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Admin
I don't understand how this is a problem. Someone gets to host the box with the USB key, set up an external service provider, and charge the idiots for a 'software only' interface to the thing they previously had in-house.
Admin
Just torrent it - problem solved.
Admin
Well, physical dongles are evil, as is (c). It's good to see at least one private company openly admitting it, if only within their IT department and semi-unwillingly.
Admin
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/extend-kubernetes/compute-storage-net/device-plugins/
Admin
Presumably that wouldn't work well because it assumes that the software in the container knows that it is in a container and must use containery methods to reach the device. It seems ... unlikely that the dongle-licensed software would play in that environment.
Admin
whoosh
Admin
Software licenses tied to hardware is a red flag in the first place. It is not a technical necessity, just a means of extortion.
As much as enterprises are afraid of all the FOSS stuffs, not getting enslaved by crappy software licenses is one of the key ideas of the free software philosophy. There was nice talk about the relationship between the industry and the FOSS community back when Log4Shell made the headlines ( https://thedailywtf.com/articles/don-t-lookup-the-log4j-debacle ), but what really changed in the meantile? Most enterprises probably patched the vulnerability but didn't learn from the underlying issues.
So, if some enterprises think that the crappy licenses are acceptable for them, who am I to criticise? Still, I can't help but feel amused that they come cry afterwards that it breaks some of their processes (especially if said process are designed and implemented at the Cthulhu level on the horror scale).
In any case... Good luck to Fred!
Admin
OK as far as it goes, but what if the software with the dongle-enforced license is one of those specialist things for which there isn't a F/OSS alternative? (Yes, that happens, usually because whatever niche it fills is one of those ultra-specialised things that F/OSS folks don't bother with.)
Admin
Just put a strip of electrical tape over the ~~check engine light~~ IT dashboard row.
Admin
Evil as in "I don't like it," or evil as in morally unacceptable?
If the former, nobody cares. If the latter, you're fighting the way the world works. Get used to it, kid. Some of us need to make money through our "proprietary" efforts.
That said, the management position on this WTF is insane. Either you make an exception for this no doubt spectacularly useful system, or you contact the supplier and arrange a licencing agreement that accommodates containerisation.
Or, of course, you could call on the FOSS community to rewrite it for you, fer free.
Bwahahahahaha!
Admin
Around 1988, I engineered replacing a RS232 hardware dongle with software copy protection for a small software company based in New Jersey. I really can't believe software companies are still using dongles 34 years later. Wow!
Admin
THey're a teeny bit more sophisticated now, what with, you know, the internet and PPK and so on ...
Admin
The specifics of their position is insane, but the position itself is fine. Had they made the transition to 100% k8s with a statement like: "Going forward all software is to be containerized. The project has a two year duration. Anything that can't be addressed in this timeframe will be noted and spun out to a remediation project. Anything that can't be remediated by the vendor in three years must be replaced. We estimate that 31% of our software is going to be addressed in phase one and the entire project will cost eighty kajillion dollars."
That way the company could have known the whole story and denied it before it got started.
Admin
Dongles. Yes, I love dongles! About twenty years ago, back at an advertising agency that should remain unnamed we did have a program that required a physical dongle. We had several and everything was running smooth ... till we decided to move people in that department (and a few others) onto a Citrix server because of some other apps and their file based databases. I mean, sure, it should be fine, right? Just stick one dongle into the server and you are done, right? Not so fast trooper ... one dongle, one license, one user. We had more dongles and needed more users using that app at the same time.
Luckily it was possible to stack all the dongles and wrap the app by a script that knew which dongles are "in use" and ran the app with the right params to choose a specific dongle for that instance. Luckily the company policy was "Let the IT handle it, as long as it works, we don't want to know."
Admin
@Steve - The software running in the container does not need to be made aware any differently, the container itself gets configured so that the device appears as if it was local hardware to the job(s) running inside the container [which, as you say, presumably cant be modified]
Admin
When I found myself in a similar situation (migration to Windows virtual machines instead of containers) the software maker was bullied into providing a dongle-free version of their precious product.
Admin
I'm not sure if these kubernetes nodes are physical or virtuals. If physical is acceptable, one solution is to create a "tainted" node such that only containers with the taint can run on that node. Then taint the container for this special software such that it is the only container acceptable to this node.
How you get the USB key to be seen by the container, that's a second separate issue, but at least its "complaint with requirements" now.
At work we use that for GPU specific containers in a k8s env where there are normal nodes and gpu-specific ones.