| 摘要 |
A non-invasive metering system enables on-demand, metered usage licensing of software applications. A packaging module generates a secure application package for an original, unmodified application authored by a software publisher. The software publisher need not directly modify the code of the original application. Rather, the packaging module includes, within the secure application package but separate from the code of the application itself, a shell application that controls runtime aspects of the application, such as metering of the application. The secure application package is made available to users wishing to use the application on a metered basis. When users use the secure application package, a specialized loader process extracts from the secure application package executable code for the application and for the shell application, and executes the shell application, which in turn authenticates the user and executes the application the using the executable code extracted from the secure application package. |
