Is it really a license violation to effectively make MATLAB free idle licenses in less then 4 hours?

This question originates from a reply in the following: thread.

I once wrote a python script that would try to get a floating license every 10 secs. From that idea now I thought maybe I can do similar one that would identify if MATLAB is idle more than 5 minutes or so, and then it would terminate the MATLAB.

Would this be a license violation, or is it just strictly altering the Network License Manager to timeout in less than 4 hours?

[Torsten]

This is a question you should address to MATLAB support, not to the MATLAB forum:

https://uk.mathworks.com/support/contact_us.html

[Burak Bayram]

Oh, sorry, I will. Thanks!

[Andreas Goser]

FYI, the support teams might need to reach out to somebody else internally when it is about the license model. But anyhow, from the technical point of view, I do not yet get is. You have an open MATLAB session and the license is a concurrent license. So far so good. And now you want to use a different tool to figure out if MATLAB is idle? How would you want to do that? And lets assume you identify such a situation. Then you want to somehow return the license key to allow other users to use it? This all sounds a lot of effort for probably just having the wrong license type for your needs.

[Walter Roberson]

@Andreas Goser

It sounds as if @Burak Bayram's license adminstrators have not purchased enough concurrent licenses to meet the demand. Ideally, the administrators would purchase more licenses.

However... licenses cost money. It is common for licenses to come from a different cost centre than payroll does, so it is common for there to be pressure to spend a bunch of time working around license restrictions, even if the salary cost of doing so are more than the license costs.

[Andreas Goser]

Based on my experience, users as well as IT might come up with countermeasures without understanding the underlying issue. And I would like to avoid helping on a countermeasure where there is a much better one addressing the underlying problem. Here, I do not know enough about Burak's application.

Example 1: Assuming this is a commcercial user and the end user is in 4 one-hour-meetings per day and can develop a Simulink model only in between. Here I can understand the desire to return the license key as the user has not the discipline to close MATLAB

Example 2: The main use is to run calculations rather than code. Having MATLAB open just for that might seen as expensive. A solution to reduce license consumption can be to create a stand-alone application with MATLAB Compiler SDK.

[Burak Bayram]

Thank you for your answers.

Let me clarify it, first I'm not IT just an engineer who uses Matlab on company commercial license (floating one I believe, where I don't have one specific to my name but I can use a common license from a pool I guess?). This license costs per use (or time based like per hour). I might have mislead you that I'm using a license from a pool of limited amount of licenses. But yeah, I have limited info on how licenses work to be honest

It's really like that in Example 1, Andreas. So after you're done with a part of your work in Matlab and if you leave it open, minimalized just in case, to work on another project or something else, Matlab would continue to count the time towards the bill.. This is what I want to avoid, sometimes you're clumsy and sometimes you just don't want to restart it. That's why I thought of writing a script that forces Matlab process to terminate or somehowe make matlab return the license when Matlab is idle.

[Andreas Goser]

This helps, thank you! Two more questions before I make a final recommendation.

1. When you write the license costs per use / hour, is this something your IT bills departments on? I ask as this is not how it works for a concurrent license when it comes to your company paying money to MathWorks.
2. If you can estimate how many work hours you use MATLAB, that would be great, In particular, more or less then around 10h per week.

[Burak Bayram]

1) I mean short answer is: I don't really know.

I also try to communicate with IT-Finance departments of our company to get detailed info about our license and billing, but you know how it is, everyone directs me to another place..

2) Well it depends on load. If fully loaded, 40-60 hours per week and if not 0-20hr per week.

But again my question is farily simple, if I were to write a code that executes alt+f4 on Matlab when it's idle for a time, would that violete the license agreement?

Optional 2nd question is can I use Network License Manager with lower timeout value (Lower than 4hours) , if not can I alter it, and would that count as license violation?

[Walter Roberson]

Altering the timeout value to less than 4 hours will simply not work; if set to less than 4 hours, it will be treated as 4 hours.

It would be a license violation to deliberately restart the license manager to clear out licenes that have not yet met the timeout period.

[Burak Bayram]

Thanks a lot for your recommendations and answers!

Answer 1

[Andreas Goser]

Based on the background information we discussed, here is my recommendation:

In order to address the underlying issue, I recommend you get in touch with MathWorks' or you distributor's sales department. You appear to be a power user and it may make economic sense for you and your employer to assign a user-based license to you instead of leveraging the conncurrent license.

I am not in a position to make a statement about something being a license violation or not, however here is information I believe being helpful:

• There are situations where the license manager software in connection with MATLAB malfunctions and IT departments have ways to remove a user / return a license key. There are descriptions in the FLEXnet user manual how to do it.
• The TIMEOUT functionality is set to 4 hours. It can be increased, but not decreased. This is not a techical limitation, but an implementation to avoid end users have their licenses removed from them in a normal work environment.
• In case you seek an official statement your plan violates the license agreement or notr, you need to involve your IT and/or legal department.

[Walter Roberson]

My memory (from 15-ish years ago) is that the way to return stuck licenses is to restart the entire license manager. I do not recall any way of freeing individual licenses.

[Andreas Goser]

Sorry for being cryptic. I was thinking of LMREMOVE.

[Burak Bayram]

Thanks a lot!