On Jul 20, 2006, at 1:38 AM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I know its frowned upon, but it doesn't take much time to check
does it? I am
thinking in the case of a school or government office, they always
have
internet access unless they have serious problem. I think this
might be more common
the future too.
Sorry, I got long winded on the topic again...
The world of software licensing is a dirty place. On one side you
have the pirates and on the side you have the lawyers... with us
normal users stuck in between.
Internet activation of any type is frowned upon by the users. They
are afraid that if they switch computers that it will be a difficult
process to install *their* software (that they "own") on their new
computer. Usually to help this process, there is a deactivation
process as well, but also many software companies have a limit of two
or three computers which can have the software installed and
activated to help reduce legitimate installations like this.
Software companies like Quark, Adobe and Microsoft can get away with
activation because they are giants in the industry and write software
that is necessary for users to purchase no matter how much the users
dislike the licensing terms. And even the giants cannot prevent
their authorization codes from being cracked, and the software
continues to be distributed by pirates.
I have *never* heard of daily activation, and I have a feeling that
it would not be well received. Unless you are already established
with a niche application (so they have to accept it), it will be
difficult to get your existing users to upgrade and even more
difficult to get new users to purchase your application (or ask for a
refund after they find out about the activation).
They only place that I have heard of with monthly activation is with
the independent game industry. I think that legitimate users can
accept a monthly activation as long as it is done well and provides a
grace period like I mentioned before.
There is one type of activation which provides "per launch"
activation, and that is with "site license servers". An application
such as QuarkXPress checks for the site license server (separate
computer and server application running as a service) on the local
network (LAN) and checks out a license. When the maximum number of
licenses have been checked out, additional launches are rejected. If
the application cannot connect to the server, then there is a grace
period of 1 to 5 days which can only be reset by connecting to the
license server and checking out a valid license. If the grace period
is exceeded, then the application goes into feature-limited demo
mode. For users that know that they will be away from the office for
more than the grace period time, many site license servers will allow
you to "Checkout" a license for X number of days. The maximum number
of days being set by the IT director or whoever sets IT policy. If
the company purchases a 10 user site license, and two people check
out a license, there will only be 8 available licenses for on-site
activation until either the time period expires or the license is
checked back in.
If you are targeting Universities or Companies, a site license server
application may be the way to go. A server app like this is possible
to create in REALbasic, but would be best if you have the REALbasic
Professional version so that you can create it as a "service" which
would automatically launch when the computer is rebooted, and does
not require a user to be logged in. The concept for the server app
is almost the same as internet activation, except that you would be
using TCP or UDP sockets instead of the HTTPSocket.
_______________________________________________
Unsubscribe or switch delivery mode:
<http://www.realsoftware.com/support/listmanager/>
Search the archives of this list here:
<http://support.realsoftware.com/listarchives/lists.html>
