*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]

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]

: 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

 

[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

 

[Joseph H Allen]

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.

 

[Guest]

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.

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christensen]

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.

or an america and european company could get together and share licenses, with
a 7-8-9 hour time difference they wouldn't need the licenses at the same time

I think some companies (big ones) can a special license, I know one that share
worldwide and I would think they have a pool of licenses

-Lasse

 

[Rudolf Usselmann]

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 [SNIP]
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.)

I'm glad you did speak up ! I wish more people would -
preferably not anonymously ...

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

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

Runs on Linux ...

Good Luck !

Best Regards,
rudi
========================================================
ASICS.ws ::: Solutions for your ASIC/FPGA needs :::
...............::: FPGAs * Full Custom ICs * IP Cores :::
FREE IP Cores -> http://www.asics.ws/ <- FREE EDA Tools

 

[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

 

[Petter Gustad]

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

I don't think his company is too happy about spending multi $100,000
for licenses exclusively to a single users notebook...


Petter

 

[Sander Vesik]

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.

 

[Stephen Williams]

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.)

Hve you filed bug reports? I know the Icarus Verilog bug database
is getting pretty large :-( but it does get looked at and worked
down.

 

[JJ]

Ever hear of VPN?

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.)

 

[rickman]

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

(e-mail address removed)
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

 

[Allan Herriman]

I think some companies (big ones) can a special license, I know one that share
worldwide and I would think they have a pool of licenses

This was certainly the case when I was at Agilent. We had three
license server triads (three each in Germany, US and Singapore) that
served the company's global license needs.

It sucked a bit that we were in Melbourne, and the closest server was
several thousand km away. The time taken to acquire a license was so
long that some users would simply not close the gui (e.g. in Modelsim)
and use up a license all day even when they didn't need to use the
tool.

Regards,
Allan.

 

[mx]

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.)

 

[Marko]

Here is my solution...

I use ModelSim PE. It's relatively cheap and works well on my PC.
The license is controlled by a dongle, so I can legally run it on any
machine I please - including my home computer. I presume the same
approach will work with ModelSim SE. The dongle works with Windows
platforms - not sure about Linux.

If you prefer Cadence or Synopsys, you can explain your situation and
ask them for a waiver. I'm pretty sure they would agree - if you
asked before you purchased it. Once they've got your money, it's
another story.

I think you can get a free version of ModelSim from Xilinx. I'm not
sure if you have to buy anything or not. In anycase, your Xilinx FAE
should be able to set up a free demo. I guess ModelTech will do the
same with ModelSim.

Hope this helps.

BTW, is it possible to buy a "used" VerilogXL license from someone?
There must be thousands that are no longer being used. I have one.

Marko

 

[Kolja Sulimma]

/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

 

[roller]

"mx" <[email protected]> escribió en el mensaje

(c) If the customer is acquired (purchased) by another company, the
EDA-software is non-transferrable.

and could somebody tell why's that? the furniture guys dont expect the new
owner of the company to pay them again for the furniture sitting in the
offices, why would we have to pay then to the software guys?

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.)

that's more reasonable...

 

[Simon Peacock]

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