"FREE" Licenses?

Zero Authorized?

If you've looked at your licensing activity lately and noticed that your "About ASE Civil" dialog looks like the following image when you click on the "License Status" tab:

... there's a reason for this.

What's The Deal?

I've been out for a while recovering from cervical spine surgery. When I returned, I discovered a few tasks had been overlooked, including monitoring the server performance.

To make a long, technical story short, client installations of ASE Civil are currently unable to access the license server, where all licensing is managed.

Why Are Licenses Still Working?

This is because of how the ASE Sentinel2 mobile licensing algorithms work. I'll explain briefly...

When a user executes an ASE command, if a certain amount of time has passed since the user's license has been validated (since the previous command), ASE Civil checks to see if the user has an Internet connection.

If there is a connection, then ASE attempts to contact Sentinel2 on the web license server to validate the serial number stored in the client.vlx file. If ASE's authentication request is allowed to be sent through the web connection, the first major hurdle to licensing has been overcome.

This is where the important decisions are made:

Your local ASE will be waiting; patiently expecting some kind of response from the Internet. At this stage, only of 3 scenarios are possible (which it is physically impossible for ASE Civil to be pirated, unless we allow it):

1. ASE's Sentinel2 manager sends back a response indicating the the serial number is valid and the client has at least one license available for distribution (even if it's to the same user again).

2. Sentinel2 says the serial is invalid or there are no licenses currently available, if the serial number is valid.

3. Sentinel2 cannot be contacted for some reason at no fault of the client, valid or not. Nor is ASE able to evaluate the serial number to verify its authenticity.

In scenario #3, the decision was made during development of the Sentinel2 license manager, that if the user made an honest attempt to contact the server to validate the license, but Sentinel2 did not respond, the authorization is gratis.

Yes, that's correct. Licenses are free until our server is back up and running again.

This Won't Last, However...

On Sunday or Monday, the server will be back up and running again.

So if you've been running unlimited licensing during this time, this is "fair warning" (to quote Van Halen) that those client licensing constraints will suddenly be back in-place and all that extra availability will instantly disappear. POOF! Gone in the blink of an eye.

Sorry for the "inconvenience"?

Sincerely,

Nick Merchant

Architect of ASE Civil