Reinder Verlinde wrote:
> In article <B7pYh.7042$13.6334@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>,
> 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.
>
> I do not deny that there is a difference between what I feel and what I
> do (I may well use a program that has more stringent copy protection,
> but I won't like it), but the OP asked about popular copy protection
> mechanisms.
>
Yes, and that is why I quote the article. It has a long introduction,
but ends up talking about a home-grown licensing technique that allowed
them to handle "license creep" while not treating their customers as
pirates.
All I'm talking about is a middle-ground here, folks. I'm not saying
anything that hasn't been said elsewhere.
The fact is, there is a complex psychology going on here that makes
/some/ of us less diligent about /some/ of the software we use.
For some shops, the assumption that people are by and large honest about
this stuff was not borne out by the evidence.
Did revenues increase? Who knows? They did have a better understanding
of their users, and could be reasonable certain that the licenses they
saw being used were /paid/ licenses? Yes, in fact they did. Those
licenses representing money, and they could track them over time to come
up with all sorts of metrics.
The other side of this discussion is another assumption that people who
are willing to pay for your software may continue to sup****t your
development. Again, this is slightly true in my case (I find after a
reinstall or move to a new system I often forget to install that neat
piece of software I paid for because it is no longer all that
interesting to me) and something that Panic, Ambrosia, et al, are
banking on.
If this is true, then keeping out the obvious license abusers is a good
way of cultivating and maintaining /that/ customer base.
I'm certainly not interested in some pointless argument over this; I
pointed out the article for one reason: it actually addresses part of
the OPs question.
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