On Nov 17, 4:17 pm, Ray <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > What would you suggest to them as a license model?
1. Generate a license key based on details that I provide when I purchase the license, including full name, company and email address. Make sure that you can derive these details from the key. 2. Provide your paying customers, with the key, and ask them to enter these same details, including the key (i.e. string) to activate the product. Once activated, it remains activated. 3. At runtime, check the key against the other provided license details before running. If they don't match, don't run. Display the username and email address in the About dialog, and the splash screen when the app starts up. (Make it obvious who "owns" the license to help people self-enforce). 4. Don't rely on any "call home" to check the license. This inconveniences legitimate users and does absolutely nothing useful to prevent the license mechanism from being hacked. This won't enforce the requirement of "install x times and only run one instance concurrently", but meets other requirements. It has the added bonus of no longer requiring you, the software developer/publisher, to even be involved past purchase. > It sucks that decent people have to put blocks up on decent software > because indecent people steal it, the fact is that it's the indecent people > who > are wasting your time, not the developers who want to be paid for their > work (time). I absolutely, whole-heartedly support software development. I make my living doing it, and support anyone else who attempts to do the same. However, draconian enforcement has been shown repeatedly, in study after study, to have _zero_ positive effect. It inconveniences legitimate, paying users, and has _no_ detrimental impact on people who would steal the software. They'll steal it in any case. Lots of talented people out there will crack your authentication mechanism, usually within days of you releasing it. Is that right? Of course not. A lot of companies knee-jerk licensing though, and end up inadvertently causing their legitimate customers problems, without having much impact on whether their software is stolen. Can of worms :) Jeff --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Versions" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/versions?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
