Padlock License Manager for Java

Happy 2012 and Padlock Updates

jason — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 15:50:25 +0000

As I start my first workday of 2012, I’d like to wish everybody a fruitful year and give some updates on Padlock. Overall, 2011 was a very quiet year for Padlock with only a minor release in April that primarily fixed some outstanding character encoding/decoding issues. 2012 will have much more activity, as I’m working on a new major release with some big changes. I’m not ready to announce anything yet, but Padlock is finally going to get some server side components as well as an improved Swing client. Along with more flexibility and an even cleaner API, it’s going to be a thing of beauty.

If anybody noticed some website downtime around New Year, it was because I was busy moving all the Padlock related domains from GoDaddy to NameCheap. I’ve been looking to move away from GoDaddy for years and their staunch SOPA support was enough to overcome the inertia. 19 domains, and it was surprisingly easy!

Happy Licensing!
Jason

Padlock 2.2 is out, all customers should upgrade!

jason — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 15:15:31 +0000

The first release of 2011, Padlock 2.2 is out and available for
download. All customers are urged to upgrade both their backend
version and their version in the field. This update adds new
capability to the DefaultMacAddressProvider and fixes a major bug with
locales during license signing and validation:

Mac Addresses:
It’s now possible to view and update the list of MAC addresses ignored
by the DefaultMacAddressProvider, giving you the upmost flexibility
with how you handle hardware locking.

Locale Bug:
Thanks to the bug reports from several customers, it’s been discovered
that validating a license in a locale that differs from the locale of
the generating machine will sometimes cause validation to fail. This
is especially true for Asian locales. Previously generated licenses
that run into this issue will need to be reissued using Padlock 2.2

Feel free to email me with any questions or issues.

Happy Licensing!
Jason
jason@padlocksoftware.net

Padlock 2.1.2 Released

jason — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 15:57:16 +0000

Just a quick note to you guys that Padlock 2.1.2 is now available for download from the Padlock site. This fixes a rare bug that may affect those who import Licenses from a String using LicenseIO.importLicense(String). Specifically, license importation may fail if the end user has a non-standard CharSet and one or more
license properties contain special characters. All Padlock 2.x users are encouraged to upgrade. Feel free to email me with any questions

Happy Licensing!
Jason Nichols
http://www.javalicensemanager.com
jason@padlocksoftware.net

Padlock 2.1.1 Released

jason — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 14:21:41 +0000

Padlock 2.1.1 has been officially released. This version is a minor update that fixes a rare but show stopping bug. Specifically, those using the Bouncy Castle JCE who are validating Padlock legacy (1.x) licenses. Users fitting the above description will not be able to validate their licenses within their respective applications.

All Padlock customers who have 1.x licenses out in the wild are encouraged to upgrade.

Padlock 2.1 released with Java 1.5 support

jason — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 18:21:53 +0000

It is once again my pleasure to announce another release of the Padlock License Manager for Java. This release in particular gives me great joy as it has support for Java 1.5 right out of the box, including the MAC address locking previously only supported with Java 1.6+.

Hardware locking on Java 1.5 is made possible by the addition of a new (and pluggable) MAC address provider implementation. The default uses Java’s built in provisions for acquiring MAC addresses for interfaces in Java 1.6, and drops back to a secondary method for determining addresses when using Java 1.5

For those that want a even more control over determining system MACs, you can simply implement your own provider through the MacAddressProvider interface.

The default provider also screens out several ranges of addresses used by virtual machines in an effort to ignore various types of virtual interfaces.

As usual, please let me know if you’ve got any questions or comments.

Happy Licensing!

Jason Nichols
jason@padlocksoftware.net

Padlock 1.3 (Legacy) Now Available

jason — Tue, 29 Jun 2010 17:52:36 +0000

Padlock 1.3 is now available from the Padlock Download page. This point release contains two bug fixes that affects various end users in the field. All Padlock 1.x customers are encouraged to update their build dependencies with Padlock 1.3 when possible.

Both bugs are related to date modification detection:

1) The first bug manifests itself as a prolonged validation lasting for as long as 20 seconds. The thread calling the Validator’s validate() method will block.

2) The second bug is an NPE thrown during validation. This happens most often for apps running under a service where the user’s home directory may not exist or may not be readable by the user.

As mentioned above, this will affect various end users, and you are encouraged to upgrade. If you have any questions, please feel free to email me.

Happy Licensing!
Jason Nichols
jason@padlocksoftware.net

Licenses Find a Home – Introducing Padlock License Vault

jason — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 12:45:56 +0000

It’s with great excitement that I announce Padlock’s first open source initiative – Padlock License Vault.

The short story: Padlock’s License Vault is a new technology for the storage and archival of both Padlock keys and licenses. It’s based on the venerable Apache CouchDB. For those unfamiliar with CouchDB, it’s an Erlang based document server that utilizes JSON over HTTP for all communications.

This is a very exciting project, as it will allow for a slew of applications that will help integrate Padlock throughout your business infrastructure. It’s an LGPL licensed Maven project stored at GitHub.

The long story can be found on the new License Vault page.

Documentation is sparse (ok, non-existent) at this point – but will be added over the next week.

I hope you will become active in its development, many of you have proven yourselves early adopters and I would expect no less in this case =)

Happy licensing,
Jason Nichols
jason@padlocksoftware.net

The Padlock v1 to v2 Migration Guide is now available.

jason — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 17:53:39 +0000

For our early adopters and all others who are using Padlock 1.0, 1.1, and 1.2: The Padlock 1.x to 2.x Migration Guide is now available on the Support Wiki. It should give you a jumpstart on how you can smoothly and painlessly move to the latest and greatest Padlock has to offer. Thanks for using Padlock and please contact me if you have any issues upgrading.

Padlock 2.0.2 Released

jason — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 17:07:16 +0000

Padlock 2.0.2 is officially available today, and contains several minor bug fixes. Users who utilize Padlock Manager are encouraged to update.

Fixes:
- Fix in Padlock Core for two bugs 1) Padlock API did not offer a method to set the location of the Padlock.lic file and 2) KeyManager import was not throwing an exception when attempting to import an older Padlock (1.x series) key

- Fix in Padlock Manager to use the selected Padlock License file from chosen location when signing licenses.

These bugs do not affect Padlock end users, as they only arise during the license signing process.

Padlock 2.0.1 Released

jason — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:21:14 +0000

Padlock 2.0.1 is now available for download. This minor update fixes a bug in the core library affecting only a small subset of users.

Specifically: Padlock 1.x customers who were attempting to use their older, RSA based licenses for Padlock 2.0 were getting validation errors. This update corrects this and allows them to use their licenses as expected. Note that this only affected license signing and not validation on the end user side of things.