Michael Ash wrote:
> Clever Monkey <spamtrap@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>> Reinder Verlinde wrote:
>>> In article <1177661623.539860.216780@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
>>> xkp <veidt1@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> i would like to know what is the most popular way in the Mac world to
>>>> protect/licensing a commercial software
>>> I know this is not what you want to hear, but IMO the popular way to
>>> protect software is to provide a good product with good sup****t and to
>>> trust your customers.
>>>
>>> Require me to enter my name and a lengthy serial number at
installation
>>> time is about as far as I would want to go. I should still be able to
>>> copy that executable to a new machine without having to go through
that
>>> process.
>>>
>> While I might agree in principle, there is little evidence to suggest
>> that /other/ people feel, or act, the same way. A non-intrusive
>> licensing model is often the only way to actually, you know, get paid
>> for your work without pissing off the majority of your users.
>
> Given how many successful software companies out there use nothing
beyond
> a name and serial number, and how few use more sophisticated licensing
> schemes, I object to your use of the word "often" in that sentence.
>
The article I quoted addresses this very situation. Did you read it?
> It may be necessary, rarely, to use such a scheme in order to stay
afloat.
> It may be helpful in many more instances, but we simply can't know for
> sure. In any case, it's obviously possible to run a successful software
> company without fancy licensing schemes, since there are a large number
of
> existence proofs out there.
>
Again, the article I quoted suggests this, as well. The problem was
that, for this particular company, they found that the number of people
who simply grabbed serial numbers off the web was much higher than they
anticipated. As in, the opposite of their assumptions, which was that
people are by and large honest and will gladly cough up the $19 or
whatever. This surprised them.
The received wisdom that the majority of your users will behave honestly
if you treat them a certain way was exactly what this particular person
found was not the case. So, unfortunately, this assumption may not be
as true as we might like it to be.
It is true that we may not know for sure if people are abusing your
licensing, but this also means that there is little evidence that the
opposite is true, and the majority of your users are actually paying for
the software they use.
Yes, software companies continue to be in business. Some have decided
to allow for volume sales, or higher per-unit prices, to cover the cost
of losses. In the realm most of us live in, however, the margins can
get quite thin, and few smaller shops can afford that for very long. In
this case a small developer company decided they couldn't continue to
bleed licenses if they wanted to keep their children in diapers and
shoes. This, despite a very liberal sort of license accounting that
depended on, and assumed a basic honesty and diligence on the part of
most of their user base.
If the question is "are a majority of my user base using paid copies of
the software", then the answer is not very well known unless you collect
some empirical evidence (i.e., the license logs collected in the quoted
article).
Anyway, the reason I mention the article is to direct the OP at a modest
licensing scheme that attempts to find the balance between treating your
customers fairly, and ensuring you are actually getting paid for a
larger majority of those installs in use.
--
clvrmnky
Direct replies will be blacklisted. Replace "spamtrap" with my name to
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