WAC License

Software License Statement

This software is protected by US copyright law and international treaty provisions. Therefore, you must treat this software just like a book, with the following exception. The Engineers Collaborative, Inc. authorizes you to make archival copies of the software for the sole purpose of backing-up our software and protecting your investment from loss. By saying, just like a book, The Engineers Collaborative, Inc. means that each licensed copy of the software can not be used by two different people in two different places at the same time.

Multiple Machine Licensing

Licenses that allow multiple PCs to run the software are so affordable that copying the software is not worth the effort and risk to do so.

Protection from Unauthorized Copying

This software is protected against unauthorized copying by a licensing method designed to be fair to both honest users and to the authors of the software.
We believe that honest users of the software have a right not to be burdened with an overly complex and intrusive licensing scheme. We also believe that the authors have a right to be protected against unauthorized copying of their software.
Our licensing method strikes a balance, skewed in favor of the user, between these conflicting beliefs as follows:

1) Users who purchase the software receive a license to use it.

2) New users activate their license using the built in license validation feature of the software which contacts our license server via the Internet and associates the serial number of the hard drive in the user's PC with the invoice number of the purchase transaction. Users must remember their invoice number to activate their license.

3) Every license is allowed to be re-activated a reasonable number times to protect the user against hard drive crashes, operating system re-installs, new computer purchases, and the like.

4) Every time a license is re-activated the reasonable number is decreased by one until it reaches zero, at which time no further re-activations are allowed.
We don't reveal the initial value of the reasonable number except to say that it is large enough to protect the user's investment and small enough to control unauthorized copying of the software.

5) Finally, to provide additional protection to users, the reasonable number is periodically reset to it's initial value. This is done because it's much easier to choose a reasonable initial value for the reasonable number if a time period is associated with it. As an example, is seems reasonable that a user might need to re-activate his/her license five or six times over five years but it seems unreasonable that this would need to be done five or six times in a single year.
We don't reveal the length of the reset time period except to say that it is short enough to protect the user's investment and long enough to control unauthorized copying of the software.

License Notes:
It's obvious that there is nothing to prevent a user from giving his/her invoice number to friends to allow them to use the software without paying for it. We knowingly permit this but think it very unwise because it decreases or eliminates entirely the ability of the lawful user to re-activate their license should that become necessary due to a PC crash, a virus infection or the need to license a new or different PC. It's in the best interest of the lawful user to keep their invoice number private unless multiple machine licenses were purchased specifically for group use.