*RANT* Ridiculous EDA software "user license agreements"?

[license_rant_master]

I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
etc.)

So I thought, ok, I'll just install Linux at home and check
out a license remotely from the company. The system
administrator told me "NO!" this is forbidden, due to the license
agreements of just about every EDA-tool vendor. According to the
language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
is tied to a physical location called 'site.'

There are minor differences among the 'site-radius', but the
end-result is the same ... no executing the tool on hardware outside
of the radius:

Cadence : 1 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(Sysadmin told me this...didn't double-check myself.)

Synopsys: 5 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(couldn't find the agreement, but found this on Solvnet.)

Model/Mentor: 800 meter (0.5mi) radius within licensed machine-node
(Download the user's manual for any Modelsim product.)

....

At this point, I think, well alright, most of these EDA tools
are $100,000 USD and up, so it's reasonable for the vendor to impose
these terms. EDA companies don't want 1 company buying a huge site-wide
(100+) licenses, then randomly 'renting' them out over the internet.

I mentally used this analogy to convince myself this is ok:
I buy broadband internet service for my household.
It's "unlimited" for my household -- not my neightborhood or someone
driving by on a WiFi laptop. Fair enough...

Since I can't use the company's tools on *my* home machine, I
started investigating various low-cost Verilog simulators to run
under Windows. (I can't use Icarus because it fails to compile a
lot of our company's Verilog RTL.)

/RANT ON

1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
as their premiere Modelsim/SE.

"Mentor Graphics
grants to you, subject to payment of appropriate license fees, a
nontransferable, nonexclusive license to use
Software solely: (a) in machine-readable, object-code form; (b) for your
internal business purposes; and (c) on
the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license fee
is paid, or as authorized by Mentor
Graphics. A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800 meter) radius."

*RIDICULOUS* If I were a design-consultant, and my laptop were
my primary compute platform, how am I supposed to comply with a
'site' radius? By their language, I can't run Modelsim
if I drive more than 0.5mi from my home-residence/business?!?

2) ok, so next I move on to Cadence's "Verilog Desktop"

Wow, same story -- the language of their license agreement brings
me to the same conclusion. Install on laptop -- automatic
non-compliance with their agreement (unless you 'lock down' the
laptop with a 1-mile chain.) Funny how their salesman now use
x86-laptops for nearly *all* customer-site product demos?!?

3) I may investigate Verilogger Pro or Simucad, but I figure why bother.
I'll probably just end up getting angrier...

....

/RANT OFF

Any comments?
What pisses me off the most, is those Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor
"travelling salesman." They come to our company-site, armed with
laptops and LCD-projectors -- then show off how a small x86-laptop
now runs jobs faster than a low-end Sun/IBM RISC workstation.
These EDAs need to be sued for false advertising. At a minimum,
someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
for products aimed at 'personal' use.

For now, I've simply told my supervisor 'project schedule slip.'
And I've given up on doing real work at home (now mostly just
catching on documentation and inline RTL-comments.)

 

[Allan Herriman]

On Thu, 01 Jul 2004 04:46:42 GMT, license_rant_master
<none@nowhere.net> wrote:

I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
etc.)

Have you tried tightVNC on maximum compression? The lossy compression
leads to some visible artefacts on bitmaps (e.g. your modelsim wave
window), but it's a lot better than anything else I've tried over a
voice band modem.

http://www.tightvnc.org/

Regards,
Allan.

 

[Uwe Bonnes]

In comp.arch.fpga license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote:
: I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
: Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
: servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
: sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
: but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
: slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
: haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
: restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
: interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
: etc.)

Look at NX. It what LBX (Low Bandwidth X ) promised, but NX
delivers. Probably not to easy to set yet, but worth a try.

Bye
--
Uwe Bonnes bon@elektron.ikp.physik.tu-darmstadt.de

Institut fuer Kernphysik Schlossgartenstrasse 9 64289 Darmstadt
--------- Tel. 06151 162516 -------- Fax. 06151 164321 ----------

 

[Joseph H Allen]

In article <SGMEc.2916$486.1576@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com>,
license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote:

According to the language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license
'seat' is tied to a physical location called 'site.'

I've heard that this is to prevent on-site consultants from sharing their
personal license (or more likely, the consultant's company's license) with
their customer. Otherwise only ASIC consulting companys would be buying the
$500K licenses.

--
/* jhallen@world.std.com (192.74.137.5) */ /* Joseph H. Allen */
int a[1817];main(z,p,q,r){for(p=80;q+p-80;p-=2*a[p])for(z=9;z--q=3&(r=time(0)
+r*57)/7,q=q?q-1?q-2?1-p%79?-1:0%79-77?1:0<1659?79:0>158?-79:0,q?!a[p+q*2
]?a[p+=a[p+=q]=q]=q:0:0;for(;q++-1817printf(q%79?"%c":"%c\n"," #"[!a[q-1]]);}

 

[Just an Illusion]

Hi license_rant_master,

For Mentor Sales Man, that not seems violated their license, because the
program and the license can be attached to the laptop, or can be
authorized by them.

I don't know very well all license aspect but do you said that the
maximum physical distance between the license server and the computer
which run the program must be the site-radius, don't you ?

That strange because I know some worldwide companies which share their
licenses all around the world (in the different company centers).

Another question, in the Mentor Graphics license, you have:
"(c) on the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable
license fee is paid, or as authorized by Mentor Graphics."

If your company provide you a computer which have a license (the
computer must be the license server for this program too? I don't
know). That can solve your problem, no ?

In the license that you give, nothing seems said that you couldn't
shared the run between different computers, as clusters.

A last solution can be transmit the result in standard format, and use
different tools.

Example:
* to analyze waveform, you can use the vcd format and gtkwave. The vcd
format has lot of limitation (i.e. can't handle enumerate type...)
* to edit vhdl, that depend of what you do. Me I like Xemacs and the
vhdl-mode. But if you use only schematics that can be a problem.

The file exchange can be very time consuming, but you are generally
software independent.

Bye,
JaI

license_rant_master wrote:

I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
etc.)

So I thought, ok, I'll just install Linux at home and check
out a license remotely from the company. The system
administrator told me "NO!" this is forbidden, due to the license
agreements of just about every EDA-tool vendor. According to the
language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
is tied to a physical location called 'site.'

There are minor differences among the 'site-radius', but the
end-result is the same ... no executing the tool on hardware outside
of the radius:

Cadence : 1 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(Sysadmin told me this...didn't double-check myself.)

Synopsys: 5 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(couldn't find the agreement, but found this on Solvnet.)

Model/Mentor: 800 meter (0.5mi) radius within licensed machine-node
(Download the user's manual for any Modelsim product.)

...

At this point, I think, well alright, most of these EDA tools
are $100,000 USD and up, so it's reasonable for the vendor to impose
these terms. EDA companies don't want 1 company buying a huge
site-wide (100+) licenses, then randomly 'renting' them out over the
internet.

I mentally used this analogy to convince myself this is ok:
I buy broadband internet service for my household.
It's "unlimited" for my household -- not my neightborhood or someone
driving by on a WiFi laptop. Fair enough...

Since I can't use the company's tools on *my* home machine, I
started investigating various low-cost Verilog simulators to run
under Windows. (I can't use Icarus because it fails to compile a
lot of our company's Verilog RTL.)

/RANT ON

1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
as their premiere Modelsim/SE.

"Mentor Graphics
grants to you, subject to payment of appropriate license fees, a
nontransferable, nonexclusive license to use
Software solely: (a) in machine-readable, object-code form; (b) for
your internal business purposes; and (c) on
the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license
fee is paid, or as authorized by Mentor
Graphics. A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800 meter) radius."

*RIDICULOUS* If I were a design-consultant, and my laptop were
my primary compute platform, how am I supposed to comply with a
'site' radius? By their language, I can't run Modelsim
if I drive more than 0.5mi from my home-residence/business?!?

2) ok, so next I move on to Cadence's "Verilog Desktop"

Wow, same story -- the language of their license agreement brings
me to the same conclusion. Install on laptop -- automatic
non-compliance with their agreement (unless you 'lock down' the
laptop with a 1-mile chain.) Funny how their salesman now use
x86-laptops for nearly *all* customer-site product demos?!?

3) I may investigate Verilogger Pro or Simucad, but I figure why bother.
I'll probably just end up getting angrier...

...

/RANT OFF

Any comments?
What pisses me off the most, is those Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor
"travelling salesman." They come to our company-site, armed with
laptops and LCD-projectors -- then show off how a small x86-laptop
now runs jobs faster than a low-end Sun/IBM RISC workstation.
These EDAs need to be sued for false advertising. At a minimum,
someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
for products aimed at 'personal' use.

For now, I've simply told my supervisor 'project schedule slip.'
And I've given up on doing real work at home (now mostly just
catching on documentation and inline RTL-comments.)

 

[Sander Vesik]

In comp.arch.fpga bko-no-spam-please@ieee.org wrote:

license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> writes:

I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
... According to the
language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
is tied to a physical location called 'site.'

Here's a hint: like a lot of things in life, these restrictions are negotiable
if you are a big enough customer.

The trend of "unless you are going to fork us over some more megabucks and
are a large company anyways we will disallow doing resonable things" in
software licences is rather disturbing.

--
Sander

+++ Out of cheese error +++

 

[Rene Tschaggelar]

The whole is solved by a notebook being the work machine at
the expense of reduced performance.

But yes, the whole is a bit silly.

Rene


license_rant_master wrote:

I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
etc.)

So I thought, ok, I'll just install Linux at home and check
out a license remotely from the company. The system
administrator told me "NO!" this is forbidden, due to the license
agreements of just about every EDA-tool vendor. According to the
language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
is tied to a physical location called 'site.'

There are minor differences among the 'site-radius', but the
end-result is the same ... no executing the tool on hardware outside
of the radius:

Cadence : 1 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(Sysadmin told me this...didn't double-check myself.)

Synopsys: 5 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(couldn't find the agreement, but found this on Solvnet.)

Model/Mentor: 800 meter (0.5mi) radius within licensed machine-node
(Download the user's manual for any Modelsim product.)

[snip]

/RANT OFF

Any comments?

 

[Allan Herriman]

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 00:25:46 +0700, Rudolf Usselmann
<russelmann@hotmail.com> wrote:

Here is another free Verilog simulator, you might find
it will run the more serious verilog jobs:

http://www.pragmatic-c.com/gpl-cver/

"GPL Cver is a full 1995 P1364 Verilog standard HDL simulator. It also
implements some of the 2001 P1364 standard features ... as defined in
the 2001 Language Reference Manual (LRM)."

Doesn't sound like it's quite ready for serious work yet.

Allan.

 

[rickman]

JJ wrote:

Ever hear of VPN?

I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest. If you mean he should run
the programs on an office machine using interface software from home,
that is what he wants to get away from. If you are talking about
checking out the license over the network, that is what is forbidden by
the license.

What are you suggesting?

--

Rick "rickman" Collins

rick.collins@XYarius.com
Ignore the reply address. To email me use the above address with the XY
removed.

Arius - A Signal Processing Solutions Company
Specializing in DSP and FPGA design URL http://www.arius.com
4 King Ave 301-682-7772 Voice
Frederick, MD 21701-3110 301-682-7666 FAX

 

[mx]

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:

The whole is solved by a notebook being the work machine at
the expense of reduced performance.

UMMM *NO* the original-poster mentioned somewhere in his rant that
the license terms of Mentor, Cadence, and Synopsys
are *tied* to a physical site. Actually the software license is bound
to 3 specific items:

a) authorized hardware (license node/server)
<AND>
b) physical site (company location, with defined 'distance radius')
<AND>
c) the party/persons/company named on the purchase-order

That's *AND* (not OR.) Change any 1 of the above, and you have to
contact the vendor to renew/re-validate your license. (This doesn't
automatically mean you have to *repurchase* the software...)

(b) Buying a laptop, taking it on the road, and using it to run the
EDA sofware falls under 'running the software outside of the
physical site.' All you've done with your laptop, is place
both the license-server and execution-machine in the same
machine (your laptop), instead of just taking the execution-machine

The physical-site limitation is so restrictive, that technically
speaking, if a customer merely relocates its office more than a
few miles, their software-liense is invalidated. Obvioualy,
no EDA-vendor requires the customer to repurchase the software. They
merely update the license contract with the customer's new (street)
address.

(c) If the customer is acquired (purchased) by another company, the
EDA-software is non-transferrable. Thankfully within industry, the
standard practice is for the vendor to permit the ownership transfer, as
long as the new owner continues to pay the maintenance/support contract
obligations. This is cheaper for the new owner, because they don't
have to 're-purchase' the licenses (large one-time non-recurring
expense), rather merely pay the quarterly/yearly support-fee (smaller
recurring expense.)

 

[Kolja Sulimma]

license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote in message

/RANT ON

1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
as their premiere Modelsim/SE.
[...]
At a minimum,
someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
for products aimed at 'personal' use.

(Disclaimer: IANAL)
Site wide licenses definitely are licenses and the two companies
involved can agree basically on any ridiculous licensee term that they
can up with, but this might not be the case for a personal edition.

For example if you can manage to buy modelsim PE in a shop or order it
online without clicking through the license agreement than you just
made a regular purchase and there is no license agreement involved.
Even if you click through the license agreement it is very doubtfull
that it is valid. Basically a purchase is a purchase not matter what
you call it and the first sale doctrine applies, which means that the
rightholder can not control the use of an item after the first sale.

This means that you can move your software around (both from place to
place on the same computer, but also from computer to computer)
Also, your company can sell the software to you and you sell it back
later. There is no way the tool vendor can interfere with that. (for
purchased, not rented software) Once you have license files for both
computers you can change ownership easily as often as you want. But
remember to deinstall the software each time.

Kolja Sulimma

 

[Simon Peacock]

Actually.. I believe they charge you a license fee if you move sites.. for
their time and effort of course


"mx" <mx@mx.com> wrote in message
news:0V4Fc.84714$s25.47872@newssvr29.news.prodigy.com...

Rene Tschaggelar wrote:
The whole is solved by a notebook being the work machine at
the expense of reduced performance.

UMMM *NO* the original-poster mentioned somewhere in his rant that
the license terms of Mentor, Cadence, and Synopsys
are *tied* to a physical site. Actually the software license is bound
to 3 specific items:

a) authorized hardware (license node/server)
AND
b) physical site (company location, with defined 'distance radius')
AND
c) the party/persons/company named on the purchase-order

That's *AND* (not OR.) Change any 1 of the above, and you have to
contact the vendor to renew/re-validate your license. (This doesn't
automatically mean you have to *repurchase* the software...)

(b) Buying a laptop, taking it on the road, and using it to run the
EDA sofware falls under 'running the software outside of the
physical site.' All you've done with your laptop, is place
both the license-server and execution-machine in the same
machine (your laptop), instead of just taking the execution-machine

The physical-site limitation is so restrictive, that technically
speaking, if a customer merely relocates its office more than a
few miles, their software-liense is invalidated. Obvioualy,
no EDA-vendor requires the customer to repurchase the software. They
merely update the license contract with the customer's new (street)
address.

(c) If the customer is acquired (purchased) by another company, the
EDA-software is non-transferrable. Thankfully within industry, the
standard practice is for the vendor to permit the ownership transfer, as
long as the new owner continues to pay the maintenance/support contract
obligations. This is cheaper for the new owner, because they don't
have to 're-purchase' the licenses (large one-time non-recurring
expense), rather merely pay the quarterly/yearly support-fee (smaller
recurring expense.)

 

"Simon Peacock" <nowhere@to.be.found> wrote in message news:<40e60e27@news.actrix.gen.nz>...

Actually.. I believe they charge you a license fee if you move sites.. for
their time and effort of course

They even charge if you move from one license server to another when
they are in the same location. Rehosting they call it, and it cost
money even if you have maintenance contract. Milage may of cource
vary.

It is amazing that noone from the vendors have even tried to make
their policies clear. There are enough of them listening on these
channels. Working off-site is very easy with the flexlm license system
since you only need to transfer the licensing info. Most programs
check out license when they start, and then keep it, which is very
convenient on a low bandwidth line like a DSL or modem line.

Working off-site could save a lot of jobs since you don't need to move
where the engineers are, have the engineers telecommute to you.

Just my opinion on the topic.

--
Svenn

 

[Thomas Stanka]

news@sulimma.de (Kolja Sulimma) wrote:

license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote in message
/RANT ON

1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
as their premiere Modelsim/SE.
[...]
At a minimum,
someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
for products aimed at 'personal' use.

(Disclaimer: IANAL)
Site wide licenses definitely are licenses and the two companies
involved can agree basically on any ridiculous licensee term that they
can up with, but this might not be the case for a personal edition.

For example if you can manage to buy modelsim PE in a shop or order it
online without clicking through the license agreement than you just
made a regular purchase and there is no license agreement involved.
Even if you click through the license agreement it is very doubtfull
that it is valid. Basically a purchase is a purchase not matter what
you call it and the first sale doctrine applies, which means that the
rightholder can not control the use of an item after the first sale.

Be careful. License law is a very hard field, especially if different
countries are involved. If you download your software, there might be
the law of two countries involved, which complicates everything.

In Germany your are right that you could ignore any license agreement,
when purchasing a standard programm (enter the shop and buy a CD). But
you have to deal with the license agreement, when purchasing a license
(or get it free) by downloading a software.

These are two different things, which seem very similar.

bye Thomas

 

[David]

On Wed, 27 Apr 2005 11:42:58 +0000, Uwe Bonnes wrote:

In comp.arch.fpga license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote:
: I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
: Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
: servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
: sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
: but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
: slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
: haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
: restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
: interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
: etc.)

Look at NX. It what LBX (Low Bandwidth X ) promised, but NX
delivers. Probably not to easy to set yet, but worth a try.

It's easy enough to set up the server (either look at the commercial
version from www.nomachine.com, or google for "freenx" or "nxserver") on
linux, and clients are even easier (download free from nomachine). It is
said to be usable over a modem connection - I have certainly found it
works well over ADSL for most work. It's definitely faster than tightVnc
(which is also okay for many things - and works well for pretending you
are sitting at your office windows desktop).


> Bye

 

[Paul Muller]

Hello,

license_rant_master wrote:

1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
as their premiere Modelsim/SE.

"Mentor Graphics
grants to you, subject to payment of appropriate license fees, a
nontransferable, nonexclusive license to use
Software solely: (a) in machine-readable, object-code form; (b) for your
internal business purposes; and (c) on
the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license fee
is paid, or as authorized by Mentor
Graphics. A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800 meter) radius."

My understanding of "on the computer hardware or at the site for which
an applicable license fee is paid" is that it can be either used on
different computers at the same site *or* on one computer at different
locations, i.e. a portable computer. Am I wrong?

Paul

 

[Kolja Sulimma]

license_rant_master wrote:

(c) on
the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license fee
is paid, or as authorized by Mentor
Graphics. A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800 meter) radius."

*RIDICULOUS* If I were a design-consultant, and my laptop were
my primary compute platform, how am I supposed to comply with a
'site' radius? By their language, I can't run Modelsim
if I drive more than 0.5mi from my home-residence/business?!?

As someone fluent in Verilog you surely know the meaning of the word
"or", don't you?
So if you license it for a certain computer hardware you can take that
hardware werever you want in full complience with their license.


Seriously:
Your boss can call your distributor and ask them to extend the license
to the company site plus the workplace of one teleworker. This should be
no hassle.

If you purchase or download software at home (e.g. not signing a site
license contract) you perform a purchase instead of licensing the
software and the principle of first sale applies. The manufacturer has
no right to control who runs the software where, as long you there
allways is only a single copy. (Disclaimer: IANAL)

Kolja Sulimma

 

[Phil Tomson]

In article <SGMEc.2916$486.1576@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com>,
license_rant_master <none@nowhere.net> wrote:

I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
etc.)

There are free waveform viewers (gtkwave). Editing code seems like it
could be done quite easily without using any vendor tools (gvim works
great).

Since I can't use the company's tools on *my* home machine, I
started investigating various low-cost Verilog simulators to run
under Windows. (I can't use Icarus because it fails to compile a
lot of our company's Verilog RTL.)

submit bugs to the Icarus developers.

Any comments?
What pisses me off the most, is those Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor
"travelling salesman." They come to our company-site, armed with
laptops and LCD-projectors -- then show off how a small x86-laptop
now runs jobs faster than a low-end Sun/IBM RISC workstation.
These EDAs need to be sued for false advertising. At a minimum,
someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
for products aimed at 'personal' use.

For now, I've simply told my supervisor 'project schedule slip.'
And I've given up on doing real work at home (now mostly just
catching on documentation and inline RTL-comments.)

The main courses of action that come to mind:
1) setup things so that you do not need to use a GUI to debug (lots of
assertions & printing of values - but make it easy to remove them from
code before synthesis). If possible use open source waveform viewers
like gtkwave.

2) help the open source tools to improve. Icarus for Verilog is already
quite good, but if you're seeing problems you should report them. As I
said above, submit bug reports. The only way you're going to get around
restrictive licenses is to use applications which are not bound by
restrictive licenses (open source). They may not always be ready for use
at work, but they'll often be OK for work at home.

Phil

 

[Phil Tomson]

In article <40E4C9F9.38C71406@yahoo.com>, rickman <john@bluepal.net> wrote:

JJ wrote:

Ever hear of VPN?

I'm not sure what you are trying to suggest. If you mean he should run
the programs on an office machine using interface software from home,
that is what he wants to get away from. If you are talking about
checking out the license over the network, that is what is forbidden by
the license.

What are you suggesting?

But with VPN the license is still checked out only on the machine at
work. VPN only allows you to see your work desktop at home, so
technically it's probably legal since the tool is not actually running on
your home machine at all (your home machine only acts as a terminal).

Phil

 

[Hans]

Probably mentioned somewhere in this tread, but perhaps you can convince
your company to convert one of the floating licenses to a dongle one? If you
go down this road make sure the dongle is insured since the vendor might ask
you to purchase the software again if you loose it. If the vendor is using
Flexlm you might want to look into the lmborrow feature. I am not 100% sure
how it works but it looks like you can take a license token away from the
license server for a duration.

Hans.
www.ht-lab.com



"license_rant_master" <none@nowhere.net> wrote in message
news:SGMEc.2916$486.1576@newssvr25.news.prodigy.com...

I am an ASIC engineer who frequently 'takes work home' with me.
Recently, I began using ssh to remotely login to our company's
servers to run some Verilog/VHDL simulations. Launching
sims (from the UNIX command line) is fairly easy and painless,
but any kind of interactive (GUI) operations are pitifully
slow over an WAN/internet connection. In the past, I
haven't needed to do much more than check on running jobs,
restart them, then logout. Now, I find the need to do some
interactive debugging work (waveform viewing, code editing,
etc.)

So I thought, ok, I'll just install Linux at home and check
out a license remotely from the company. The system
administrator told me "NO!" this is forbidden, due to the license
agreements of just about every EDA-tool vendor. According to the
language/legalese of the license-agreement, a license 'seat'
is tied to a physical location called 'site.'

There are minor differences among the 'site-radius', but the
end-result is the same ... no executing the tool on hardware outside
of the radius:

Cadence : 1 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(Sysadmin told me this...didn't double-check myself.)

Synopsys: 5 mile radius within licensed machine-node
(couldn't find the agreement, but found this on Solvnet.)

Model/Mentor: 800 meter (0.5mi) radius within licensed machine-node
(Download the user's manual for any Modelsim product.)

...

At this point, I think, well alright, most of these EDA tools
are $100,000 USD and up, so it's reasonable for the vendor to impose these
terms. EDA companies don't want 1 company buying a huge site-wide (100+)
licenses, then randomly 'renting' them out over the internet.

I mentally used this analogy to convince myself this is ok:
I buy broadband internet service for my household.
It's "unlimited" for my household -- not my neightborhood or someone
driving by on a WiFi laptop. Fair enough...

Since I can't use the company's tools on *my* home machine, I
started investigating various low-cost Verilog simulators to run
under Windows. (I can't use Icarus because it fails to compile a
lot of our company's Verilog RTL.)

/RANT ON

1) Modelsim/PE "Personal Edition" -- *exact* same license agreement
as their premiere Modelsim/SE.

"Mentor Graphics
grants to you, subject to payment of appropriate license fees, a
nontransferable, nonexclusive license to use
Software solely: (a) in machine-readable, object-code form; (b) for your
internal business purposes; and (c) on
the computer hardware or at the site for which an applicable license fee
is paid, or as authorized by Mentor
Graphics. A site is restricted to a one-half mile (800 meter) radius."

*RIDICULOUS* If I were a design-consultant, and my laptop were
my primary compute platform, how am I supposed to comply with a
'site' radius? By their language, I can't run Modelsim
if I drive more than 0.5mi from my home-residence/business?!?

2) ok, so next I move on to Cadence's "Verilog Desktop"

Wow, same story -- the language of their license agreement brings
me to the same conclusion. Install on laptop -- automatic
non-compliance with their agreement (unless you 'lock down' the
laptop with a 1-mile chain.) Funny how their salesman now use
x86-laptops for nearly *all* customer-site product demos?!?

3) I may investigate Verilogger Pro or Simucad, but I figure why bother.
I'll probably just end up getting angrier...

...

/RANT OFF

Any comments?
What pisses me off the most, is those Cadence/Synopsys/Mentor "travelling
salesman." They come to our company-site, armed with
laptops and LCD-projectors -- then show off how a small x86-laptop
now runs jobs faster than a low-end Sun/IBM RISC workstation.
These EDAs need to be sued for false advertising. At a minimum,
someone needs to challenge their ridiculous license agreement
for products aimed at 'personal' use.

For now, I've simply told my supervisor 'project schedule slip.'
And I've given up on doing real work at home (now mostly just
catching on documentation and inline RTL-comments.)