cquirke (MVP Win9x) wrote:
Our registration scheme will not be a built-in Windows subsystem at
all.
IOW, it doesn'r underfoot like NAV's current nightmare, or DRM stuff
that patches into critical data streams ("sorry we wiped out your data
after you upgraded your xIDE drivers, but we feel that's an acceptible
price to protect our interests (esp. as *we* aren't paying it)")
That's guuud
Only our software will attempt to make sure that it has been paid for.
According to our own standards, this is perfectly legitimate.
Sure. As this is a public forum, I was writing not just to you, but
to all of us who may be considering such strategies.
I'd consider this approach if I was producing a large foreground
application with small distribution, preferably local. This situation
creates the need (fixed development costs borne by fewer shoulders,
thus costly anyway, and any license leakage really hurts everyone) and
the opportunity (small local client base facilitates a personal
vendor-client relationship) and likely acceptance.
If doing a large foreground application with large global
distribution, I might be tempted to swallow the one-off cost of
developing a hardware USB dongle rather than take on the open-ended
committment to manage incoming calls for the next decade.
With both approaches, the revenue gains can suddenly collapse if the
protection is cracked - and this is harder to shore up if
fire-and-forget hardware dongles are involved. Small-volume products
are unlikely to provide an ROI for factory conterfeit dongle or CD
production, but a global money-spinner might be.
If OTOH your product is general-purpose, then I'd reconsider. The
question to ask is: If all products in my category did the same thing,
would the result be sustainable for the user?
Imagine if you had to phone WinZip, Acrobat Reader, NAV, DiskKeeper
Lite, QuickTime, Real Networks, BitWare fax, Eudora, Netscape, DVD
Player, Photoshop, Corel, Encarta, The Sims etc. every time your
hardware blinked. If your software is in the same general category as
this and it's unacceptable for all of these vendors to take your
approach, what's so special about you? More to the point, why would
clients accept the hassle factor for a non-unique product for which
several hassle-free alternatives exist?
That's why I suggest doing this only for the sort of large foreground
apps that are typically the sole purpose of the PC; things like
AutoCAD, custom business-critical accounting apps, etc.
This will be a purely proprietary scheme with no real or potential
conflicts with the host OS. Of course, all this personal information
will be treated with complete confidentiality, just as all registration
information is.
Registration is usually voluntary, and those who choose not to
register generally do so for privacy reasons. Why trust other
entities that are beyond your control, if you don't have to?
Users will be informed right from the start that any major change(s) in
their hardware setup will entail a need for reactivation. Then they
will have to get in touch with us to get a new registration code.
Free phone call? 24/7 or business hours? If business hours, then how
does that shake out for different time zones?
No questions will be asked. But people changing several major
hardware components within one single year will be treated as
special cases. To be honest, we doubt that there will be any at
all. Fee dodgers will not even bother to get in touch with us.
No, they'll use the inevitable cracked version instead :-(
Most other people will not be changing hardware so frequently.
And people doing so in good faith will not mind if we get curious.
As you might not be aware, currently there are quite a number of
hackersÕ sites on the Web offering free hacked registration codes for
all major software. We do not believe that users who can get such
registration codes for free will bother to pay our fees. Even if we
provide the best value for money there is.
This is true, but you may find yourself competing with a free
"cracked" version that is percieved to offer better value (if the
scheme turns out to be a pain). In fact, you can create the
opportunity to *sell* the cracked version, which can lead to a more
driven distribution of same.
We might sound cynical, but we do not have such blind unquestioning
faith in human nature.
Call me cynical as well, then (if you haven't yet!)
On the other hand, we believe that only a very small fraction of our
customers (if any) will actually change major hardware components so
frequently.
If you are innocent, you have nothing to fear! ;-)
To end on a personal note, I have a motherboard with built-in network
card. Windows XP had been activated with network enabled. Then because
I had no longer any use for it, I uninstalled all network hardware and
software from my PC. I immediately got a message from Windows asking me
to reactivate. I did so without even giving it a thought. It seemed
only natural to me. My version of Windows is a genuine fully-paid,
fully-registered version. I did not see any problem when I was asked
to reactivate. Neither my good faith nor MicrosoftÕs had really been
questioned.
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Dreams are stack dumps of the soul