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Is flexlm comprehensively cracked yet? It seems like a juicy target. Honestly, I hate all of these things. My employer spends multi-millions on software licens
by azalemeth 5y ago
Is flexlm comprehensively cracked yet? It seems like a juicy target.
Honestly, I hate all of these things. My employer spends multi-millions on software licenses every year. All these DRM schemes are painful, insulting, and inevitably break at the worst possible moment. We have one box -- legally acquired -- with a hardware dongle, plugged in the back of the machine. Someone smashed it when moving the thing accidentally. Were we inclined, with SEM, TEM, AFM and plenty of x-ray facilities, I'm sure that it's not beyond our ken to crack the sodding thing, and honestly, after that experience I was sorely tempted.
I'm fed up of being treated as a rich criminal by businesses. They want an un-get-out-able subscription agreement, for life, and with "markets made" at every available opportunity, i.e. $METRIC_FUCKTON_OF_MONEY for $MINIMAL_INCREMENTAL features. One commercial FEM solver I use charges per GPU, per CPU, and per year. The whole thing is based on maths invented in my university!
- eitland 5y ago> Someone smashed it when moving the thing accidentally. And that's one of the reasons why I'm glad we used HP servers with internal usb ports for this.
- dsr_ 5y agoI worked at a company which made heavy use of a math library that had license enforcement via a method rather like FlexLM. After enough complaining, we got them to send us an unenforced version -- and they became a little more proactive in sending us annual bills and asking if we needed a new number of licenses. If you're paying bigbucks, try asking for better terms. Explain how painful it is for you, not to pay them, but to not be able to use their software. Maybe it will work.
- userbinator 5y agoThere are (with varying degrees of shadiness) cracking services which specifically cater to people who have legally purchased software but are hampered by the DRM. Dongles are a bit of an interesting case in that a lot of the time the software they protect is something like the control program for a 6-,7-,or 8-figure priced piece of industrial machinery, without which the software would be useless anyway, so the hardware is already effectively a dongle.
- azalemeth 5y agoOne of the pieces of hardware controlled is exactly that (albeit only six figure). The only thing that single usb dongle does is make me nervous about our backup strategy. I can't imagine that they prevent much piracy at all, to honest. Commercial reverse engineering and espionage in East Asia maybe, but even then I'm not so sure it's a real problem as the other commercial suppliers of $MACHINE don't really do it. It's hard to take it as anything other than a giant "f-you" to the end users.
- kevin_thibedeau 5y agoI worked a contract for some industrial equipment where the log data was manipulated specifically to ruin the results of anyone who tried to replicate it. This manufacturer knew their stuff was being cloned in Asia.
- josephcsible 5y agohttps://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Biggest-BoonDongle-in-the-World https://thedailywtf.com/articles/The-Biggest-BoonDongle-in-t...
- gruez 5y ago> Is flexlm comprehensively cracked yet? It seems like a juicy target. I see cracked releases of flexlm software all the time (eg. autodesk products), so it's definitely being cracked.
- Nexxxeh 5y ago>Is flexlm comprehensively cracked yet? Yes it is, and while I've not seen any evidence, I suspect that's partially why AutoDesk are changing their subscription model. As for dongles, you can pay to have them cloned. Claimed turnarounds cheaper and faster that getting them from the software supplier in at least one instance. I've not used it, but godamn was tempting.