Due to the recent changes regarding developer licensing, I have been asked to get clarity on what is allowed regarding developer license assignment, and the resulting impact on ensuring that built files are correctly licensed.
According to "https://www.telerik.com/purchase/faq/licensing-purchasing", under "How do I assign developers and managers to the purchased licenses?", it states that "The license holder can assign license developers and managers through Your Account in the section Licensed Users and reassign them anytime." This wording appears to suggest that developer licenses can be reassigned freely as needed, yet my understanding is that this is not the intended interpretation, and that reassignment is only permitted under specific circumstances. I have not been able to find any documentation that explicitly states this.
Our concern arises from how these licensing changes affect the building of .NET assemblies. According to the license agreement at "https://www.telerik.com/purchase/license-agreement/reporting-dlw-s", we are granted what appears to be an unlimited testing and building license, not restricted by seat count, however the new licensing behavior seems to conflict with this. Any assembly that uses Telerik Reporting and is built by an unlicensed developer will be unlicensed at runtime.
4.A.1.1.2. Testing and Building License. If you purchase a Developer License, you may also use (as applicable based on the Product(s) identified in the Order or included in the DevTools collection(s) identified in the Order) the UI/Kendo Products Product Package, and/or Progress Telerik Reporting Product Package in the testing and building of Your Integrated Products. Testing consists of one or more of the following functions: retrieving source code developed by your Licenced Developers from the source control repository, and/or using a compiled version of Your Integrated Product, for the purposes of quality assurance (i.e. writing tests and manually testing). Building consists of one or more of the following functions: retrieving code developed by Your Licensed Developers from the source control repository, compiling such code (without making or performing any modifications, customizations, configurations, or further development actions which utilize or impact the Products) and checking dependencies and modules, running automated unit tests, linking libraries and code, building and storing artifacts, archiving build logs, and publishing/distributing Your Integrated Products to your Permitted End Users. This testing and building license is not limited to a number of seats.
Additionally, at least one cross‑reference within that license agreement appears to point to an incorrect section number (the one referring to the definition of a user points to the section adjacent to the actual definition); the rest may be worth a brief look.
If there is a page that explicitly clarifies the intended rules around developer license assignment and reassignment, I would appreciate being directed to it. If no such clarification currently exists, I recommend including this information in the appropriate documentation, as the current wording appears ambiguous.
Thank you in advance for your guidance.
1 Answer, 1 is accepted
Hello Mark,
Thank you for the detailed question!
Let me start with the topic of the developer seat reassigment, indeed, the developer seat for each license can be freely changed at any time, and as many times as the license holder would like. We do not impose any restrictions on the ability of the license holder when it comes to the ability to reassign the developer seat.
Regarding the building of .NET assemblies that include Telerik Reporting, or other Telerik products, you are indeed granted unlimited testing and building rights to projects that include Telerik products, as long as a valid license key is provided.
For example, let's take a look at a part of the quoted text regarding building the projects:
Building consists of one or more of the following functions: retrieving code developed by Your Licensed Developers from the source control repository, compiling such code (without making or performing any modifications, customizations, configurations, or further development actions which utilize or impact the Products) and checking dependencies and modules, running automated unit tests, linking libraries and code, building and storing artifacts, archiving build logs, and publishing/distributing Your Integrated Products to your Permitted End Users. This testing and building license is not limited to a number of seats.
Here, building refers to the automated process of taking code written by your licensed developers and preparing it for use. This includes pulling the code from source control, compiling it without making changes, checking dependencies, running automated unit tests, linking libraries, creating and storing build artifacts, archiving build logs, and distributing the final integrated products to your authorized end users.
This license allows unlimited users to perform these testing and build activities. Let's say "User1" and "User2" are two developers from your company working on the same project, which uses Telerik Reporting code in it, and only "User1" has a developer seat for the Reporting product, while "User2" does not have a dedicated license.
Both users can build the project on the build environment using the license key, but only "User1" is allowed to work locally on the Telerik Reporting-related code in the project. This includes CI/CD scenarios where the same license key can be used as well, as long as the Telerik Reporting code is not being modified during those processes. You can take a look at the Learn how to add your License Key to CI/CD Services. - Telerik Reporting article for more details on how to provide the license key for such scenarios.
With that being said, I have contacted the legal team regarding your points about the incorrect section numbers and your overall inquiry, so they will be taking a look as well. In the meantime, if you have further questions, please be more specific about the scenario that you have in mind, so that we can have better context. Please also feel free to open a new support ticket and continue the discussion there if you do not wish to share such information on the public forum.
Once again, thank you for taking the time to thoroughly go through the document and ask your questions. Let us know if we can assist any further.
Regards,
Dimitar
Progress Telerik
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At this point, what you’ve described doesn’t seem to align with our understanding of how the licensing is intended to work. Specifically:
- The license key is not permitted to be shared with unlicensed developers in any form.
- Developer seats are not intended to be reassigned repeatedly - as we’ve understood the intent from prior info - for example, assigning a seat to Developer #1 today, removing it tomorrow for Developer #2, assigning it back to #1 next week, removing it again the week after so Developer #2 or #3 can use it, and so on.
Thank you.
Hello Mark, I`m Plamen and I am a Support Lead at Telerik. I took my time to check with the product and legal team regarding your questions. I hope I can clear up any confusion and help you move forward.
- There is a difference between sharing a license key with a developer and assigning a license to a developer.
If you are a developer with an assigned license for a Telerik/Kendo product, you have a unique license key. You have all the rights to work on your project.
However, if you are not assigned a license, you can't use someone else's license key to work on the project and make changes to the code base. - Developer seats (licenses) can be reassigned as frequently as you want. We designed them to be flexible, so you can re-allocate any unused license to a developer in your company that needs it. This way your team utilizes all licenses without any downtime. As you pointed it out, it is mentioned in the FAQ. It is not prohibited in the End User License Agreement (EULA) and I am not sure I can point you to a document that reinforces that statement. Since is it not prohibitted - it means that it is allowed to reassign a license as frequently as needed.
Your example with re-assignment is a bit extreme and from my experience things don't change so rapidly. Either way, the scenario is allowed, as long as the same license seat that is re-assigned is not used simulataneously by two developers via sharing license keys.
I like the fact this forum thread now contains a lot of useful information that can help other users with the same questions, but I also want to ensure we clear things up for you without exposing any sensitive information about your licenses and use case. If you have any pending questions, I suggest that you open a private support ticket, where we can discuss exact scenario or concerns that you might have.
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It was my understanding that frequently re‑assigning a license between a few developers is viewed by Telerik as "sharing a license key", and therefore is not allowed.
Re-assigning a license does not mean that you are sharing a license key. That is why each license key that you generate from your Telerik.com account is unique. The developer with assigned license will use their own license key, while they have the license assigned to them.
Rank 1
Also, I was wondering about the license file that we download. I assume that re-assigning a license to someone invalidates that license file, but does that mean we need to download a new file when the license is assigned back?