There are ways to limit that, however.  For one just simply DONT have your
program in fully functional mode on the market as shareware.  Have a very
limited program on the market as shareware.  It makes *paying* more
lucrative, if your product is okay.  Don't bother with keygens.  Just make
people have to order it directly from your web site.

next, everyone do your part in scaring people who deal in palm software
piracy.  When you see pirated palm software.. scare the guy hosting it.  Be
creative.  ;p

And finally, the most lucrative part of selling palm software is not
offering it the general public, but making software for a particular sector
of a particular field (or just something useful for a particular field)...
and such places will pirate your $50 app much much less.

You could also try to set up something on the installation so that the
program can't be beamed from palm to palm, and  don't leave a copy of the
PRC on the desktop during installation.  Once it's on the palm get rid of
it, and if they re-need it they come back to your web site and you verify
them through real purchase records as a buyer =D

-----Original Message-----
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]]On Behalf Of Joe
Programmer
Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2001 4:18 PM
To: Palm Developer Forum
Subject: Re: Piracy


--- Max Bian wrote:
> I found it will be very difficult to deal with
> cracker who modify the application to make it
> full-functional.  So I decided the only hole
> I can plug is to make the key-gen very
> difficult if not possible.  To do that,
> asymetrical-key encryption (eg. RSA) is a way
> to go.

But at some point, your app is going to have to do

  if (validKeyEntered)
     // do program
  else
     // refuse to do program

and all the crackers have to do is insert a NOP in
place of the if.

You can read all about why it's a waste of time to try
to make your app uncrackable in a paper Aaron Ardiri
wrote.  Search the archives -- a link to it is in
there somewhere.


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