E.T.

[Phil Davis]

Or...

This is reaching back into the annals of computing history, but it works.

You could distribute your product on flash drives and require that they 
be plugged in during use. Each flash drive (thumb drive, whatever) has a 
unique ID in its firmware that the OS (and therefore LC) can access. You 
can write a first-startup initialization process that ties the flash 
drive uuid to the computer it's running on (MAC address or some other 
system uid), and Bob's your uncle. After the startup process runs, the 
key (flash drive) will only enable the software on the machine where it 
first started.

When copying the key to the flash drive, the key needs to have the flash 
drive's uuid embedded in it (and hidden - maybe encrypted), or else a 
person could make many copies of a virgin key and they would all work. 
But with the drive's uuid embedded in the key, a startup process can 
verify that the right key is residing on the right flash drive.

No internet required.

Phil Davis



On 7/29/17 12:53 AM, Richmond Mathewson via use-livecode wrote:
> Let us suppose I have sold a 5 seat licence of some software to an 
> organisation and I don't
> want its workers merrily taking copies of that software home to pop on 
> their home machines
> as well as giving copies to Aunty Betty, Uncle Oswald and Cousin Jeff 
> . . .
>
> I would suppose I need that software to "phone home" and check itself 
> against a list (text document)
> or something so that only 5 copies can function "out there", and if a 
> 6th version phones home it
> will do a "Peter Graves" and self-destruct.
>
> Obviously this needs the end-user to have an active internet 
> connexion, at least when the program is
> initially installed . . .
>
> Richmond.
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-- 
Phil Davis