Can a database FE / BE be configured for licensing?

[Blings]

Is there a way to license a FE / BE database for commercial purposes?



Greg

[mike60smart]

Hi Greg

This is one Company :-

https://cryptolens.io/

[Blings]

Thank you Mike.

I'll contact them to see if their software can integrate with MS Access.

I'll post the outcome here in case anyone else has a query like this in the future.

[Welshgasman]

What happened to Blings?

[Welshgasman]

Is there a way to license a FE / BE database for commercial purposes?

Greg

I think @isladogs would be a good person for advice on this.

Thinking ahead are we?

[Blings]

What happened to Blings?

Haha! That was my gaming nickname from back in the day! I thought OwenMedia might be more appropriate for this audience

[Blings]

I think @isladogs would be a good person for advice on this.

Thinking ahead are we?

Yeah, I am trying to do an internal official license to reduce company taxable income whereby it pays to license the CRM software. Will @isladogs be notified of this thread if we tag @ the username?

[isladogs]

First of all, the software at this forum doesn't alert you if your username is 'pinged' though that does happen at many other forums.

However, I had followed this thread from the start. I didn't reply at first as I was, and still am, unclear what exactly you want to know.

For info, I have sold a variety of Access apps from my website for several years. Each has its own license conditions. Some are site licenses, others are restricted to a specified number of workstations.
Some are locked down, others are supplied for developers with full source code. All have restrictions about being used in other commercial apps without permission.
I also sell applications on a contract basis to individuals or organisations. Those aren't available via my website

What I know nothing about is licensing in-house software for use in reducing a company's liability to tax. It may be legal but its not something I've ever been involved with

[Blings]

Hello Colin,

Thanks for your response.

I am trying to monetize my CRM database through the form of a monthly license to business customers and am looking for guidance in how to achieve this successfully.

License conditions for this particular application should be simple, if a business with six application users need access to the application they would each require a valid license in order to run the application.

They own their data to the application, however, if they need to use the designed CRM front-end they need to pay the monthly license fee.

How do you prevent piracy through Access apps you monetize through licenses?

[CJ_London]

Depends who is receiving the license fee if in house. Whoever does will be liable to pay corporation tax if a business or income tax if an individual. So if your company has an offshore holding company in a lower corporation tax country you might save some tax if they are doing the licensing. But then the expectation is they will have paid the cost of development.

You might be better off capitalising the cost of development - but that will take your costs off the bottom line (so the company makes more profit and pays more tax) in that year but has lower taxes in the following years as depreciation will reduce profits. But there are allowances which might make this more workable. Talk to your auditors who will know your business and can give professional advice.

Edit: story has changed, now about licensing to customers, not in house.

If a customer has bought your app outright they will either capitalise the expenditure or not and is treated as an expense. Depends on the level of expenditure and their own rules on capitalisation.

[Blings]

The application was made for company A by the owner of company A.

Owner of company A thought about starting company B which could License said application to company A and many others.

[isladogs]

First of all I would suggest a yearly license rather than monthly..

There are a number of ways of making piracy more difficult but it can never be eradicated completely.
What are your initial thoughts on this?
Taking your example of six users, how will you prevent it being installed on additional machines?
How will you manage it when a valid user gets a new machine?

EDIT Post #11 gives a totally different scenario. The above may no longer be relevant

[Blings]

Yearly license sounds good.

Initial thoughts:-

• Users requiring access to the application need their own FE copy i.e. "FE-USER1" saved on the server with a shortcut placed on their Desktop. Only one user can open that shortcut at a time.
• To prevent the Client from creating many "FE-USER(s)" copies the folder that houses the FE and BE files should be Windows locked according to the licensing contract.
• Each "FE-USER" interface requires a valid license key in order for the buttons to work.

Suggestions welcome.

[isladogs]

First of all, I suggest you implement a number of security measures to lock down your application as much as is appropriate for your app. See my article Improve Security 2 - Mendip Data Systems.

All my commercial apps require a license key as part of the installation process. This is supplied on purchase.
Most of the apps then have to be validated before they are fully functional. The validation can only be done on the 'master PC' used for the initial installation

By far the easiest way of managing licensing is to use site licenses. Nothing further is required once the application has been sold.
Handling a set number of licenses is trickier

I wouldn't use the approach you suggest.
First of all, for best performance, the FE should be on the user's own hard drive, not the network.

It is very difficult to prevent customers making more copies of the FE than they have licenses for.
You could try to regulate that by requiring each installation to be individually validated but that's likely to annoy users and be a lot of work for you.

I prefer a system similar to that now used by MS for Office 365 whereby the number of installations isn't restricted, but the number of simultaneous users are limited to the number of licenses.
If there are say 5 licenses, then the First 5 users can login but user #6 etc have to wait till someone closes the app.
Of course, if that happens often, the client may wish to purchase more licenses.

[Welshgasman]

Haha! That was my gaming nickname from back in the day! I thought OwenMedia might be more appropriate for this audience

Yet now you ARE Blings?