Re: [OT] serial number validation algorithm?
Re: [OT] serial number validation algorithm?
- Subject: Re: [OT] serial number validation algorithm?
- From: Dave Thorup <email@hidden>
- Date: Mon, 06 Oct 2003 20:29:24 -0600
On 10/6/03 5:15 AM, "petite_abeille" <email@hidden> wrote:
>
Assuming I have the right ingredients to seed a SN, what would be the
>
most straightforward way to validate such a number?
I faced this problem somewhat recently and rather than try to code my own
serial number generation/validation algorithm that would be buggy and
probably easily hackable I tried to look for something that already existed
and would be easy to add to my applications without much effort.
After reading some articles about shareware (I think on Oreilly's site,
oreillynet.com) I learned about a company called eSellerate
(esellerate.net). Their focus is strictly on software sales and they've set
up a really good resource for software developers. They have serial number
validation libraries for both Windows and the Mac, using Carbon, Cocoa, and
RealBasic on the Mac. They make it possible for people to purchase your
software securely from within the application and have it automatically
register itself.
As far as SN validation goes, you can only check to see if the serial number
is valid if you like. Or, you can validate each serial number against an
online database of serial numbers. You can specify how many times a serial
number can be validated, add to, or take away validations per serial number,
blacklist serial numbers, etc. You can also tie each serial number to a
specific publisher and product as well as a name or company name. They also
provide a nice online store, accept credit cards, allow you to create
coupons, provide reporting, and lots of other nice things.
I've used them for two of my products, Defaults Manager and HyperSpell.
They only charge 10% for the first $15,000 in sales and I think this is a
bargain for the services they provide. They one thing that I haven't liked
about them is there is a long lag between when a pay period ends (pay
periods are monthly) and when they pay you. I've averaged about 2 to 3
weeks between when my pay period ends and when I get paid.
Overall, they've saved me a ton of time by making it easy for me to add
serial number validation to my applications. I don't know of anyone else
that provides the services that they do, but they do a great job at what
they do.
____________________________________
Dave Thorup
Software Engineer
email@hidden
www.kuwan.net
Defaults Manager - The premier editor for Mac OS X's User Defaults /
Preferences database.
_______________________________________________
cocoa-dev mailing list | email@hidden
Help/Unsubscribe/Archives:
http://www.lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/cocoa-dev
Do not post admin requests to the list. They will be ignored.