To be considered authorized, a user must have an activation key, which generally means that the product has been purchased; however, the key can also be provided by the vendor for evaluation purposes. Licensing can apply to an entire component, or to a subset of a component.
Subsequent chapters describe the client API and the provider API of the Licensing framework. Most developers using the Licensing Service are concerned only with developing licensed products, which use the Licensing framework client API; they should read Chapter 9
, "Licensing framework client API." Developers who are interested in becoming providers of licensing technology to be plugged into the Licensing framework should also read Chapter 10, "Licensing framework provider API."