Date: Wed, 25 Sep 1996 10:59:23 -0700 (MST) From: Terry Lambert <terry@lambert.org> To: wollman@lcs.mit.edu (Garrett Wollman) Cc: terry@lambert.org, jhs@FreeBSD.org, current@FreeBSD.org, commercial@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Licensing Software Message-ID: <199609251759.KAA06301@phaeton.artisoft.com> In-Reply-To: <9609251415.AA23310@halloran-eldar.lcs.mit.edu> from "Garrett Wollman" at Sep 25, 96 10:15:23 am
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> > Machine ID: 32 bit value > > use network tuple > > use ifconfig interface > > attempt to subvert via kernel hacking will damage ifconfig > > No, do not use any form of network address for machine > identification. This sort of idiocy is one of the most significant > barriers to the IPv6 transition and to flexible renumbering in > general. Network addresses are just that, ADDRESSES. They are > subject to change at will, without notice, and without any recourse on > the part of the licensee. (Some of the other proposals for IPng would > have separated the addressing and identification completely, but > unfortunately this did not happen.) The return from the hostid function is supposed to be a 32 bit value. One of the biggest barriers to IPv6 transition? I don't think so; why would it be a barrier? Flexible renumbering in general? Yes, I'll admit it's a barrier to flexible renumbering. Under what circumstances would you want to allow a license host to "flexibly renumber"? To hide the licenses from Billy-Bob? It makes no sense. If you are talking about renumbering for some other scheme than transient connectivity and/or temporary address assignment (neither of which should apply to a license hosting host), I'd suggest allowing renumbering under software control of fixed installations is silly and unnecessary and is the reason we have non-numeric machine "names" associated with the tuples in the first place: so we can move the tag around without moving the tuple. > DEC's license manager does not identify machines at all. You can in > fact just copy /var/adm/lmf/ldb from one machine to another and it > will work just fine. (We can legally do this because we have a site > license.) But if you didn't, you could still illegally do it. The point is that you want a software barrier to illegal activity. > If PCs had some sort of IEEE 802.x address burned into them > as a sort of serial number, you might be able to do this, but they > don't, so you can't do this, either. I don't know about your machine, but mine has one: # dmesg | grep de0 de0 at pci0 dev 6 function 0: DC21040 [10Mb/s] pass 2.3 de0: Ethernet address 00:80:48:e8:1b:b1 ------------------------------***************** de0: enabling 10baseT/UTP port de0: interrupting at irq 11 de0 <Digital DC21040 Ethernet> rev 35 int a irq 11 on pci0:6 de0: DC21040 [10Mb/s] pass 2.3 Ethernet address 00:80:48:e8:1b:b1 --------------------------------------------------------***************** de0: enabling 10baseT/UTP port The problem with using this value is that it is larger than 32 bits. Terry Lambert terry@lambert.org --- Any opinions in this posting are my own and not those of my present or previous employers.
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