I was trying to run Stata and get the message:
The license-tracking file
   /usr/local/stata9/.license/stata.sim
could not be opened for writing

This file is actually /software/stata/9/.license/stata.sim and is owned by
root with no write permissions for anyone else.

From the stata web site, it looks like this file needs to readable and
writable by all stata users and that this is done as part of the install?  I
couldn't find any info about what user should actually own the file.

Dave