The Dongle is Dead - Long Live the Dongle

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For more than 30 years, dongles have been an obvious and effective choice for software protection. Reports of its death have been greatly exaggerated, as the technology remains a favorite for developers and users alike. What software developers like about it is the great protection it offers against hackers, coming at comparatively low costs for them. Users, on the other hand, enjoy its portability and the option of using their licenses on the go and, if they want, offline. More recent copy protection technologies, such as licenses in the cloud bound to individual users or individual machines, might beat dongles on even lower upfront costs per user and on the immediate availability of the licenses. Power users typically also have licenses for multiple applications and software systems, and they are not too keen to lug around a big bulge of license dongles.

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CmDongles have one feature that beats one key weakness of typical dongle solutions in many industries and use cases: CmDongles are multivendor-capable. That means, if your user already owns a CmDongle, you can ‘hop on’ as well with your license. This saves you and your users the price of the dongle and the shipping cost, and CodeMeter License Central makes sure that the license gets to your user in the blink of an eye – without compromising the level of protection we all know and love in our CmDongles. The required infrastructure is also cheaper to maintain than that of a pure cloud solution, as the server only creates the licenses in the first place and does not have to come into the picture at all during regular use of the software.

Your users benefit a lot from this option: Their licenses stay mobile and can be used offline. Switching computers is as easy as unplugging the CmDongle from one machine and plugging it into the next. And if everybody is on board, your users need only one CmDongle for the licenses from many different vendors.

During the one-hour live event, we will alternate between theory and practice and cover:

  • CmDongle, CmActLicense, CmCloudLicense: What’s the difference?
  • CodeMeter basics: Firm Items and Product Items
  • Dynamic memory management with CmDongles
  • Transferring licenses into existing CmDongles
  • Demo: Using existing CmDongles
  • A closer look at Firm Items
    • Firm Access Counter: Locking your licenses
    • Firm Update Counter: No interference with other vendors’ updates
    • Firm Precise Time: From global clocks to vendor-specific timers
  • Demo: Parallel push updates by two vendors
  • Practical use cases:
    • Music industry: Host application with plug-ins
    • Industrial controllers: Licensing for PLC developers and industrial engineers
    • Board manufacturers: CmDongles integrated ASICs
    • Image processing: Libraries protected with CodeMeter
  • Demo: Consolidating licenses from two CmDongles
  • CmActLicenses and multivendor capabilities
  • New uses in 3D printing

By clearly demarcating the separate areas – the Firm Items – CodeMeter offers unparalleled security for all vendors. All vendors can create, edit, or delete licenses only for their Firm Items. What one vendor does with a license could never affect the Firm Items of other vendors. With CodeMeter, security starts right with the basic architecture. Join our webinar and explore the fundamental design of CodeMeter.

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