Daft idea for commercial software ???

Björnke von Gierke bvg at mac.com
Tue Mar 30 11:46:59 EDT 2010


Actually most Reg-Key schemes work exactly like that. The Name or email of the person buying is encoded in some way within the key, or via a reference in a database. Therefore the ID is tied uniquely to that customer. Of course you could mail around the program, but that won't help at all against being pirated, and might alienate some customers. Depending on tech-knowledge they'll either react confused or annoyed ;)

Note that there are some indy game sellers that work like that. If a registration scheme works that way, I expect it to also offer me a link to re-download at any time, even months or years later. Not all of the game portals do give more then one chance to download, a reason I do not buy from those anymore.

Be aware that changing a single occuring string in your app to "hacked by l33t dude" is actually simpler then reverse engineering the registration code. That fact is also why Richard Gaskin is such a fan of putting registration code into several places that use various approaches to recheck for validity often. It's easy to change or remove one function that checks at startup, even when considering the work of decompiling. But it's much harder to go trough all the code and look wether it checks various stored registration keys or not.

Random thoughts by
Bjoernke


On 29 Mar 2010, at 20:57, Richmond Mathewson wrote:

> I have been thinking about all the cafuffle about registration numbers and so
> forth; and wonder, given the fact that some level of pirating will go on if a piece
> of software is worth anything, if it is really worth all the mucking around.
> 
> So:
> 
> I should like to float this idea and welcome all reactions and criticisms:
> 
> I release a crippled demo which contains a page that lists my Paypal place
> and informs would-be buyers that within 48 hours of my receiving via
> Paypal I will either e-mail them as an attachment or direct them to an ftp folder
> where a full version of the program is with a banner of some sort plastered
> across the front page / opening screen saying something like:
> 
> "This version of ZZZZZ is the property of QQQQ and as such may only be used by
> him/her/it."
> 
> No doubt some folks will share their personalised versions with their friends,
> relations and so on; but that will probably happen anyway unless I go down
> the painful route of tying programs to mac addresses.
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