Clarification on licensing terms of LR4

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rjalex

rjalex

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A few days ago, after giving LR4 a spin in trial mode, I bought the license.
Installed the product on my Mac using my account.
Today wanted my daughter to pull off pics from her camera from her account on the same Mac and LR4 asked me for either a trial or to input my license code.
I seem to remember this is allowed. Can I go forward without messing up my LR4 installation ?
Thanks
 
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Hey Bob, yes, that should be fine. It's a 2 computer license, as long as the 2 machines aren't in use at the same time.

Here's the applicable bit:

“2.1.3 Portable or Home Computer Use. Subject to the restrictions set forth in Section 2.1.4, the primary user of the Computer on which the Software is installed under Section 2.1 (“Primary User”) may install a second copy of the Software for his or her exclusive use on either a portable Computer or a Computer located at his or her home, provided that the Software on the portable or home Computer is not used at the same time as the Software on the primary Computer.”
 
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Victoria Bampton said:
Hey Bob, yes, that should be fine. It's a 2 computer license, as long as the 2 machines aren't in use at the same time.

Here's the applicable bit:

“2.1.3 Portable or Home Computer Use. Subject to the restrictions set forth in Section 2.1.4, the primary user of the Computer on which the Software is installed under Section 2.1 (“Primary User”) may install a second copy of the Software for his or her exclusive use on either a portable Computer or a Computer located at his or her home, provided that the Software on the portable or home Computer is not used at the same time as the Software on the primary Computer.”
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He said it is the same computer, different user.
 
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I think same computer's ok. After all, Adobe aren't going to be monitoring who happens to be sat at a computer if it was all in a single user account. The main point is you can't have 2 different people using it on 2 different computers.
 
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Is the computer not licensed to use it, rather than the user? Should a second user on the same computer need to enter a license code? That does not seem right. Even Microsoft does not do something that dumb.
 
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I'm with donoreo on this one: my understanding has always been one user on a maximum of two machines.
 
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You could check with the tech support chat line if you're concerned. There isn't any activation involved - I'm betting it's just asking for a serial number because the registration key is stored in a user folder.
 
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Is that a Mac thing, Victoria? On Win7 the registration key is stored in Program Data, which is not in the user area.
 
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Er, no, turns out it's me confusing myself by being super-organized. I got fed up with reentering my serial number during some testing stages and copied the registration file to my own account. I don't know why it's happening!!!! Possibly installing "for this user" instead of "for all users" might explain it.
 
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When I bought the license from Adobe's website I did not receive a license file but only an email from [email protected] with a serial number and a download link. So on my Mac, user Bob I entered it to register "my" LR4. Yesterday I logged on the same (and only machine) in the house (an iMac 27") as my daughter Erica and launched LR4 (which was already installed) and it asked for trial or enter a serial. I am a bit wary of entering my serial again.
Thanks for the help.
Bob
 
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And yes I understand that I could use it also on my portable computer and would not be worried about damaging the installation since they would be two totally different machines.
 
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Entering your serial again won't cause you a problem Bob. There's no activation so it won't use up one of your two installations or anything like that. The LR license is a trust license.
 
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To add to the confusion. I can verify what Jim says, In windows, the Registration file is located in "C:\Program Data\Adobe\..."

As a new Mac user, I installed LR in /Applications (The universal Application location AFAIK). It was registered in /Users/{userName}/Library/Application Support/Adobe/Lightroom (i.e. local to my user)

Adobe does not track LR installations, like PS/CS. There is no harm to add an additional registration to another user on the same machine.

I have my 3.x license on my Windows desktop, my obsolete Windows laptop and my iMac. I can physically use only one keyboard at a time. So am I in violation of the License if I don't de-install LR from the Laptop? I don't intend to use the laptop or LR on the laptop but I might in an emergency. So far, I have only installed 4.0 on the iMac. Eventually, I'll get around to installing it on the Win7 desktop. As I see it, as long as there is no intent to defraud Adobe, it really does not matter how often or where you install LR.

I think to answer Bob's issue, Bob is the primary user of the license, The license is for his use exclusively. Daughters would not be included in that exclusive use. On a Mac, this creates a conflict and is detected by the application. On Windows,is no conflict detected and LR would always run for every user. So either LR is not properly installing on Windows or the License agreement is not clear by what it means by "Exclusive".
 
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Speaking of the "conflict" which Cletus talks about to make things more complicated, on a multiuser operating system such as Mac OS, I might want to have more than one userid for the same physical person (for example Bob is the machine administrator and Rob is a simple user, being always me I should legitimately use LR from both userids (one person, one computer, two userids) :) or am I wrong ?
In any case I think that both technically (thanks Victoria) and ethically I should be aok to enter the license again for a secondary userid.
Thanks to all.
Bob
 
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That is not a bad idea. Keeping an admin user for admin purposes and using a regular account is a good idea. The admin user on Mac OS is technically a regular user, they just have a sudo (su do = SuperUser do = root user do) entry to allow them to do root user tasks. By default this is always the first account created in Mac OS. Many Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, do the same thing and actually disable the root user account.

Ok, was that geeky enough for everyone this morning, or shall I go in to explaining that your username is useless and you are really a number? Queue The Prisoner references now please ;)
 
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Hi, 20+ (sigh) years of several Unices under my belt give me a faint idea of what's going on under the shiny GUI/WM of Mac OS X :) Another reason for which I personally love Mac OS is that in the rare instances in which something does not work out of the box I can always open a shell and start piping commands :) Nice to know there are other fellow-geeks around ;-)
 
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I am logged in to 5 AIX boxes as the moment :)
 
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Ehm Clee ... of course ! It's the most common unix flavour in enterprise setting along with Linux as of today (Solaris and HP-UX have somewhat declined).
Bob - Executive Architect - IBM Italy ;-)
 
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rjalex said:
Ehm Clee ... of course ! It's the most common unix flavour in enterprise setting along with Linux as of today (Solaris and HP-UX have somewhat declined).
Bob - Executive Architect - IBM Italy ;-)
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Korn shell sucks, it annoys me all the time. I am not allowed to out Bash in here :(
 
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