On Jul 20, 2006, at 6:09 PM, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
I have *never* heard of daily activation, and I have a feeling
that it would not be well received.
But yahoo, hotmail, ebay, amazon require you to sign in, in many cases
automatically each time you access your account. Its not so much
activation as its
verification of an account in good standing.
That is a very different situation. Those are web "applications"
designed to be accessed by any computer in the world with pretty much
any web browser.
Instead of having them authenticate certain CPUs (as Native
Instruments and Waves do in the music software world), what about
just surreptiously maintaining a database of all logins on the
server which keeps track of their mac address or isp address. If
the number of different addresses for a user exceeds 5 in any given
month, then a "piracy alert" would be flagged internally. It
doesn't do anything, but alerts you the developer to the
possibility that someone is sharing their license. If this never
happens, then no need to do much about it, and if it does happen,
you do things like give them a new code and deactivate the old one.
IP addresses are *not* a good indicator. Most home users have DSL
with dynamic IP address which could change after 20 minutes of no
network/internet activity. Then there are business people who travel
a lot and are under a different IP address nearly every week. Also
there are a few people who access the internet through their
Bluetooth phones. Finally there are those who might bring their
computers back and forth with them from work, home and friends
houses... all with different IP addresses.
What I was talking about with a Month license is that the month would
be validated in the license file or in another file. A single serial
number does not need to access your server twice a month, and if it
does then you have a potential piracy issue.
In reality, it all depends on the application. If you have a
internet application (such as a stock ticker or an online game) then
daily activation is no big deal and the user would probably never
know that it is going on. But how would you feel if you *had* to be
connected to the internet whenever you wanted to use Microsoft
Office? If you have or have used a notebook, you could understand
how frustrating that would be.
It might be the case that all of get used to paying for
subscriptions, maintence, and more stringent copy protection. For
an example, look at us with RB, most of us have bought into the
"rapid release model" with little complaint - even though bug fixes
do not occur until the next quarter at the soonest by which time
your license may have expired so you are in essence paying for bug
fixes). We have all just accepted this proposal and hope for the
best with each release.
That is a different situation... I am able to use REALbasic without
an internet connection. Obviously I need to download it first, and
there might be an activation required the first time you launch the
new version, but once it is verified REALbasic no longer requires an
active internet connection.
REALbasic is far more like a Maintenance program than a
Subscription. For example, my software comes with an 18 month
guaranteed maintenance from the date of purchase. If I come out with
a 2.0 version within 17 months after a user purchases the software,
then they get the upgrade for free, but if the release is 19 months
afterwards, then they would need to pay for the upgrade. A
subscription would disable the software or functionality after the
subscription ends... an example would be the Everquest or World of
Warcraft online games which require a valid subscription in order to
play.
If you are targeting Universities or Companies, a site license
server application may be the way to go.
I do indeed have the professional version but I am an ignoramus
regarding networks. Can you point me in a direction to learn about
this? I assume the application sends and recieve messages via one
of these protocals, and there must be some event change/action
event that fires when a message comes in? So I would have two
different apps - one of the server and one of the served computer
which are set up to talk to each other. Is this right?
I have several plans for apps with TCP/UDP sockets but so far I
haven't had the time or the need to work on those projects. For now,
all my experience is with HTTPSocket. However, I know that the
networking guru for REALbasic is Aaron Ballman and he has a number of
articles in REALbasic Developer (Sockets 101, 201 and 301), a few on
his blog and at least on significant Read Me on his website:
www.aaronballman.com. But I think that nearly all of the information
would be on the RBLibrary website, would be the most comprehensive
and most up-to-date:
http://www.rblibrary.com/index.php
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