limited time demo?

[Scott Kane]

Rob,

Richard's suggestion of approaching the issue from a crippling point of view 
is an excellent one.  The problem with us technical types is that we see 
trial versions as a security issue and not as what they really are - 
marketing tools.  Once you start delving into protection via time limited 
demos it get's quite hairy as there are so many ways to circumvent this.  By 
all means use a time trial but use it in the knowledge that it can an may 
well (depending on how popular or application is) be bypassed by either the 
end user or a dedicated hacker (most often by "scene crackers").  It is 
*almost* impossible to add extra code in (I say almost because if it's 
something simple like a checkbox or a simple file save in a common format 
then it can often be patched too) and that makes it impossible to produce a 
real crack.  Research by software companies and Colin Messits famous 
experiment is one of the best and is often used in the industry.  See:

http://hackvan.com/pub/stig/articles/why-do-people-register-shareware.html

It's no mean feat in a lower level language to defeat crackers - it's even 
harder in a higher level language like Rev.  It's not Rev that's at fault, 
mind, but the nature of the tools.  Most MISV's (who are successful) that I 
know of  use some combination of of the above experiment and variations on 
time and licensing systems.  There are programs (for Windows) that create 
pretty good trial period software and though expensive they are *all* 
stripped and cracked routinely.  There are some things one an do and I'm in 
the process of writing something that I'll be sharing with the Rev community 
in an upcoming newsletter that address' some of the problems faced with 
serial numbers vs keygens and cracks.

Scott