Mastercam 2021

Hi everyone,

I am a programming contractor for CNC equipment. My contract job has ended for my 2 Mastercam keys. I am looking to lease them for 1 year at a time. I will be charging $2200.00 for the year. It is the cost of my maintenance for each key. I want to keep them current and free myself from paying the maintenance fee each year. The key has Milling, Turning and Mill Turn.

Thank you very much

Tom

Tom, just a heads, up, I don't think that's allowed by your user license agreement.

Hi everyone,

I am a programming contractor for CNC equipment. My contract job has ended for my 2 Mastercam keys. I am looking to lease them for 1 year at a time. I will be charging $2200.00 for the year. It is the cost of my maintenance for each key. I want to keep them current and free myself from paying the maintenance fee each year. The key has Milling, Turning and Mill Turn.

Thank you very much

Tom

Click to expand...

Don't let Mastercam find out or that maintenance fee will be chump change to what you will pay in legal fees. You don't own those keys or the software and Mastercam/CNC Software is the worst for going after EULA violators.

Actually I don't think you can contract program for other companies without violating the EULA. From what I understand,,, (when I got into trouble with Delcam) is when you purchase the license to use the software it is one location specific. Maybe you worked out some contract like these places that do sub contract programming but that would also cost MUCH more than $2,200 per year.

Over on Emastercam there are quite a few people that contract program for a living. Though they purchased their own seats of the software and pay their own yearly maintenance. I still have my seat of Mastercam and I keep my maintenance current so I can keep up with the lasted updates.

Tomc3700 said:

Hi everyone,

I am a programming contractor for CNC equipment. My contract job has ended for my 2 Mastercam keys. I am looking to lease them for 1 year at a time. I will be charging $2200.00 for the year. It is the cost of my maintenance for each key. I want to keep them current and free myself from paying the maintenance fee each year. The key has Milling, Turning and Mill Turn.

Thank you very much

Tom

Click to expand...

Yep, that's a no-no with Mastercam. The license can only be transferred with the sale of the shop I believe.

Mtndew said:

Yep, that's a no-no with Mastercam. The license can only be transferred with the sale of the shop I believe.

Click to expand...

I don't think that is necessarily a hard and fast rule. I worked for company A that was being "supported" by shop B. When the project died, company A went under, company B bought the license from A. But, maybe they look at sale and closing the same for this purpose?

Back on topic, OP can't do that legally with the hasp keys.

Mike1974 said:

I don't think that is necessarily a hard and fast rule. I worked for company A that was being "supported" by shop B. When the project died, company A went under, company B bought the license from A. But, maybe they look at sale and closing the same for this purpose?

Back on topic, OP can't do that legally with the hasp keys.

Click to expand...

The legal way to do that is for company B to buy Company A. It's also possible for a company to create a subsidiary, make it the owner of the license, and then sell the subsidiary. Bit of a hassle though.

Tomc3700 said:

Hi everyone,

I am a programming contractor for CNC equipment. My contract job has ended for my 2 Mastercam keys. I am looking to lease them for 1 year at a time. I will be charging $2200.00 for the year. It is the cost of my maintenance for each key. I want to keep them current and free myself from paying the maintenance fee each year. The key has Milling, Turning and Mill Turn.

Thank you very much

Tom

Click to expand...

Hope Mastercam never finds out your license key. You will have a very tender butt hole.

barbter said:

I'm sure 100% it is

Click to expand...

mhajicek said:

The legal way to do that is for company B to buy Company A. It's also possible for a company to create a subsidiary, make it the owner of the license, and then sell the subsidiary. Bit of a hassle though.

Click to expand...

All I can say is I know for fact that is what the company I worked for did. This wasn't Bob's machine shop, this was a major electronics manufacturer, think something like Foxcon. They had an entire legal team so I am pretty damn sure there was nothing going on "on the downlow" too much at stake for them, when I worked there a few years back our annual revenue was about 18 billion $. They sure weren't going to screw around over 20k worth of software...

Also, after all this happened we contacted our reseller to get a post for a UMC750 they purchased after, so I know it was all legal, however they made it happen...

Mike1974 said:

All I can say is I know for fact that is what the company I worked for did. This wasn't Bob's machine shop, this was a major electronics manufacturer, think something like Foxcon. They had an entire legal team so I am pretty damn sure there was nothing going on "on the downlow" too much at stake for them, when I worked there a few years back our annual revenue was about 18 billion $. They sure weren't going to screw around over 20k worth of software...

Also, after all this happened we contacted our reseller to get a post for a UMC750 they purchased after, so I know it was all legal, however they made it happen...

Click to expand...

A company that size, a thing as trivial as a single seat software licence would be unlikely to attract the attention of the immediate supervisor, let alone the entire legal department....

Much more likely explaination is that CNC Software only try and enforce the T&C on the easy targets.

Wait, so you mean if you buy Mastercam that you don't actually own it, you just mostly kind of own it? Where's the uproar from the Anti-Fusion crowd. Not actually owning the software is one of their largest gripes.

nateacox said:

Wait, so you mean if you buy Mastercam that you don't actually own it, you just mostly kind of own it? Where's the uproar from the Anti-Fusion crowd. Not actually owning the software is one of their largest gripes.

Click to expand...

Nice try.

The clue is in the word license.

You buy a perpetual license for a piece of software like mastercam. That means you are licensed to use it for as long as you want to - it is owning it for all intents and purposes. Limitations are on selling it and in some cases how you use it.

Fusion, you are licensed to use for as autodesk want you to use it. Same limitations still apply.

nateacox said:

Wait, so you mean if you buy Mastercam that you don't actually own it, you just mostly kind of own it? Where's the uproar from the Anti-Fusion crowd. Not actually owning the software is one of their largest gripes.

Click to expand...

Wrong, cloud and subscription based is the largest gripe. I've never heard of anyone complaining that you don't actually own Fusion. Can you show us? Maybe I'm wrong.

nateacox said:

Wait, so you mean if you buy Mastercam that you don't actually own it, you just mostly kind of own it? Where's the uproar from the Anti-Fusion crowd. Not actually owning the software is one of their largest gripes.

Click to expand...

Autodesk

gregormarwick said:

Nice try.

The clue is in the word license.

You buy a perpetual license for a piece of software like mastercam. That means you are licensed to use it for as long as you want to - it is owning it for all intents and purposes. Limitations are on selling it and in some cases how you use it.

Fusion, you are licensed to use for as autodesk want you to use it. Same limitations still apply.

Click to expand...

+1....

The reason for restricting sales of the software is to make it harder to create pirated copies (i.e. if you can sell it to Joe Blow on the black market, nothing prevents you from making a copy and selling it again).

Granted, it is more difficult to crack copies now with online licensing but software companies still have to protect their IP.

Solidworks is the same way, as well as most higher end CAD/CAM packages AFAIK.

Ask g-coder-05 how many cracked copies of NX are floating around in Asia. It's a real problem for them.

Rewt said:

Hope Mastercam never finds out your license key. You will have a very tender butt hole.

Click to expand...

Probably less tender than just buying it outright.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

Rewt said:

Hope Mastercam never finds out your license key. You will have a very tender butt hole.

Click to expand...

as9100d said:

Probably less tender than just buying it outright.

Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

Click to expand...

I've been told some people are into that kind of thing, I don't judge

Ask g-coder-05 how many cracked copies of NX are floating around in Asia. It's a real problem for them.

Click to expand...

Oh man, our interview room is probably 1500-2000 square feet. I used to interview at least 20 a day classroom style and can honestly say I have never had one interviewee without a cracked NX on a laptop. But then again they need it, Some of the best machinist I ever worked with, yet can't read code for S#!^. I have a written test with a 100MM square 10MM deep that gets profiled with a 10MM cutter, No comp just hand code a square. HA, always the rapid is G54 X0Y0, G43 TXX Z-10MM. Im confident had there never been the advent of CAD/CAM China would still be rubbing sticks together for fire.

The reason for restricting sales of the software is to make it harder to create pirated copies (i.e. if you can sell it to Joe Blow on the black market, nothing prevents you from making a copy and selling it again).

Click to expand...

I'm not sure on that, If anything the flexnet licensing has made it easier to pirate. I think they went that way because it was easy for someone to steal a dongle or take it home and contract program.

The reason I said earlier that the people doing contract programming must pay more is I got busted by Autodesk for travelling around doing contract management with my seat of Featurecam. When it was Delcam, Glenn Mcminn and Christian Biscoe said no problem. Then Autodick bought Delcam and got rid of Glenn and Chris along with sending me a nastygram letting me know my seat was for personal use only. They even went as far as getting a court order for me to list all the companies I did contract work for using my seat. Lill Bastards!!!! If I went into a factory and setup a run with Featurecam and that company purchased a seat I got 20%. Now, Autodesk steals my customer base and cuts me out.

From my point of view, the contract programmers are cutting out potential sales of the software and the CAD/CAM companies don't like it.

gregormarwick said:

A company that size, a thing as trivial as a single seat software licence would be unlikely to attract the attention of the immediate supervisor, let alone the entire legal department....

Much more likely explaination is that CNC Software only try and enforce the T&C on the easy targets.

Click to expand...

I wouldn't be on that. Should have seen the hoops this company jumped through (all of their own making I will add) when buying a couple seats of NX! Also, we went through our (new, different states form original purchase) reseller for a new post after the license was transferred... But I suppose there could have been some shady dealings?

g-coder05 said:

Oh man, our interview room is probably 1500-2000 square feet. I used to interview at least 20 a day classroom style and can honestly say I have never had one interviewee without a cracked NX on a laptop. But then again they need it, Some of the best machinist I ever worked with, yet can't read code for S#!^. I have a written test with a 100MM square 10MM deep that gets profiled with a 10MM cutter, No comp just hand code a square. HA, always the rapid is G54 X0Y0, G43 TXX Z-10MM. Im confident had there never been the advent of CAD/CAM China would still be rubbing sticks together for fire.




I'm not sure on that, If anything the flexnet licensing has made it easier to pirate. I think they went that way because it was easy for someone to steal a dongle or take it home and contract program.

The reason I said earlier that the people doing contract programming must pay more is I got busted by Autodesk for travelling around doing contract management with my seat of Featurecam. When it was Delcam, Glenn Mcminn and Christian Biscoe said no problem. Then Autodick bought Delcam and got rid of Glenn and Chris along with sending me a nastygram letting me know my seat was for personal use only. They even went as far as getting a court order for me to list all the companies I did contract work for using my seat. Lill Bastards!!!! If I went into a factory and setup a run with Featurecam and that company purchased a seat I got 20%. Now, Autodesk steals my customer base and cuts me out.

From my point of view, the contract programmers are cutting out potential sales of the software and the CAD/CAM companies don't like it.

Click to expand...

That makes sense, if one contract programmer programs for 3-4-10 or whatever companies, they only get one seat sold instead of 3-10...