Activating Educational Licenses

This licensing guide applies to Educational Site Licenses for Universities, Colleges and Schools

Educational Site Licenses can be activated similarly to individual licenses if you choose to, however they support additional licensing options for easier deployment.

Important Licensing Information

It is not allowed to make the License Keys available to students for use directly on their home machines.
License keys need to be hosted on School Hardware. Students need to either remote into School machines or be given access to license keys via Network Mounts + Environment Variables

STUDENT LICENSES
If keeping the license key under school control is not possible, we do offer dedicated 1 year student licenses that can be locally installed on the student's machine. We charge a processing fee of 7 EUR per Student License. For more information see here

Things you need

Mari Extension Pack will run for a limited time without activation, until you have to license it to continue using it.
You will need the following to activate it:

Internet Connection is required for activation, unless you had asked for a floating license server version. Sporadically after successful activation Extension Pack will re-check the License, requiring Internet Connectivity again 

Creating a License File

Choose one of the options below to create a license file you can deploy

Creating a License File from within Mari

1. ​Install Extension Pack locally or in a writable location
2. Start Mari and go to the Help Menu
3. Choose the Extension Pack Licensing Option from the Help Menu

4. Enter the email and license key in the Licensing Dialog.
  The license key can be found in the original purchase email

5. If the licensing information was entered correctly, a dialog will allow you to save a copy of the license file

6. Save the license file as lc.ep

Creating a License File using a Text Editor

Extension Pack License files are simple text files named lc.ep

You can create a license file with your details by copy pasting the below into a text file and naming it lc.ep and adding in your Email and License Key. Ensure the " characters and brackets remain where they are.




Beware of illegal, hidden "new line" characters

Some Text Editors (e.g. Pluma on Linux, Wordpad etc.) add hidden characters to files indicating a "new line". These characters can invalidate the license file.
If you choose to create your own license file, it is recommended to use one of the basic editors below or use a proper IDE such as PyCharm, VSCode etc. 

{
    "MariExtensionPack2027": {
        "e": "REPLACE WITH EP2027 PURCHASE EMAIL",
        "k": "REPLACE WITH EP2027 LICENSE KEY"
    }
}

If you are running older Mari Extension Pack Versions alongside this version, add separate license information per version into the file. Ensure the " characters and brackets remain where they are and the different main items ("MariExtensionPack2027", "MariExtensionPack6", "MariExtensionPack5") are comma separated. 

{
 "MariExtensionPack2027": {
        "e": "REPLACE WITH EP2027 PURCHASE EMAIL",
        "k": "REPLACE WITH EP2027 LICENSE KEY"
    },
    "MariExtensionPack6": {
        "e": "REPLACE WITH EP6 PURCHASE EMAIL",
        "k": "REPLACE WITH EP6 LICENSE KEY"
    },
    "MariExtensionPack5": {
        "e": "REPLACE WITH EP5 PURCHASE EMAIL",
        "k": "REPLACE WITH EP5 LICENSE KEY"
    }
}

The License files are standard .json files. You can test if the syntax is correct using an online linter like  jsonlint.com

Deploying the License File for students

One time install Licensing on School Machines

If you activated Mari Extension Pack through its User Interface ("Creating a License File from within Mari"), and your Extension Pack Install Directory was writable at the time of activation , then your copy of Extension Pack is fully licensed already.

It is not allowed to distribute the licensed Extension Pack Installation to students for use on their home machines. The licensed copy of Extension Pack needs to remain on hardware owned by the School

  • Simply deploy it to user machines; or
  • put it on a server location that is read via the MARI_SCRIPT_PATH Env var or copy the install to school machines

Use the MARI_SCRIPT_PATH Environment Variable to define Locations where Mari looks for Plugins and Scripts

Environment Variable Licensing (suitable for student home machines)

If students need to use Extension Pack on their home machines, the following setup is recommended

  1. Create a License file ("lc.ep") using one of the ways described above and make it available on a network share that students can mount on their home machines (via VPN). 

  2. Students on their home machine point the environment Variable below to the license file on the network share
  • MARI_EP_LICENSE_FILE_PATH