Licensing benefits

Licensing technology does not directly address the domain of software distribution, installation, or asset management. Means other than licensing technology are responsible for ensuring that the user has access to the licensed product in order to try to execute it. However, by helping to control unauthorized usage of software, licensing technology promotes more widespread distribution of software; the vendor and its distributors are often willing to allow copies of the software to be made widely available to potential users. The vendor relies on the licensing technology to ensure that the user will purchase a legitimate license activation key before being able to use the full product.

Tailored functionality

In addition to controlling whether a product will execute, licensing technology can be used to provide tailored functionality at a lower cost. This is achieved by having the license activation key contain all of the relevant licensing terms between the software vendor and a particular user group. These terms control whether particular features of the product are enabled and the usage patterns that are supported. An important example of the latter is whether each simultaneous use of the product by the same user counts as many uses or only one, or whether a single license key activates the product for only one user or any user on the same machine or network.

Lowered cost

The ability to place the terms into the key lowers costs to the software vendor by enabling a single executable product to be distributed; it lowers costs to the users by allowing them to purchase only the functionality they need.

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