Some 3rd party software vendors are now licensing software based on
number of sockets instead of number of cores....
which may mean that to comply software has to perform a socket check.
This sort of brain-dead artificial scarcity enforcement deserves to
fail. It doesn't even cost the vendor proportionately to the number of
users or installed copies, let alone the number of dies, cores,
sockets, or hyperthreads. Why in Christ's name do they feel justified
in making the price so proportional then? Even copyright law provides
no legal or rational basis for charging proportionally to anything but
installed copies or perhaps copies in concurrent use. Even supposing
multi-CPU (but not single dual-core CPU?!) systems spawned two
transient copies during execution in place of one, such transient
copies as are made during normal use of the software are legit as per
17 USC section 117(a)(1) and do not require separate permission from
(or payment to) the copyright holder. One legitimately purchased and
installed copy can be used as the user sees fit as per first sale
doctrine; they only infringe if they install more copies or install
and keep but sell the original media or something.
The only (flimsy) legal justification these companies can muster is
some dialog-box text they claim somehow constitutes a legally binding
contract between the user and the vendor that supersedes all existing
tacit agreements made through the process of purchasing a copy from
the retail outlet as well as all state and federal law governing
retail sales and copyright, supposedly enforceable despite the vendor
having no signed document to that effect as evidence of such an
agreement having been made, and despite being a contract of adhesion
even if so.
As for moral justification for why they deserve to be paid for every
separate CPU chip it runs on ... well they have none of course. That's
just pure unadulterated greed.