Joe is entirely correct. There is absolutely nothing you can do that will provide serious protection against determined individuals. The better your application is (read: more demand for your app) the faster and more likely that your app will be 'cracked'. ie, unpopular apps that no one wants may not be cracked at all.
The bottom line is that you'll have an 'if' statement or equiv that says, "is this registration code that was entered correct?". and if so, you'll jump to some segment of code that starts the normal operation of the software, with another pathway that leads to the failure message and exit of the software. Replacing the 'if' instructions within the machine code with a "jump to the address of the success code" is often pretty easy for those skilled in reading assembly. http://palmdemon.cjb.net/ is a link to a palm disassembler, along with links to 68328 manuals, etc/ Like Joe mentioned, you can do things that will prevent the average joe(no pun intended) from buying the software and then redistributing to his friends. If I had to guess, however, most people have a "friend or two" max that own palms. This probably isn't going to destroy your business model. Be careful with locking things to particular devices with flash id's, what happens when your customer buys a newer palm? Support issues? I think things like making a good product, charging a fair price, providing good support, providing good documentation do more in the long run than some standard serial number scheme. YMMV, Keith M ----- Original Message ----- From: "Joe Malone" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Palm Developer Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Wednesday, September 11, 2002 8:20 AM Subject: Re: Application copy protection > --- Alexandre Kazantsev <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > The issue is reasonable and reliable copy protection > > approach or trick. Our application is to be protected from > > illegal copying, and I am looking for a programming method > > to secure our copyright. > > Any copy prevention you create can be bypassed. The only thing that > makes sense is to do something that discourages casual copying. A > simple example: issue a registration code that is based on the HotSync > user name (or to the Flash serial number for flashable units). Your > app can check the registration code and refuse to run if it doesn't > match the code for the HotSync name on the device. > > See http://oasis.palm.com/dev/kb/papers/2169.cfm > > > __________________________________________________ > Yahoo! - We Remember > 9-11: A tribute to the more than 3,000 lives lost > http://dir.remember.yahoo.com/tribute > > -- > For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/ -- For information on using the Palm Developer Forums, or to unsubscribe, please see http://www.palmos.com/dev/support/forums/
