Answer: IDL Virtual Machine (IDL VM) is a special mode of IDL runtime execution where the appearance of the interactively-dismissed IDL VM splash screen is a requirement for being able to run a compiled IDL application in an IDL VM session. Automatic dismissal or disabling of the IDL VM splash screen is not permitted under the IDL End User License Agreement (EULA). Details about the terms of use of the IDL Virtual machine are listed under item #11 in the IDL End User License Agreement (EULA) document. For IDL 8.4, this document is included in with the product installation under the idl84/help/legal subdirectory, for example on Windows: C:\ProgramFiles\Exelis\IDL84\help\legal\eula.html On Linux and Solaris: /usr/local/exelis/idl84/help/legal/eula.html On Mac OS X: /Applications/exelis/idl84/help/legal/eula.html The IDL VM splash screen can be avoided by running an IDL application save file in a licensed IDL Runtime (RT) session. IDL Runtime mode also avoids other limitations of IDL VM sessions: http://www.exelisvis.com/docs/Limitat... If you would like to discuss licensing options for your IDL application, please contact your sales account manager or local distributor: http://www.exelisvis.com/ContactUs.aspx

This is a great pity. We use IDL as part of cron jobs to run automated data processing jobs. The access to our license server is dependent on the availability of access to the network, an extra link in the reliability chain. Using the VM would have provided a significant improvement in the reliability of the processing.

Such arcane policies provide a strong shove in the direction of a port of the processing to python.