Exactly. We had one of those at my last company. Distributor stole *a little* from us by selling off-book features that were not key controlled. Same distributor stole over $1MM from a small software company where that might have been a 20-30% increase in their sales. He was able to do it because they gave him the key generator. Story would have been no different if the software had had no keys.
Charles -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Jaffe Sent: Wednesday, June 19, 2013 11:14 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Auditing vendor source code On 6/19/2013 9:17 AM, Phil Smith wrote: > So this is a slightly different topic, but it's been my experience > that CPUIDs ("keys", whatever you want to call 'em) are more trouble > than they're worth. We once had a situation in which a foreign distributor had numerous "off-book" customers using our software illegally. It's not clear whether the customers actually realized they were pirating the software. In any case, the implementation of so-called "keys" put a stop to all subsequent attempts at deliberate or accidental misuse (as far as we know, of course)... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
