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ECLAIR is proprietary, protected commercial software owned by BUGSENG. In order to use ECLAIR you need a license from BUGSENG. However, as the word license is ambiguous, we will distinguish:

  • License agreement:

    The contract allowing a customer to use ECLAIR with certain limitations and upon certain conditions.
  • License model:
    A combination of parameters that defines how a customer can use ECLAIR. This combination is reflected into the license agreement.
  • License-enforcing mechanism:
    A combination of technical measures that assist in checking compliance with the license agreement.
  • License key:
    A software or hardware token that entitles a user or a machine to the use a selected ECLAIR features.

Please make sure you appreciate the distinction between these concepts. For instance, the fact that the license-enforcing mechanism does not block a certain use of ECLAIR does not imply that such use complies to the license agreement.

What are the parameters defining ECLAIR license models?

They are the following:

Userbase

The criterion defining the group of users that are allowed to use ECLAIR. There are the following possibilities:

  • Per-seat: The userbase is defined by the number of individually-named users who can use any component of ECLAIR, possibly adjusted to take into account the requirements of Jenkins/GitLab/GitHub controllers/instances and agents/runners (see “What are the ECLAIR licensing requirements for Jenkins, GitHub and GitLab?” for more details). BUGSENG does not require customers to communicate the identities of users, except for the users that use BUGSENG support services (see “Maintenance” for more details).
  • Per-project: The userbase is defined indirectly as the set of all users working on a specific project for a
    specific purpose.

Term

The criterion defining for how long the userbase is allowed to use ECLAIR. There are the following possibilities:

  • Indefinite-term: Use is allowed for an indefinite amount of time as long as the customer complies to the license agreement. Indefinite-term licenses include one year of support services including updates;
    such services can be optionally bought at a predetermined price for subsequent years (see “Maintenance” for more details).
  • Subscription-based: Use is allowed for one-year time periods. Subscription-based licenses are automatically renewed every year unless they are terminated by one of the parties; they always include support
    services with updates.

Coverage

An attribute describing the relationship between the licensed userbase and the customer potential userbase. There are the following possibilities:

SiteSite

The userbase comprises all software developers and all software quality assurance people at a given site, independently from whether, at any given time, they use ECLAIR directly, they use ECLAIR reports, or they do not use ECLAIR and its outputs at all. Here “site” has to be interpreted in its broadest sense: a clearly-delimited and official company department, division or group may qualify as a site. External consultants temporarily working on software development or quality assurance have to be counted.

MultisiteMultisite

Same as above, set of sites, but for a given provided there IS for a single point of contact all contractual actions, including releases, updates, technical support and payments.

EnterpriseEnterprise

Like multisite when the site or sites covered are the totality of customer sites.

PartialPartial

All other cases.

What are the advantages of site/multisite/enterprise licenses?

Such licenses allow the generation of detailed outputs in all supported format for their distribution within the site/multisite/enterprise. For instance, HTML outputs can be published on the internal LAN and consulted by anyone having access to the LAN using any supported web browser.

In contrast, with a partial license detailed outputs can only be consulted using the ECLAIR analysis results browser. Rich outputs, summary outputs and metric outputs can be generated in any supported format with any license (see “What are the main categories for ECLAIR outputs?” for an explanation of the different output categories).

The main advantage of site/multisite/enterprise licenses is that each human user can obtain, at the customer’s discretion, any kind of license key, thereby relaxing the constraints specified in “Who chooses the license enforcing mechanism(s)?”

This is decided on a case-by-case basis, but typically the project should be not-for-profit (independently from the nature of the organizations involved in the project).

There are only two factors:

  1. The cardinality of the userbase for which the license is bought at once. BUGSENG operates a volume discount policy: the higher is the number of users, the lower is the cost per user.
  2. The licensed features: the price increases as the number of licensed features increases. Some features are bundled with others with no price increase: for instance, the ECLAIR B package is bundled with all MISRA packages with no price increase, even though the price for ECLAIR B, when bought in isolation, is not zero.

Exactly: an enterprise license and a partial license will cost the same if the licensed features are the same and the userbases have the same cardinality.

What are the available license-enforcing mechanisms?

There are two license-enforcing mechanisms. What is common to them is that running ECLAIR requires a key. A key can be:

Node-locked

The key is fully implemented in software and is locked to a specific machine. Remote access is not allowed. Transferring a node-locked key, a.k.a. rehosting, is possible with BUGSENG intervention. One node-locked key serves one user.

Detachable

The key is fully implemented in software and can be detached by a (possibly remote) license server. For partial coverage licenses, one detachable key serves three users in the same region (APAC, EMEA, AMER).

The above distinction concerns the technology used to implement keys. An orthogonal distinction is the one between ordinary keys and analysis node keys: the latter are only meaningful in the context of ECLAIR deployment in continuous integration system (see “What are the ECLAIR licensing requirements for Jenkins, GitHub and GitLab?”).

Node locked Keys

Node-locked Keys

  • Fully implemented in software
  • Remote access is not allowed
  • Locked to a specific machine
Detachable Keys

Detachable Keys

  • Fully implemented in software
  • Remote access enables flexible work
  • Auto-returns to server after set detach time

What are the pros and cons of node-locked keys?

Pros:

  1. They are fast: all communications occur within the same machine.
    2. The user can use ECLAIR on that machine at any time.

Cons:

  1. The user can only use ECLAIR on that machine.
    2. If the machine crashes badly, the node-locked key can be lost. It is thus recommended to use hard disk drives supporting SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis and Reporting Technology) and to rehost the key at the first sign of disk issues.

Detachable keys can be detached from a pool of available keys for a specified time (up to 9999 days). Once detached, the license is automatically installed on the individual user’s local machine: no further connection with the license manager is required. This can easily support commuters or people on external duties where connection with the license managers is cumbersome or inadvisable. Detaching a license key requires a very small amount of network traffic (10–15 kB) and just a few seconds.

The validity of a detached license key can be extended before expiration. The detached license key can also be returned earlier to the license server. If not explicitly returned, the license key expires on the local machine after the specified time has passed, and automatically re-materializes on the license server.

Pros:

  1. They can be easily shared among users, even if they are geographically distributed in the same region (APAC, EMEA, AMER).
  2. They are fast: after detach, all communications occur within the same machine.
  3. A crash of the recipient machine does not cause loss of the key.

Cons:

  1. If the machine hosting the license server crashes badly, the entire pool can be lost. Not a problem if the server is properly maintained and monitored.

The factors in the decision about the number and size of each pool of detachable license keys are the following:

  • A detachable license key belongs to one and only one pool and cannot be transferred to a different pool.
  • A pool can contain any number of license keys: such a number can be increased at any time, but it cannot be decreased.
  • A pool can be rehosted, along with all the detachable license keys it contains, to a new server.
  • A machine used as license server can host any number of pools.
  • Any machine that is suitable for running ECLAIR may act as a license server, but only reliable machines should be chosen as license servers.

Having more than one pool hosted by the same license server is only advisable as a temporary measure, e.g., because we know some pools will have to be rehosted to a different machine. At the outset, it is best to plan for multiple pools only in the case of multiple license servers, each server hosting one pool.

Multiple license servers allow for the mitigation of failures: if one license server is momentarily offline, another license server may be available. This should not be overdone: if you spread your detachable keys across too many servers, users may incur overhead in finding a server with an available detachable license key. A rule of thumb you can follow for each LAN is the following: if a very reliable and continuously monitored server (e.g., with a RAID disk array and S.M.A.R.T. services) is available, host a pool containing all license keys on that server. Otherwise choose two reasonably reliable machines and divide your detachable license keys into two pools, one for each license server.

Of course, if you have multiple LANs and/or multiple regions, you should first divide your detachable keys by region, then by LAN, then apply the above reasoning for each individual LAN.

Sure, you need not lose them: there are hard costs associated with them, so they cannot be replaced for free and replacement requires paperwork as well.

For node-locked keys and pools of detachable keys:

  1. Never dispose or reformat or change disks of a machine unless you have already rehosted all node-locked keys and pools of detachable keys hosted by that machine.
  2. Especially for large pools of detachable keys, use RAID disk arrays and S.M.A.R.T. services (in general, such large pools should be hosted by machines continuously monitored by competent IT personnel).

Each Jenkins controller and GitHub/GitLab instance requires an ordinary key: this key may be shared with one user working locally on the same machine.

Each Jenkins agent and GitHub/GitLab runner requires a key, which may be an ordinary one or an analysis node key. In the former case, the ordinary key may be shared with one user working locally on the same machine and/or with a Jenkins/GitHub/GitLab controller/instance.

As the keys for Jenkins/GitHub/GitLab controllers/instances and agents/runners are treated as increments to the userbase, the same volume discount policy applies.
Note that, when the Jenkins controller or GitHub/GitLab instance is equipped with a site/multisite/enterprise license key, users can browse the detailed outputs using any of the supported web browsers even from computers without ECLAIR installed. In contrast, when the Jenkins/GitHub/GitLab controller/instance is equipped with a partial license key, users can only browse the detailed outputs from machines with an ECLAIR installation and a valid license key. This restriction for partial coverage licenses only concerns detailed outputs: all Jenkins users can freely browse the Jenkins’ pages showing the number of ECLAIR reports, their evolution over time, and so on.

The customer does, taking into account that:

  • one node-locked key corresponds to one user;
  • one detachable key corresponds to three users in the same region (APAC, EMEA, AMER) for partial coverage licenses, but only to one user for site/multisite/enterprise licenses.

Suppose the customer wants to serve 8 users with a partial coverage license; this requirement can be satisfied in all ways indicated in the following table:

Detachable Node-locked
0 8
1 5
2 2

 

A customer with a site/multisite/enterprise license can serve all its users with any combination of keys, with at most one key per user.

ECLAIR SaaS: Verification as a Service

For teams looking to reduce infrastructure complexity while maintaining full compliance with safety and security standards, ECLAIR is also available as a fully managed SaaS solution.

With ECLAIR SaaS, there is no need to install or maintain analysis servers, your team can focus on writing and verifying high-integrity code. All analyses are executed in the cloud, using a secure, private infrastructure managed directly by BUGSENG. Your proprietary source code never leaves your premises: only preprocessed, non-compilable representations are uploaded for analysis, preserving confidentiality and IP protection.

Key Benefits of ECLAIR SaaS

  • No local installation required: Save time and avoid dependency issues

  • Full compliance with the same functional safety standards supported by on-premise deployments

  • Minimal setup: Analysis runs automatically after a quick initial configuration

  • Safe by design: Code privacy is preserved; no source or binaries are ever uploaded

  • Frequent updates: Access to the latest features, improvements, and rule sets: always up to date.

ECLAIR SaaS is an ideal choice for organizations seeking:

  • Streamlined CI/CD integration without maintaining local analysis infrastructure

  • A scalable verification setup across distributed teams or short-term projects

  • Full traceability and standards compliance with zero compromise on security

Want to learn more? Contact us to schedule a demo or discuss the SaaS deployment model that fits your needs.