I wrote a program that would spit the complete works of shakespeare back and forth, over and over, to the mainframe and back using multiple threads. Two weeks of testing cost the company an extra $12,000 because of the cycles expended.

To bilk or not to bilk