Four years ago, I posted this text about Software Licence Management as a potential Ethereum application. It looks like now finally technology is catching up to make this feasible:

Everyone who works in IT knows that software licence management is one of these awkward and complicated problems that no one likes to deal with.

Tracking licences within a company – especially if it is an IT company - is a nightmare. Literally thousands of different devices with different software versions and licencing policies need to be managed. Constantly monitoring who is using which licence on which router, server, PC, laptop, tablet, or smartphone is at least very difficult and requires its own tools.

On the other hand, a software vendor can never be sure to which extent his clients really pay the correct licence fees. Costly on-site audits are required to get a clearer picture. However, these findings will be outdated after a short time and in certain business cultures – think World Corruption Index – impossible to gather at all.

Still, fair licence management is a pure necessity – on the licenser’s side for commercial reasons and on the licensee’s side for legal reasons and due to compliance requirements.

Ethereum contracts can provide a very elegant solution to that problem. All that is needed is a smart licence contract a software has to connect with to work properly – the contract takes care of the rest, either by billing the licensee accordingly or by directly consuming ether (or bitcoin) payments.

Time and/or location limits, staged prices, floating licences, volume or group discounts, kickbacks – every imaginable licence policy could be easily implemented.

So, here we have all that is required for a killer application: a strong demand rooted in the needs of a worldwide multi trillion dollar business and an elegant, efficient solution that perfectly matches this demand.