What happened to the "floating license" model? | Hacker News Reader

What happened to the "floating license" model?

3 pointsashwinsundar4 comments

I feel like I used to encounter this licensing model a lot more, in the world of enterprise software. MATLAB famously had floating licenses at the last organization I was at. If too many people concurrently were using MATLAB at the same time, then the server would not let new users sign in (because no licenses were available).

Clearly this is a con, but the pro is that organizations could purchase way fewer licenses than the number of employees that might need to use the software, because presumably not everyone needed to be signed in at the same time. This worked well for software someone might access once a week, for example.

I haven't seen this model offered in a while though. Has it fallen out of favor, and if so, why?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Floating_licensing

If by "floating" you mean not a subscription, then sure. Non-subscription licensing for commercial software is going away for all but niche and indie stuff. For the same reasons my grocery prices have tripled even though overall inflation has not: People are generally willing to put up with arbitrary increases in cost if it's something they really need. They will complain, but they will still pay. Broadcom's Law, or something.

That aside, lots of enterprise software subscriptions still effectively use the floating model because they price by "active user accounts" where an active user is one that has logged in within the last X months. Some will deactivate user accounts automatically when not in use, some you have to make sure to deactivate users when they are no longer with the company or do your own periodic audits.

Appreciate the answer but I don't think it really answers the question. I don't think companies were any less greedy 5-10 years ago, compared to today. They certainly didn't just realize that they could make more money by charging for, well, more subscriptions, instead of fewer.

>Clearly this is a con

How so?

> the server would not let new users sign in

That's the "con" (contra).

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