Licenses when dual booting

Support License
#1

Hi,

I have a (personal) laptop running Windows 11, with a lifetime Duplicacy GUI license attached. I’m now considering to also install Linux on this laptop, in a dual boot configuration, but it just hit me that Duplicacy might not play well in such a setup.

Would I need a separate Duplicacy GUI license if I want to run Duplicacy Web Edition in a second OS on the same hardware, or will one license work for both OSes? The hostname would be the same, although all uppercase in Windows and all lowercase in Linux. Both installations would be actively used, but never simultaneously.

I have looked around, but haven’t found anything giving a clear answer to this in the available documentation or the forum, making this sort of a gray area. The “Buy” page mentions that the license is valid for a “single computer”, but I can also fully see two entirely separate installations on the same physical hardware being considered as separate “computers”, at least implementation-wise and/or in legal terms.

#2

I believe the license is tied to a combination of a machine-id and a hostname. So it seems just having hostname the same won’t be enough - as Windows and Linux are unlikely to come up with the same Machine ID. (I seriously still don’t understand why is hostname a factor in license in the first place)

But you can always try…

I don’t think there are licensing limitations in doing what you describe — because you can keep re-activating duplicacy after each boot on then-current OS, and there are no limits on a number of reactivations, afaik. It’s just annoying to need to have to do that. But I’m not a lawyer - let’s wait for @gchen to clarify the terms.

#3

That is correct. Windows and Linux on the same machine won’t give you the same machine-id, so you’ll have to manually activate the license again after rebooting to a different OS.