Thanks, Frederic!
Sure, the integration with the sale channel is part of the big picture. However, a complete solution would consist of many components (the license management framework is just one of them) and each of them should be replaceable, following the extensibility nature of Eclipse. For example the license management framework should be able to integrate with different sales channels. Most probably big vendors would want to implement their own sales channel, while small companies and individual developers would like to avoid this effort and use/pay for an existing sales service.
My next steps is to focus on the evaluation/trial licenses, which should demonstrate the extensibility potential of an open source license management framework. There might be different strategies available for providing a new user with an evaluation license:
1. Self-generated by the Eclipse plugin (still thinking what's the best way to do it)
2. Retrieved by a license server based on a hardware ID - transparent for user, no interaction required
3. Retrieved by a license server based on login information - requires registration by the user
All of the above strategies have pros and cons. The availability of different strategies gives the flexibility for product vendors to choose the one that fits best their business model. Of course, if none of the built-in strategies fits, the product vendors would be able to contribute their own via extension point.
Greetings,
Kaloyan