At the heart of any license management system is a representation
of the License Agreement (LA) that itemises the
consensus of terms between the vendor and customer, terms
that describe the duties and constraints of both parties. An
example would be the ’time-based license’ where one of the terms is that the use of the service is only available for a certain
time; usually with a cut-off date, it is permissive in that
it allows the customer to use the software, but constraining
in that it can only be used until the given date. Another example
would be a ’consumptive license’ that allows for a
defined number of uses of the service. Every license contains
terms with their individual metrics that quantify and
qualify an aspect of the service. The domain ontology for a
License Agreement is illustrated in Figure 5