Developer Center Resources

cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

NI License Manager Third-Party SDK

NI License Manager Third-Party SDK

 

The NI License Manager (NILM) is NI's solution for protecting, licensing, and activating software that is built on the NI platform. The NILM Third-Party SDK contains a set of APIs and tools necessary for licensing products that are sold through the LabVIEW Tools Network. This enables customers to evaluate third-party software before purchasing and experience the same purchase, evaluation, and activation process as NI products.

 

The NILM Third-Party SDK is available for any third-party software sold through the LabVIEW Tools Network. For more information on how to contribute your products, visit http://www.ni.com/labview-tools-network/contribute/.  

  

NILM API for LabVIEW

 

The NILM API for LabVIEW is a toolkit for licensing LabVIEW add-ons and applications using NI License Manager.  It supports licensing add-on and application built in LabVIEW 2014 and later.

 

Getting Started

 

 Licensing LabVIEW libraries

 

Learn how to license LabVIEW Libraries with NILM

 

NILM for Other Development Environments

 

NI is currently working on building APIs for other languages and IDEs including C#, C++ and LabVIEW NXG.  If you are interested in learning more about these APIs, please contact the LabVIEW Tools Network team for more information.

Comments
MaximeR
Active Participant
Active Participant
on

Hello,

 

I just take a look on the API and the new licence manager. This is a real improvement compare to licencing software of the TPLA.

You said that is only for software sold through the LVTN. If I moved my licencing from TPLA to this, can I generate activation code directly to send it to my customer, or I need to ask my customer to buy it from LabVIEW Tools Network ?


I'm asking that, because we are selling TestStand add-on built with LabVIEW. For the moment there is no built-in function to manage easily our product activation compare to LabVIEW. We built all by ourself based on TPLA. This new SDK can be a solution. But we want to keep the ability to sell it easily and directly to our customer if we include our toolkit in a bigger project.

 

We also hope that one day we can publish TestStand addon on the NI Tools Network and not on the LabVIEW Tools Network. NI tools Network make more sense for tools dedicated to any NI Software.

 

Best Regards

Maxime R.  

  CLA - Certified LabVIEW Architect / Architecte LabVIEW Certifié
  CTA - Certified TestStand Architect / Architecte TestStand Certifié

David_L
Active Participant
Active Participant
on

Hi Maxime,

 

Thank you for your questions.  Due to the tight integration of NILM and the NI purchasing process, products that use NILM can only be sold on the LabVIEW Tools Network.  You're welcome to create an alternate version of the software that uses a different licensing system for selling through your own channel, but you would not be able to generate NILM licenses unless a purchase is made through ni.com.

 

I hope this helps,

David

MaximeR
Active Participant
Active Participant
on

Hi David,

 

thanks for the reply. If we use a solution, we will use only one solution. Using 2 different ways to activate a software depending on sales channel is not a good idea.

I have 2 other question : With the Toolkit, during development, can we do some real test with online activation without paying everything ? We can do it with Softwarekey and it's very helpful to test and validate activation.

What about using our tools as internal use ? The best way to validate a product, is to use it and often, we use out tool for different project and in this case we use the final product. We used specific licence that cost nothing for us. Is this possible with NI Licence Manager ?

 

Best regards.

Maxime R.  

  CLA - Certified LabVIEW Architect / Architecte LabVIEW Certifié
  CTA - Certified TestStand Architect / Architecte TestStand Certifié

David_L
Active Participant
Active Participant
on

Please forgive my delay in responding, it's been a busy week over here.

 

To answer your questions, yes you are able and highly encouraged to do real activation testing with your toolkit during development.  When you are ready to start development, our team will send you a license file at no cost which will be your actual real license file for your product.  When your development is complete and we're ready to sell your product, we'll make the necessary changes in the back end to attach it to a real part number and make it activatable for real customers.  

 

Regarding your second question:  When your product goes live as described above, we'll also send you a real serial number for internal use only.  Your team would use this serial number for testing, validation, internal development, etc at no cost, however you would never give this to a customer.  If you have customers who are using your software (either purchased by itself, or as part of a system) they would need to purchase a license of your software from ni.com in the same way that they would have to purchase a copy of LabVIEW or other NI Software part of the same system.  


I hope this is clear, but let me know if you have further questions,

David

MaximeR
Active Participant
Active Participant
on

Hi David,

 

Thanks for the reply.

This is clear for me now.

 

Best regards

Maxime R.  

  CLA - Certified LabVIEW Architect / Architecte LabVIEW Certifié
  CTA - Certified TestStand Architect / Architecte TestStand Certifié

grkunklm
NI Employee (retired)
on

Hello, 

I am curious if using the NI License Manager Third-Party SDK would make the Third-Party toolkit also available for Central Licensing (with NI VLM and/or FlexNet Publisher)?

 

Many thanks

Michaela

Czendżej
Member
Member
on

Hello,

 

I am thinking to use NILM for licensing application my company provides.

 

The problem is, that we would like to license one application exe, but generate separate license key for each instance/copy of our application. Then we have some control on our software.

 

Is it possible?

 

User002
Not applicable
on

Czendżej,

 

Did you ever get an answer to your question? It sounds like you wanted to make sure that any copies of your EXE require a separate License File/Purchase per EXE so that people cannot simply copy License Files over to a new computer and make unlimited "Free" copies of your application.

 

I assume the License File provided by NI uses some form of encryption using the local Computer ID or MAC Address and the unique Serial Number given to a customer that purchases your license from ni.com (like the LabVIEW Development Licenses).
Someone could simply share the Serial Number and activate your application on multiple computers, which would be in violation of the User License Agreement, and is how a lot of Software licensing and enforcement is accomplished.

 

(I think that in times past, some Software Companies kept a database of "Used" licenses activated on their website. But that made a lot of customers angry when their computers died or were lost/stolen, and they had no way to De-activate that copy in order to Re-activate on a new computer.)