Issue I'm a little worried about with licensing.

[Kazander]

In my experience, the GM ends up footing the whole bill in the end anyway.

I'm going to chime in and agree with this. Despite my best intentions to get my players to buy a client license, it ended up just being easier to have a pack of floating licenses. This goes beyond the BRPG costs as well; game rules and books end up being footed by the GM as well, unless a player really wants a copy for himself.

As for the licensing server, that was a planned feature originally, but due to various factors heruca never got around to it before becoming busy with other projects.

Hopefully if he creates a BRPG v2, it will be designed with a better licensing model from the ground up.

As for a licensing server, meh, I don't think it's necessary. I suspect it may be more trouble than it's worth at this scale. As Urlord suggested, you'd have to assure uptime, which probably means going a couple of rented servers or cloud-based options. Full redundancy requires multiple servers, multiple ISPs, and multiple power sources, all of which are a significant expense. It's one thing for the Lobby server to go down. It's a much bigger deal for a license server to go down.

[Omnidon]

As for a licensing server, meh, I don't think it's necessary. I suspect it may be more trouble than it's worth at this scale. As Urlord suggested, you'd have to assure uptime, which probably means going a couple of rented servers or cloud-based options. Full redundancy requires multiple servers, multiple ISPs, and multiple power sources, all of which are a significant expense. It's one thing for the Lobby server to go down. It's a much bigger deal for a license server to go down.

Well, there are cheaper ways to ensure redundancy. However, you may be correct about it not being worth the effort in this particular case.
Nonetheless, I agree with Urlord that the current licensing model and authentication methods have likely harmed sales and have certainly annoyed some of the users. Something better will need to be worked out if there is a BRPG v2.

[TRIAD4Evr]

Especially since if a person _does_ buy his own license for BRPG and has an issue with disconnecting, there are two choices- a ping code that thinks the players are disconnecting every so often when they aren't, which in turn seems to adversely affect the turn sequencer _or_ the GM has to disconnect everyone and reconnect to clear the user's license. So, I agree, there's no benefit to individual licenses at all. Hopefully that will be fixed at some point tho...

[Omnidon]

Especially since if a person _does_ buy his own license for BRPG and has an issue with disconnecting, there are two choices- a ping code that thinks the players are disconnecting every so often when they aren't, which in turn seems to adversely affect the turn sequencer _or_ the GM has to disconnect everyone and reconnect to clear the user's license. So, I agree, there's no benefit to individual licenses at all. Hopefully that will be fixed at some point tho...

While those bugs are certainly annoying and need to be fixed ASAP, that isn't exactly related in any way to licensing.
Any license schema that heruca uses (short of removing digital rights management entirely) will have the potential to cause some bugs, but those bugs can be squashed without necessarily changing the licensing model.

[TRIAD4Evr]

No, my point is Floating Licenses are the way to go- individual licenses are currently more trouble than they are worth. I'm fine with Heruca wanting licenses- every program designer needs income! I'd recommend taking a collection with all of your potential players and buying as many floating licenses as that allows, rather than individual ones held by each member of your group. If they don't pony up enough for everybody, somebody gets to do the disconnect dance until they do!

[Omnidon]

No, my point is Floating Licenses are the way to go. [...] If they don't pony up enough for everybody, somebody gets to do the disconnect dance until they do!

And my point is that isn't really a flaw in the licensing model, but merely a bug that needs to be squashed.

I too vastly prefer floating licenses over player licenses, but not just because there are currently bugs in the licensing code.

We were discussing the long term solutions to overall licensing issues, not merely a short-term workaround for an existing bug.