Efficient License Management Based on Smart Contracts Between Software Vendors and Service Providers

Abstract

In a fully interconnected world where even network-related services are becoming more dependent on software, the management of license agreements is critical for the business of any software vendor and communication provider. Building, managing and protecting the infrastructure to handle software license validation and scalability for the provider and, on the other hand, assessing the correct use of the software licenses for the vendor can become an expensive part of the relationship costs. We propose a novel approach for decentralized software licensing that leverages blockchain and smart contracts as fundamental enabling technologies. Our proposal guarantees a secure and inexpensive system with no central point of failure that can regulate the relations among untrusted parties. We describe the main design choices and present a prototype experimentation that demonstrates the benefits of the proposal in the context of virtualized network infrastructures.