Hi Bob,
this theme was covered many times.
There is a very good paper from Aaron Ardiri on this subject - I don't know
the reference by heart, but it should be easy to find.
There are plenty of other discussions on this topic around and all kinds of
argument were covered.
Basically we all exist in this imperfect world and most of us stopped
looking for an "unbreakable code" because given the existing possibilities
nothing like this exist. Plus such trials increase the risk of getting angry
the honest people.
What proved to be working is relying on sincere users. They constitute not a
negligible quantity. The others would not be paying probably anyway.
Finally, when a program achieves the state that it is being cracked, then it
must already be a popular program. And illegal users - if nothing else - at
least contribute to the growth of the popularity.
So it is...
Best regards,
Jan Slodicka
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bob Kodadek" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: "Palm Developer Forum" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Sent: Monday, November 22, 2004 9:18 PM
Subject: Software Copy Protection - One More Time!
> Well, I have searched this forum, the PalmOne site, Appforge, and
everything I can find on the internet, and no one has ever found a solution
to protecting software apps on Palm devices. I've seen lots of explanations
and whimsy, but nothing real. Simply put, if there is no ROM serial number,
or unique (Read Only) ID stored in the hardware, then you are screwed and
that's all there is to it. When copy protection is an absolute necessity
for anyone developing programs in today's world, why doesn't Palm include a
Flash Eprom or ROM chip with a unique serial number? Who wants to waste
their time developing products for a device when the manufacturer doesn't
care what happens to the developer.
>
> Now, anyone in the world can develop some scheme based on the HotSync user
name, but that is completely worthless. It's not a matter of just a few
people getting your program for free. Anyone can get one copy of your
program with a working password and then upload the contents of the BackUp
folder from the Palm Desktop for that username, onto the internet and the
whole world has your program the next day. All they need to do is supply
that user name. They could buy Palms on Ebay for $20.00 and resell the
entire Palm with your program and that user name. And, they could sell
hundreds and hundreds of them and no one would be the wiser. Don't you
think that your application is worth putting onto a $20.00 Palm just to have
it? I'll bet you do! The developer is the one who suffers here. No one
else. It doesn't hurt the manufacturer of the Palm device one bit. In
fact, it helps to sell more Palms because there is plentiful, un-protected
software available for free.
>
> There are no dongles available for a Palm device, no copy proctection
schemes that work. You cannot hide anything in the programs's Preferences,
because a HotSync creates a database file of those preferences and stores it
the the BackUp folder!
>
> I've been programming for about 20 years now, started in machine language
and have seen and done it all since then. I began working with PalmOS last
year and feel that, unless you are doing it for a hobby, it is a wasted
effort. You can have all the hash routines and randomly generated serial
numbers that you want. When you can simply HotSync the files located in the
BackUp folder over to another machine with the same user name, nothing that
you do can work.
>
> So, my real question is, why isn't everyone demanding that the hardware
manufacturer incorporates a unique serial number, or unique ID of some type,
that is Read Only on every device? One extra 25 cent chip on every device,
that's all it would take.
>
> Bob
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