> Matt Sergeant <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> > Has anyone delivered a commericial mod_perl application before? If so, how
> > do you handle demo versions, preferably with expiration dates? One thought
> > is to simply xor encrypt some of the modules when the user downloads it,
> > mail him a key, and use the Filter module to decrypt at runtime using his
> > key (retrieved from STDIN at server startup time).
Embed a Perl code into a C wrapper or XS glued C code inside perl. Make
sure that it'd be really hard to emulate and reverse engineer the
functionality hidden in this block. Once you thought about it, your
question is non different from all compiled com apps.
I can think of C code calling the rest of the Perl. All the protection
mechanism to exist in C code, and a few tricks to make the Perl code
"unusable" to some degree without this C code. See 'Advanced Perl
Programming' Ch.19 "Embedding Perl" and perlembed manpage.
The phylosophical, ethical and financial discussion of this issue:
Every determined user will be able to crack it, but people with money in
hand and companies will be honest and buy your final product if they want
it. Protect your demo version with proper license and not walls.
People without money, won't buy it anyway, so you cannot reach their
wallets no matter what you do. So give them the "free" version, by leaving
an opportunity to reverse engineer the code. Here is the example showed by
our beloved neighbour M$.
M$ has helped to pirate Windoze dists in Russia, understanding that they
cannot ask for $100+ from people whose monthly salary is less than $30. It
didn't cost them a cent, yet they had a much bigger user base. You can buy
a CD with Windoze and all M$ products for as little as $5 on the black
market. Another aspect of M$ sanity is that in a long run, some of the
Russians became rich and could afford to buy the official version of the
product.
But I'm sure they won't because of the history, 99% of the sw in Russia is
pirated. 95% in Israel (In Israel when you buy a PC, you get Windoze and
office preinstalled for free... it's being changed now though.) These are
the places called "one disk/per country". Someone is stupid enough to buy
the original version, the moment this happens everybody else have it for
free.
Back to mod_perl :)
_______________________________________________________________________
Stas Bekman mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.stason.org/stas
Perl,CGI,Apache,Linux,Web,Java,PC http://www.stason.org/stas/TULARC
perl.apache.org modperl.sourcegarden.org perlmonth.com perl.org
single o-> + single o-+ = singlesheaven http://www.singlesheaven.com
