Needing some info regarding the very confusing per-seat licence

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Hello Unity Community!

I am looking forward to buying an editor extension and I've noticed it has a "license-per-seat". I've searched around the web and it's apparently a very confusing licence type, and it confused me as well. I own two computers, a desktop and a laptop. I do most of my work on the desktop, but sometimes while travelling I also work on my laptop.

Now my question is this: do I need to purchase TWO licenses just to be able to work on both machines?

If yes, shouldn't this be a per-computer license?
If no, shouldn't this be a per-user license?

Do I have to make sure that nobody else has access to the environment? Let's say I leave Unity idle in the task bar and my mom watches a video on YouTube. Would that mean I violated the license agreement by allowing an unlicensed third-party to access the editor extension?

What if I get, let's say, a weird script behaviour on my desktop and decide to test it on my laptop at the same time, side by side comparison. Or maybe I forgot how to do something and I want to open up another project and check out how I did it there. Would I be in violation of the licence agreement by having two instances running at the same time?

Or what if I buy the extension on my laptop, and a month after I want to replace the laptop with something newer, or get rid of it altogether. On what device can I use the editor extension then?

This licence doesn't make any sense to me whatsoever, so any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for your time!

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Answer by Mmmpies · Jun 12, 2016 at 04:37 PM

This is more of a forum question but I don't think you have to worry. If it's just you using the software I serious doubt a company would prosecute you for your mum watching netflix on a PC with Unity open whilst you worked on Unity on your laptop.

The seat is not specifically a user or a computer it just means if someone is sat down (metaphorically) using it then that license is taken up. You or your mum could use the license and it could be on your PC or laptop but as long as only 1 is in use at any given time you shouldn't be in breach.

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Ashky · Jun 12, 2016 at 05:43 PM 0

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Hello $$anonymous$$mmpies (lol), thanks for your answer. So you're telling me a per-seat license is basically "per-instance", e.g. having 2 per-seat licenses means a maximum of 2 instances can be in use at the same time, regardless of the users and machines? This type of license seems very vulnerable to abuse by the end users. Someone could have the same license on 4 PCs and have 4 different people at them, the only thing they'd need to do to be in the clear would be to use the said license at different times. Sure it's very impractical, but still possible.

Mmmpies Ashky · Jun 12, 2016 at 05:55 PM 0

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$$anonymous$$icrosoft use it a lot and it's more prevalent in big companies where you can have 1000's of computers and employees often with staff moving around a lot. The practicalities are you need the software on most PC's and the people using it may well change from day to day (or shift to shift) but you only ever use X amount at a given time.

I think they try and abstract away from either per user or per computer by using per seat.

You could always bypass the license by standing up but if anyone asks you didn't get that from me :D

Needing some info regarding the very confusing per-seat licence

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