AW: OT: locking software to one specific machine?

[Richard Gaskin]

Tiemo Hollmann wrote:
> In the first years our software was - in your intention - completely
> free of copy protection, later we implemented a copy protection on some
> programs, which were running off the CD.
>
> We made the experience, that nobody ever thanked us the ease of use and lack
> of licensing. Just the opposite. Just because our target market is so small
> and lots of people know each other, our software was copied, given away
> without control.

"Completely free of copy protection" is very different from the 
industry-standard per-user license keys I described, and not something I 
would advocate for any commercial product.

In markets where piracy is an unusually serious consideration, 
server-based activation can provide reasonable control over license key 
redistribution.  If smartly implemented with grace periods, "phone home" 
activation should pose no inconvenience to the end-user.

But most successful products don't even do that, they merely use 
pre-generated keys.  Per-user license keys have made Adobe, Microsoft, 
Apple, and most other software vendors quite profitable.

Not having any protection at all is, IMO, only appropriate for free 
products.  The early years of the computer industry's "shareware" 
experiments proved that convincingly.  The difference between "free 
demo" and "full version" need not be onerous to the user, but there must 
be some incentive to motivate the user to put in the additional effort 
to fill out an order form.

This is one reason why having PayPal as a payment option is so valuable: 
  it reduces the payment process to just a single password field and one 
click.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World
  Rev training and consulting: http://www.fourthworld.com
  Webzine for Rev developers: http://www.revjournal.com
  revJournal blog: http://revjournal.com/blog.irv