Trial software and registering

[Gordon Webster]

Trevor makes a good point. Mikey's users might get
thoroughly cheesed off if they found they couldn't use
their software away from their network connection.
Verifying the license each time over the network might
also introduce an unnacceptable delay in the startup
of the application.

To use the "phone home" approach effectively, the
application could cache the results of the last
license validation along with it's date and time. It
could then allow the user to work for a given number
of sessions (or a certain elapsed time) without
requiring license validation, but during each session,
in the background it would silently check the
existence of a network connection and update the
license validation whenever possible, resetting the
"time since last license check" clock each time. 

If the user used the application for some extended
period without revalidating the license and started to
get near the allowed limit of sessions (or time
elapsed) since the last license validation, the
application could warn the user of this when it was
launched -  something like "You only have n more
sessions/days left before this application will
require revalidation fo your license". 

Hope this is helpful

Best

Gordon





--- Trevor DeVore <lists at mangomultimedia.com> wrote:
> On Mar 16, 2005, at 9:18 AM, Mikey wrote:
> 
> > One of the nicer ways to do this now is to have
> your application
> > "phone home" via a TCP/IP connection.  To activate
> the software, the
> > software has to be able to connect with your
> server.  Every launch it
> > has to reconnect to ensure that it still has
> privileges.  At the end
> > of the time period, it gets notification that its
> time is up and
> > that's it.
> >
> > This keeps people from rolling dates back on their
> systems.
> 
> But what if I want to use the software on my laptop
> with no internet 
> connection (on a plane, etc.)?  I usually try out
> new software under 
> these conditions.  It really isn't a problem to
> connect the first time 
> to activate the software but connecting on every
> launch would be a 
> problem.
> 
> 
> -- 
> Trevor DeVore
> Blue Mango Multimedia
> trevor at mangomultimedia.com
> 
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:::::::::: Gordon Webster ::::::::::