Software licensing for spare processors

A system is provided for controlling a right to use a computational component, comprising (a) a backup computational component 102 associated with a primary computational component 150, wherein when the primary computational component is in an operational mode the backup computational component is in a standby mode; (b) an activation agent 154 operable to determine when the primary computational component is no longer in the operational mode; (c) a timer 126 associated with the backup computational component; and (d) a mode setting agent 124 operable to permit the backup computational component to change to the operational mode when the value of the license error timer is not zero and to not permit the backup computational component to change to the operational mode when the value of the license error timer is zero.