System and method for controlling access to licensed computing processes via a codified electronic license
View Patent ↗A system and method controls access to hardware and software functions by employing a codified electronic license that does not generally require application code modification. In response to customer purchases, highly configurable XML licenses containing lists of allowable CLI commands are generated, digitally signed, and transmitted to various customer systems over a network. The customer systems authenticate the licenses, extract the CLI command lists, and register the specified commands with a command processor internal to the customers' systems. Only registered commands are allowed to execute, preventing unlicensed hardware and software from operating on the system.
1. A method for licensing external processes on a server comprising the steps of:
generating an electronic license, wherein the electronic license is generated by formatting a customer order for a software product in accordance with a licensing schema and the formatted electronic license to include a plurality of software command directives embedded within the formatted electronic license to indicate whether a particular software command directive associated with a particular feature of the software product is to be accepted for registration or rejected for registration, and wherein each software command directive includes a command name associated with a particular software command or operation of the software product and an inclusion or exclusion identifier for indicating the acceptance or rejection of registration for that particular software command or operation within the software product, and wherein at least one software command for the software product is associated with the exclusion identifier; and
registering selective ones of the software commands in response to the software command directives and their inclusion and exclusion identifiers; and
executing the registered commands.
2. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein the step of includes directing the software product to only use a set of licensed hardware resources, the set of licensed hardware resources also being defined by one or more fields in the electronic license.
3. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein the step of generating includes generating a license upgrade, the license upgrade defining a set of additional commands for registration that are not part of software commands registered in conjunction with one or more prior licenses.
4. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein the step of generating includes generating a license upgrade, the license upgrade describing additional hardware resources licensed for use by the software product that are not part of hardware resources licensed for use by prior licenses.
5. The method as set forth in claim 1 wherein the step of generating includes generating a license upgrade, the license upgrade describing additional hardware resources licensed for use by the software product that add further capabilities to hardware resources licensed for use by prior licenses.
6. The method as set forth in claim 1 further comprising either one of (a) installing the electronic license in the server prior to shipment of the server to an end-user of the server and (b) providing the electronic license to the end-user on a removable media for installation in the server after the shipment of the server to the end-user.
7. The method as set forth in claim 1 further comprising installing the electronic license in the server in a over-the-wire process including (a) digitally signing the electronic license by a vendor, (b) transmitting the digitally signed electronic license over a communications network from the vendor to the server, (c) validating the digitally signed electronic license by the server and (d) installing the validated electronic license in the server.