[absmiths]

This isn't explicitly about Mac OS X, but the 10.3 version seems to leave me in more of a quandary about what to do about licensing (especially for shareware). Back in Mac OS 9 days, if I purchased Snaps Pro, or something similar, I would place it in Applications (Mac OS 9) and anybody who happened to sit at my machine could use that software.

Now, for the sake of security and convenience, I have all users on my system use a separate logon (really just 4 - my account, my wife's account, an account I use for software development and one for maintenance).

Well, most shareware nowadays stores registrations in your preferences (or somewhere in your user account), which means that only the user doing the installation has a license. The issue is even more complicated in 10.3 where multiple users can be logged in and actually running the same software simultaneously.

So, my question is, is software still sold per user, or for a specific user? In other words, can I use the same registration code for two different users on the same machine? It doesn't quite seem fair otherwise. Why should my wife not be able to use iSeek or Audio Hijack if I purchase it? She certainly has use of GoLive, Photoshop, Office, etc.

Anyway, I am really interested in what publishers feel about this (esp. moki since I own some of his stuff) - and I am not really interested in responses like "screw 'em, just do it!" as I would like to support developers who do good work.

[dtriska]

You'd have to ask the companies in question, or look at the license agreements for the software.

That said, I think most software is still sold per computer, and therefore it would be fine to have the software registered under each account.

[Brass]

If any developers are selling you software that is registered on a per-user basis, you should talk to them and convince them that it should be on a per-machine basis.

Most of them (including myself and others I've talked to) are happy to change where the licensing information is stored from a user specific file (in ~/Library) to a global file (eg, in /Library).

Unfortunately, it is easier for developers to just store licensing info along with all the other preferences in the default location. And this means user-specific. It is not difficult to make it global, but it does require a little extra effort of the part of developers.

I think most developers that license on a per-user basis only do it because they haven't got around to making the effort to do otherwise yet, and will be quite happy to do so if it is pointed out to them.