Unlimited Licensing for FireAPI applications

[BruteForce]

With the release of ubCore 5.11 a new feature called "Unlimited
Licensing" was introduced.

Let's see a short description of this feature:
(*) You have created an executable called FireApp.exe that uses the
FireAPI SDK.
(*) Unibrain creates and gives you a file called FireApp.exe.ubcore.
(*) You put this file in the same folder as your application.
(*) You start your application and everything works without requiring a
PK for the adapter or a licensed adapter.

In the ubCore 5.11 release we use this feature for three of our tools,
FireCommander, FireViewer and UBTweak. These tools will always run
without an evaluation dialog box, even if you have not installed a PK
for your adapter.

Let's see some details of this feature.
(*) The license file is generated per application. There is no license
file that unlocks multiple applications.
(*) The unlimited-license file is generated using public key
cryptography. Only Unibrain can generate these license files.
(*) The unlimited-license file is generated based on the contents of
the executable together with the contents of the current version of
UB1394.DLL. This means that you have to submit your application's
executable to a Unibrain server so that the license file can be
generated. Unibrain will at some point provide a web page for
performing this process yourself.

So the overall life cycle for companies that choose to use unlimited
licensing is:
(1) Install PKs or use licensed adapters on development machines.
(2) Develop FireAPI application.
(3) When application is ready for release, generate ubcore license
file.
(4) Repeat from step 2.

We decided to involve the contents of UB1394.DLL in the license
generation as an extra step in quality assurance. If your application
runs on a system with a newer UB1394.DLL then the user will see for a
small time (5 seconds) a dialog box informing him that the application
is using a different version of UB1394.DLL than the one specified in
the license key.
This way the user will know immediately that he might be running on a
configuration that has not been properly tested and validated by the
manufacturer of the executable.
Generally manufacturers tightly control what version of ubCore runs on
production machines, so you shouldn't have this dialog ever appear.

Dimitris Staikos
Unibrain