Comments on: WebObjects Deployment license change

By: Marc

Marc — Mon, 12 Dec 2005 11:47:17 +0000

Update: Apple has posted a temporary, unsupported workaround to solve the deployment problem:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/webobjects-dev/2005/Dec/msg00191.html

By: Marc Oesch

Marc Oesch — Mon, 28 Nov 2005 18:23:28 +0000

@Neale:

Posted your bug report number and my doubts to the WO mailing list, since the license question came up there once again:

http://lists.apple.com/archives/Webobjects-dev/2005/Nov/msg00596.html

Hope this helps, thanks for filing it.

By: Neale

Neale — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 17:15:03 +0000

Filed Radar #4354596 for this at bugreport.apple.com

By: Neale

Neale — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 16:40:32 +0000

I’m hoping this is a rather simple mistake on Apple’s part of including an incorrect license string with WO 5.3.1.

In previous versions when you attempted to deploy with a platform-specific key on another platform the error message was a lot more explicit - it told you what you were trying to do was unsupported. Similarly if you attempted to deploy using a development license etc, etc…

However this error message ‘License Key is invalid’ - seems to indicate that the license checking code isn’t even getting as far as assessing the capabilities of the license - it looks like its tripping up straight away. However what is weird is that plugging the 5.3.1 license into the the WOLicenseUpgrader.app does seem to decode it and reports it as a “5.3 Deployment - Multithreaded - Unlimited requests”

As other people have reported the old 5.3 development key will allow you to deploy on non-Apple platforms under 5.3.1.

Hope this helps.

By: Marc

Marc — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 15:22:35 +0000

@Neale: Thank you for your confirmation !

No, this can’t be right.

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday in the US, I guess we will have to wait a little longer on an answer from Apple to resolve the technical issue.

By: Neale

Neale — Fri, 25 Nov 2005 11:52:08 +0000

I can confirm that the WO 5.3.1 license key does not work when deploying under JBoss 3.2 on Windows 2003 Server.

: Cannot be initialized.: The License key [deleted for web] is invalid.

“Take the key included with the dev tools and deploy wherever the hell you want to…” - I don’t think so.

So *legally* Apple have made it possible to deploy on any platform, however *technically* & in practice it is impossible - surely this can’t be right!?

By: Marc

Marc — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 19:38:41 +0000

The new WO 5.3.1 license key does not work on non-Apple server platforms.

So while the license has been changed, the license key for WO 5.3.1 dows not work on platforms other than OS X Server, but the older WO 5.3 key works.

Could anybody make this work on WO 5.3.1 on Linux or Windows ?

By: lance

lance — Wed, 23 Nov 2005 00:25:16 +0000

Also, “… you may also deploy server applications built with the WebObjects Software on any platform.” sound like: “you may deploy something which was built on any platform”, instead of “you may deploy to any platform something which was built with WebObjects.” ie: the word “on” should have been “to” at least. But, really, the whole sentence is way to brief to understand its exact meaning and I really wonder about related things such as bundled WO java client code for instance.

I really don’t care about this too much because I’m just a developer and all I want to do is deploy to Mac OS X Server anyways. I imagine in a few months a new Xcode will be distributed with a pressed Mac OS X DVD, and that is all I’m interested in buying. But other types may be interested in other things. thanks! -lance

By: lance

lance — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 17:03:12 +0000

I did read the agreement. Xcode 2.2 was released to anyone that joins the ADC (you can’t get it otherwise) and agrees to term (6); thus it is NOT released to the general public. If you could get the wording fixed and put up a public URL where any one can get it (without agreeing to the ADC terms and without that nasty warning on the download page in the grey area) then that would then be released to the general public. If you could define “platform” then that would also be a good thing to do. Sorry for being so picky. I would only imagine that a data center would want to be picky about things like this (and some are, not all). Thanks bbum!

By: bbum

bbum — Tue, 22 Nov 2005 16:26:27 +0000

Read the agreement. Specifically, the confidentiality clause has an exclusion for information that Apple makes generally available to the public. WebObjects with Xcode 2.2 is a production release that is generally available.

The ADC site is worded in an unfortunate fashion. I’ll report that as a bug.