Licensing
Licensing for DocktorUI components is based upon three factors. The three factors determine the overall cost for the licenses while each single factor determines a single aspect of the licensing process. These three factors are license type, license subtype and quantity.
- License Type: determines the possibilities offered by the license, in terms of available support, subscription limits and upgrade capabilities. It's distinguished into: Basic, Professional, Business.
- License Subtype: determines the limits and possibilities attached to the license in terms of shared usage and distribution. It's distinguished into: Individual, Company, Corporation, Enterprise.
- Quantity: it refers of course to the amount of licenses purchased in block at the same time.
Here is a table for comparing the various characteristics mentioned above. Please note that all the possible licensing options share the same exact full range of features, they only differ in regards to level of support and distribution. Note also that support is provided only for Professional and Business license types and not for Basic. It is also limited to the duration of the subscription which lasts 1 year since the date of purchase of the license and is renewable on a yearly basis. Upgrades to newer versions will automatically renew the support subscription.
| License Types | |
| Basic | A license of this type is the most limited as it does not offer any official ticket-based support although it does provide a basic free of charge, very low priority bug reporting system through e-mail but without any guarantees of feedback. This type of license is aimed at highly experienced professionals on a tight budget who can work their way out on their own, getting around problems and issues without external help. |
| Professional | A license of this type provides the owner with a professional-level ticket-based support system through which the user can report bugs, suggest new features or request general support about code-related problems. Support requests of this type get handled at medium priority depending on the severity of the issue. For bug reports or feature requests that get accepted the report is pumped up in the to-do jobs list and is included in the next release upon implementation. |
| Business | A license of this type provides the owner with the greatest advantages and flexibility. It is exactly like the professional license but any issue reported through tickets is handled with the highest priority and particular care is put into delivering the best solution quickly. Remember that a Business license, although it has the highest priority over the others, does not grant an infinite number of these high priority requests as these are really time consuming. So, even though there isn't a specific count limit, there are some restrictions aimed at avoiding abuses of the service. In the case this happens the user will have the choice to either pay for the additional requests or these will be switched silently to medium priority. |
| License Subtypes | |
| Individual | A license of this subtype is bound to an individual, the owner, who's the only person allowed to use and redistribute with his own software the licensed code in the form of a binary module. The owner of this license is permanently attached to the license and thus can not be changed. |
| Company | A license of this subtype is bound to a specific entity, the owner, that remains the owner of the license but is able to establish a specific individual as the active user for the license. The active user is then the only person allowed to use the licensed code in the form of a binary module while this can be distributed under a common name describing the aforesaid entity. The active user for a license of this subtype can be changed by the owning entity and is subject to a fee of 60% the cost of a new license as the one the user of is being changed. |
| Corporation | A license of this subtype is bound to a specific entity, the owner, that remains the owner of the license but is able to establish a specific geographical location as the location of usage for the license, such as an address or a building, with a surface cover inferior or equal to 2000 square meters; above this limit an Enterprise license is required. Within the location of usage any employee of the aforesaid entity can use the licensed code in the form of a binary module while this can be distributed under any name the owner of the license chooses. |
| Enterprise | A license of this subtype is bound to a specific entity, the owner, that remains the owner of the license and that grants every and each one of his employees the right to use the licensed code in the form of a binary module while this can be distributed under any name the owner of the license chooses. This license does not have any geographical limitation and can be used anywhere by any employee or representative of the aforesaid entity. |
| Quantity Discount | |
| 1 to 5 | By ordering an amount of licenses in this range there's no discount. |
| 6 to 10 | By ordering an amount of licenses in this range there's a 5% discount. |
| 11 to 25 | By ordering an amount of licenses in this range there's a 10% discount. |
| 26 or more | By ordering an amount of licenses in this range there's a 25% discount. |
| Upgrades | |
| 0.0.0.* | Upgrading to the next bugfix version is free for every license type except for the Basic type, for which it costs 10% the cost of buying a new equivalent license. |
| 0.0.*.* | Upgrading to the next minor version costs 10% for every license type except for the Basic type, for which it costs 30% the cost of buying a new equivalent license. |
| 0.*.*.* | Upgrading to the next major version costs 30% for every license type except for the Basic type, for which it costs 70% the cost of buying a new equivalent license. |
| *.*.*.* | Upgrading to the next head version costs 70% for every license type except for the Basic type, for which it costs exactly as buying a new equivalent license. |
Licensing Protection
Based upon the assumption that even the most efficient protection mechanism can still fail and on the long-time experience in the field, DocktorUI software adopts a mild and passive license checking where licenses are validated in a very simple and un-sophisticated way at design time only, when the code is being used directly by the developer within its IDE of choice. This ensures the developer that for no reason during the usage of his applications his users will be blocked or annoyed by some license validation failure. This decision follows the principle that it is better to concentrate on providing a high quality service to certified licensees rather than making their experience uncomfortable in the vain effort of limiting illegal users.