AW: OT: locking software to one specific machine?

[Jeff Massung]

Just tossing out another option for people:

I've found with shareware I've written in the past that - in this day of
internet access - my customers didn't mind at all having to be connected to
the internet in order to gain access to their purchased software (read: ping
a server w/ their license key/user name and get an reply access key that was
good for the "session"). This also allows you to see if a certain key is
being used all over the world and black list it.

I had to also implement temporary session keys for people who weren't
connected to the internet or who were planning on taking the software on
vacation or such, but that wasn't too difficult. And it was very generous
(offline keys lasting for a week+). I think I only had a single complaint
from a paying customer and went out of my way to give them a version of the
software that didn't require a key at all.

And, while I understand this isn't the case for all niches and companies, if
your licensing is good, a certain level of copying and sharing is *highly*
desirable.

Keep in mind that no matter what you do your software will be
cracked/pirated. Your goal should be to make customers happy and balance the
price + the value of your software vs. the difficult to pirate in order to
maximize paying customers.

Jeff M.