I have tried various version all the way up to 11 build 503 and I just simply can't get past the splash screen.

It shows that there are 3 non-commercial licenses installed, Master, render, and Escape.

I have a Mac Pro 8 core 2.93 system with ATI Radeon 4870 video card.

Software was installed as admin on the box, but get the same effect whether logged in as admin or standard user.

Have a look at various posts in these forums on slow license acquisition and configuring your DNS server. I betcah that's the issue. If you can open the License Administrator and you get three green spheres, then I bet it's a super long DNS lookup.

Many ISP's these days have sucky DNS and our licensing relies on DNS look-ups when aquiring licenses.

Many times all it takes is to enable DNS cache on your router to get things going.

It could be something else as well. The more details the better. Search for this condition as well on these forums.

I don't see three spheres in the Server Information tab, just three white boxes.

I tried on two different Mac Pros here one is an 8 core Nehalem box with ATI Radeon 4870 the other is an 8 core Xeon box with Nvidia 8800 GT

Also is it normal for the server host to be the bonjour name for the Mac, such as name.local?

Licensing mode is local licensing

Yes the .local suffix is common for macs. Three whyte spheres is not good

If you haven't already, open the licensing tools and from the main menu choose File > Change License Server. Then pres the “Local Server” button to ensure that you are using the correct license server host name. Once in a while a mac will spontaneously change the last suffix. I'm at .local3 now.

Please send your licensing issue in to support.

Ended up being a licensing issue, switched to local license and all is good.