Cloud Zoo License Management Available in Rhino 6

hi @qlabrosse Cloud Zoo was designed from the beginning to support third parties. Currently there isn’t a lot of documentation available, but here is what you would have to do from a high level:

  1. Pass the correct information to Rhino from your plugin telling it that you support Cloud Zoo (this part is trivial).
  2. Host a relatively simple REST server to respond to validation calls from Cloud Zoo. The details can be found on this doc.

I’d just like to add that I find Cloud Zoo to be an excellent solution to the perennial issues of sharing a personal license across two computers never used concurrently.
Bravo

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Hi Scott, I suspect all resellers are meeting this much anticipated end-user resistance. What is confusing for customers (and confusing for me), is given that all three licensing options discussed at Rhino - Licensing indicate that “License Available Offline” [YES], customers want to know which option will support them best when they hadn’t planned to be offline. For example, if in your normal Rhino operation, Rhino requests a license (requiring an internet connection) and you are off-line (but hadn’t planned to be), then you are stuffed - you can’t access Rhino. If you are using Zoo 6 and hadn’t checked out a license, you are similarly stuffed. And the single computer option is not really an option if that was not the computer you had planned to take with you. So, it seems, trips away require pre-planning to make licenses available off-line. Have I missed something? The advice to customers using Zoo Cloud that “Work online or offline. No need to check out licenses, so you should not be caught out on the road without a license.” just doesn’t seem to ring true. Or have I missed something? Currently I am faced with a customer who is thinking of exercising the 100% satisfaction guarantee on ALL his upgrades as a consequence!

Hi @tim.3danz

For example, if in your normal Rhino operation, Rhino requests a license (requiring an internet connection) and you are off-line (but hadn’t planned to be), then you are stuffed - you can’t access Rhino.

I think we’ve done a poor job explaining this. It is true that when you start Rhino for the first time you need an Internet connection, but Cloud Zoo allows you to run Rhino offline without you having to worry about checking out a license. The last thing we wanted to design was a system that required constant internet access.

@tim.3danz
When you start V6 with an Internet connection, your off-line lease is renewed.
You can always check it:

The thing to watch is if you have a laptop for traveling and are going to need Rhino in a place with no internet connect, be sure to start Rhino on the laptop before you leave to refresh your off-line lease.

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… AND make sure that you have logged into your Rhino account “lately”.

[I just wonder if it would be possible to make it so that using Rhino on the Cloud Zoo equals logging into the Rhino account.]

Yes. For a certain segment of users - those who have a single Rhino license used by multiple computers and who travel or do not have a constant internet connection - the days of “my license will always be there, I don’t even have to think about it” are behind us.

Of course, it one absolutely has to be guaranteed a license will be available no matter what the conditions, there is still a solution - albeit a bit more expensive… Simply buy one license for each machine, install the licenses locally and forget about the cloud zoo.

Or, as my customer says, I am not 100% satisfied with Rhino anymore. All solutions above require an adaptation to routine where you need to premeditate your need for Rhino outside of the office before you leave the office. I am familiar with the solution suggested by John Brock. And I tried it long ago. But even when I was away from internet access and needed to use Rhino 6, guess what? My offline access had expired and I couldn’t use it. The embarrassing thing was that coincident with this, I received a support call from the particular customer who is in the same predicament and highly frustrated.

I’ve read in more than one response in different threads of the reseller discourse the rather glib suggestion that a customer can always get around this by buying a license for each machine he uses (on and off-site). It’s this attitude that leads customers to saying that they are no longer 100% satisfied. I sympathise with these customers. They have upgraded many times as long and loyal customers of McNeel products. Indeed they are one of the 5% who have upgraded. They are familiar with the “single user” concept, not the single computer concept, And most certainly not the but you can do that if you must premeditate your need for Rhino.

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So the change in behaviour we expect of our customers is to premeditate their need for Rhino. Else, you have designed a system that for frustration free usage in on/off site scenarios requires constant internet access. You knew this change of behaviour was going to be hard. When customers tell me they are no longer 100% satisfied, we have failed them and it is likely to cost us.

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@tim.3danz

It is expected for users to be frustrated at the rapid changes in the software industry. It is inevitable for some longtime users to be frustrated at the fact that we have changed how we enforce our license agreement.

Our goal is to design a system that minimizes this frustration and that, for 99%+ of users, requires ZERO “premeditation”. We will keep learning at what works and what doesn’t work at time goes by.

It is imperative for us to explore alternative license enforcement mechanisms separate from a “standalone license key” system we’ve been accustomed to. As you may very well know, modern software uses lots of different licensing methods that the old “standalone license key” system simply isn’t compatible with.

As @Helvetosaur suggested, users can always install a license standalone as before. The difference is they can only use it on one machine. This would eliminate any need for “premeditation” by 100%. The reason we decided not to allow a standalone license to be installed on multiple computers is simple: We have reasonable proof that many were being used concurrently, which seemed unfair to us.

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I am one of your frustrated users. I run a one-person-show laser cutting business and have two computers: one to prep files and conduct daily business and the other to open files and run the laser. Being a good customer, I recently spent $400 upgrade to Rhino 6 and now realize that both computers cannot run the same version of the software without purchasing another license. I don’t feel that my additional installation if Rhino 5 was ‘unfair’ to the Rhino developers. It seems like a reasonable trade for the cost of license, especially given how many people run their lives from multiple computers these days. Also, It’s simply ABSURD and extremely short-sighted to assume that users will always have access to the internet to be able to open the software!!! This is a major violation of basic UX common sense!!! I am shocked. Rhino needs to reward customers who actually choose to buy licenses (as opposed to resorting to other illegal methods) rather than punishing them for trying to do the right thing.

I only see one possible problem here and that would be with the machine connected to the laser.

If you are always careful to close Rhino on one machine before running it on the other, then the situation with V6 is that you will have to occasionally have to have both of the machines connect to the internet - about once every two weeks. I assume the one that you “conduct daily business” with will not have a problem with that as you probably run e-mail, web, etc. on that one.

If the machine that runs the laser has to be absolutely isolated from the internet, then that’s an issue that will be difficult to solve without buying a separate license for it. If it can connect occasionally, there isn’t really a problem…

I’m curious to know what “reasonable proof” that “many” users were abusing the terms of use would be?

Assuming your assessment is reasonable, is this a situation where McNeel perceived the ratio of abusers to honest users of multiple machines became too high to be ignored? Another situation where the few bad apples ruin it for the rest of us? Certainly McNeel isn’t so naive as to think there would not be any dishonest users; I always assumed they just wrote them off to marketing promotion and goodwill.

I have also always felt that a large portion of Rhino users, perhaps a majority, were people like Lauren and myself: individuals with more than one computer with Rhino installed for whom it is physically impossible to operate multiple installations simultaneously. The one situation where simultaneous use of Rhino might occur would be when one installation was doing a rendering while active modeling was being done on another. This was previously interpreted as being no different than running two instances on one machine for the same purposes and thus permitted under the terms of use.

In my case all my modeling is done on offline machines (mainly one). Apparently if I want to own two offline machines with Rhino installed I will now need two Rhino licenses, effectively doubling my Rhino cost for no change in the operating convenience I have enjoyed for several decades.

One of the things that has historically contributed to my respect for McNeel as a company was the trust and respect for users implied by the terms of use and many other aspects of their customer relations. It saddens me that they feel they can no longer serve their offline users without forcing them to double their licensing cost or connect their machines to the internet.

Hopefully your ongoing consideration of these policy changes can come up with something better for users like me.

For those with a desktop and laptop at their sole disposal, whom go on the road periodically, and whom have never had to wrestle with the new ‘two week auto’ construct in past, I was wondering if a more overt checkout option might help, if technically feasible? Perhaps in addition to the existing ‘two week auto’ construct.

I’m referring to existing floating license solutions; where we may manually ‘checkout’ a license, and define the term, and then manually ‘return’ the license early, or allow it to automatically return at the end of the manually defined period.

At least such an option would give the road warrior a premeditated means to insure that he/she is not ‘somewhere’ stuck in an “aw @#$&” moment, scrambling to rectify.

Just a thought. (Which I suspect may have been vetted previously?)

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That has never been permitted under the EULA as far as my recollection is concerned… correct me if I’m wrong. One license of Rhino is not supposed to be running on two machines at the same time, no matter what the circumstances.

I could be the one who is wrong. My recollection goes back to the days when rendering took a really long time and was usually done on a separate machine or group of machines. I recall much discussion on this point and thought it was resolved in favor of not requiring a user to have a second Rhino license to accomplish rendering on a second machine which could otherwise be done with a (permitted) second instance on the primary machine.

Hi, Any way to either reset/logout manually whatever - the cloud zoo should be transparent and working…but it does not…I have just upgraded and tried the zoo on my 2 computers - first on the laptop and then on the desktop - which fails - Rhino6 was not working on the laptop at the time I was trying on the desktop…I even got an e-mail regarding the login trial…(I prefer the hardware key I have with Archicad if it is supposed working like this)
Sorry but the first impression of the new licensing system is no good ;(
Piotr

Error messages? screenshots?

I answered by e-mai(so it might be duplicated)l: Now it works - conclusion might be: that the restart of the machine after installing might have helped…wired because on the laptop it was not necessary.

@piotr.dobrowolski

There is a bug in Windows affecting some machines that disables programs from being able to open links in a browser. The workaround is to reset Window’s default web browser, then try again. I have re-written the login code in 6.4 so that Rhino does not depend on Windows to login.

AJ