How does the OF licensing work?

[SpiralOcean]

If I have a computer at work & a computer at home... do I purchase two licenses or one?

[Tim Wood]

There's a blurb about this you can view from store.omnigroup.com; click the 'How our electronic licenses work.' link in the "Other Information" box at the bottom of the right sidebar.

But, the text relevant to your question is:


For instance, one person with both a laptop and a desktop computer (or, say, a home machine and an office machine) can legally install and use a single license on both computers, though not at the same time.

[jasong]

An additional clarification had been requested on this before, with no resolution: does "not at the same time" apply to the "can install" portion, or just the "can use" portion?

in other words, can I have it installed on two machines, but only use one of them at a time, or can I not have it installed on two machines period?

[Ken Case]

in other words, can I have it installed on two machines, but only use one of them at a time, or can I not have it installed on two machines period?

You need a license for every person using the software or for every computer using the software (whichever is less). So you can install a single license on two (or more) computers as long as you're the only person using those licenses and you're only using it on one computer at a time.

[SpiralOcean]

Excellent! Thank you for the clarification.

[villan]

Considering all the terrible licensing and DRM implementations out there today, thank you for a system that seems to rely on common sense :)

[braindump]

When adding a license, I'm prompted for the license type (computer or personal). The license I purchased did not make this distinction. Is there a functional difference between these two license types?

[Andrew]

When adding a license, I'm prompted for the license type (computer or personal). The license I purchased did not make this distinction. Is there a functional difference between these two license types?

This just determines where the license is installed, which in turn controls which user accounts will see the license.

If you install it as a personal license, it gets stored in your user account, so other user accounts won't see and try to use it.

If you install it as a computer license, it gets stored in a shared location, so all user accounts on the computer can find that license and attempt to use it.

Personal licenses are used in preference to Computer licenses, so that person A with a personal license for OmniFocus will use that one, instead of claiming the shared license and thus potentially preventing use by someone who doesn't have a personal license but who could have otherwise used the shared license. This mostly comes in to play with Network licenses, such as at a company with many client computers - if your network is configured in a specific way, you can put the license in a particular place on the network such that client computers will find that network license, rather than forcing you to control licenses installed on a bunch of separate client computers.

-andrew

[braindump]

OK makes sense, but I don't think the UI for license type is very intuitive. I suggest providing some additional information to clarify this either with the purchased license or in the online help for the license interface.

Thanks for your response!