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Ask HN: Use after license expiration protection schemes

3 points by b20000 ↗ HN
What are some good solutions to prevent businesses from using your software past termination of a licensing agreement or past a trial date?

Specifically, this is in the context of software that is installed on linux servers for which a monthly licensing fee needs to be paid.

Some ideas I had myself: - reduce reliability of software past certain date - use a licensing server with the software connecting to it to check if it is allowed to run - keep some type of secure date or time counter which is checked

Curious what scenarios you've had yourself in your startup dealing with customers and how you've handled this.

4 comments

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solardev
(As a user) Is the Jetbrains model realistic at all for your use case? They charge a monthly fee, but if you stop a subscription, you can keep using the last version you paid for with no further updates. They also offer long term loyalty discounts to encourage subscribers to stick with them past the expiration.

Carrot, not stick, I suppose.