A license management system for software which drives a single computer or a
plurality
of computers includes: an application program for requesting a decision of the
number of license which it needs to drive itself and for receiving issuance of
the license; a number of license decision unit for determining the necessary number
of licenses in accordance with the request from the application program; and a
license management unit for issuing the number of licenses which was determined
by the number of license decision unit. Further, the number of license decision
unit has means for determining the number of licenses based on the following multi-nominal
function, LK=f (x1, x2, . . . , xn), where, LK is the number of licenses,
and x1 to xn are parameters which are needed to determine the number of
licenses. According to the present invention, it is possible to provide a license
management system enabling issuance of a license in which the sales strategy of
a software maker was considered.