License Management Facility (LMF)

[Jim Gettys]

Oh, so you want N CD roms every couple months, where N is large?
The number of products is going up greatly with time, including
3RD party products, who insist on security in distribution.
And then you'll complain about simple products costing lots of
money since the distribution costs will dominate what we ought
to charge for it...

Basically, if Unix is to succeed (or VMS for that matter) we need
a much cheaper distribution mechanism than we have right now.
And floppies and tape don't cut it...  They are manual, expensive, slow,
small and less reliable than CD's.

The model you suggest basically doesn't work; you should see the number
of tapes we get internally, subscribing to all DEC products
as we do here.  Granted CD's are smaller and cheaper, just the
time to put them in and out of the CDROM reader becomes a major
hassle.  In time, one would like to be able to press a button,
and get an up-to-date system installed, without manual intervention,
including layered and 3rd party products.  Having in my deep
dark past had to do serious system administration, such a scenario
is more than slightly attractive....

The docs will also be on line (look at Bookreader on VMS).

If it is a hassle, then we've failed.  But don't damn it before
you touch it.
				- Jim