I’m currently in contact with DxO support in order to find out, how the new licensing scheme handles activations.
Activation per computer (separate physical entities)
Activation per user account (separate logical entities on one physical entity)
As of today, I have to activate PhotoLab8 when I create an additional user account (e.g. for isolated testing) on my Mac. DxO support is now checking how many activations have been used, and I’ll report back as soon as I get the feedback.
I could have created a bunch of accounts and activated DPL8 on each and see if account Nr. 4 would be accepted or not. I didn’t want to shoot my own foot though…
Support came back with an answer that seems to say that activations are counted per computer (not user account on one computer). It also says that mans users can a) see the number of activations in their shop account and that b) deleting an app changes the counter accordingly. I cannot see the number of activations in my shop account and therefore also can’t confirm that activations are adjusted with the deletion of an app. What does “delete” mean here? Is there a difference between Mac and Win users? etc.
More new questions than answers. I’ll see if I’ll get any resolution for these riddles. Don’t hold your breath.
I do not have any additional info related number of activations under my DxO account either.
Ans installing or uninstalling a DxO app in macOS is as simple as dragging into the apps folder or in to the litter box.
A licens file will not have anything to do with that.
A launch process might notice it’s gone but I find it hard to believe they would instruct it to report the app being uninstalled and therefore release the license.
Thanks, but be careful with that test. Suppose you have activated PL on two different Macs already. If you now get a third Mac and activate the license, your allowance is spent and if uninstalling does NOT decrease the (invisible) activation counter, you’ll have to deal with DxO support and it seems that they are not very welcoming in license related matters. From what I’ve read here, DxO also wants to remote access your computer to make sure that the product has been cleaned out. This all makes the impression that there is no automatic activation counter decrease. Maybe they are working on it though.
Nevertheless, my supporter has responded to most/all requests in due time or has transmitted them to other groups that then came back to me (or not). So far, DxO support has been adequate with my cases.
I’ve had these conversations with support when I’ve wanted to move an activation to a new computer and it’s truly bizarre. Even if I were to let them snoop around on my computer (I won’t), I could simply restore a previous backup when they’re done to make their examination moot.
Besides, there’s nothing for them to look at if your computer or any significant part of it dies. They just seem to revel in making it difficult and/or have such a primitive system that they can’t keep track of the activations themselves. I don’t think it’s paying customers they have to worry about, but they seem quite suspicious of our motives.
They will also tell you that you must remove an old installation of the software after purchasing an upgrade, which isn’t stated anywhere in the terms, and if they really had that requirement then they could choose to install an upgrade on top of the existing version.
The license file seems to depend on something that identifies the computer. This would mean that no matter what we do, the activation counter isn’t changed as long as we use just one computer.
You can see how to do it better at Steinberg. Ok, they’re a bit bigger, but never mind. There’s an app that allows you to firstly see and then change every activation. Something comparable, doesn’t have to be an app, but it should be possible, for example, via your own account.
This diversions via DXO support is indeed annoying. And also the dependency. It’s a black box for the user.
Based on several answers I got from DxO:
PhotoLab is sending an “add activation” signal to the license management server
I understand that uninstalling sends a “remove activation”, but I got no definite answer of what must be uninstalled. I suppose that it might (kind of) work with PL for Windows, but not with PL for macOS.
Maybe DxO is working on an activation management feature, but if they do, I fear that it’s going to be some built-in automatism that might not work as reliably as e.g. deactivating a device in an Adobe User Account.
I’ll drop the topic for the time being and will see what future has up its sleeves.
This was the last answer from DxO Support (slightly shortened by me).
Again, we’ll have to wait and see what will come and when.
As far as I know, the goal of the new license system is to automatically reduce the activation counter as part of the uninstall process: I don’t believe this is done by looking for specific components, but by the software explicitly notifying our activation server during the uninstall process. Activation is a different process, where the software both checks “locally” for the presence of license files and queries the activation server.
Unfortunately, this is currently an academic issue as the new system is not yet fully functional and we are still releasing activations manually! This could be related to the fact that there is currently no uninstaller for the Mac version of PhotoLab.
There are … restrictions on how much detail I am allowed to give about the licensing system, as this information could theoretically be used to facilitate unauthorised use of the software.
@platypus Sorry that this is a late response to your post. Typically the term used is a “footprint” or fingerprint or whatever it is called and is made up from details of different components on the system.
During pre-release testing I upgraded from a 5600G to a 5900X and DxPL objected to the change, it no longer recognised the footprint (or part of it) and asked for my activation code.
Now things get slightly more complicated.
I started testing with one particular Boot SSD and things were O.K for a while but suddenly the SSD got very unpredictable, taking ages to do some tasks etc. So I asked Support for assistance and they allocated another activation to my Test account but at that point the SSD started to behave itself and is still O.K. now, so I did not need to use that additional activation at that time at least!?
So when DxPL objected to my change in CPU I entered my Test registration number and it was accepted and all progressed as I hoped it would but I don’t know whether it was using the original activation or the spare activation I had been allocated!?
Either way it spotted the CPU change, something I consider somewhat draconian and required re-activation, albeit that might have been as simple as re-entering the activation code but I had the complication that I had two activations available at that time so which was it using after the CPU change!?