One of the things a commercial application needs to protect intellectual property as well as avert piracy is a licensing component. As the application I’m managing is a java based web product we naturally needed a java based licensing framework. Our answer was found in TLC – an open source licensing framework that offers everything from license creation to license verification.
The tutorial(s) leave a little to be desired from a custom implementation perspective, but after several emails to the creator (note: send emails to the mailing list, not him directly!) we were able to get past the issues left unclear by the tutorial. The framework makes it so simple to use a private key store to generate a license and then distribute your application with the public key store for verification of the license.
Our implementation in a web application utilizes a servlet filter to read the license file, verify it and then install it. It’s really quite simple and we ended up with only four class files to implement. A SWT client was created to generate the licenses for our purchasing and trial customers.
Another note: the framework also included support for a ‘free trial period’. We chose not to use this as we wanted to keep a strong grasp on where our application was installed, but the ‘ftp’ option looks promising.
Anyone in need of a licensing framework for java, check TLC out!
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#1 by Philippe on April 2, 2008 - 10:49 am
Hi:
I the spirit of open source… would you share that SWt client?
#2 by pushkar on June 21, 2008 - 8:10 am
hi matt,
Could you please tell me if one could add his own feature set in the license ? Say for example, I want to store Customer Name = XYZ , Customer Name = Andy , etc. Is that possible ? Hoping to listen from you soon.
Thanks
#3 by dibya on January 29, 2009 - 11:00 pm
Do u have any idea on implementing the multiple licenses in the same web app.
as you have a servlet , can it be that in the same servlet or in separate servlets we need to upload it???
#4 by Matt Brotherson on January 30, 2009 - 6:50 pm
dibya – i don’t have an answer for your question unfortunately. We abandoned our product that utilizes TLC due to a much larger company beating us to market in a niche sector (business intelligence dashboards.) Have you tried the TLC developer? He was rather helpful when we needed it.
#5 by Krishna on May 14, 2010 - 3:13 am
Can u please give me step by step process of using True License
Thanks
Krishna
#6 by Niraj on June 9, 2011 - 7:08 am
Can u please give me step by step process to implement True license in my java based web application.
#7 by Matt Brotherson on June 11, 2011 - 7:00 pm
I haven’t used True License in five years. I’m unable to help you.