Re: Best place to hide license files
Re: Best place to hide license files
- Subject: Re: Best place to hide license files
- From: "b.bum" <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 16 Apr 2004 11:09:52 -0700
(lots of creative ideas for obscuring license files deleted)
Please don't do that. Stick your license file out in the open and
concentrate on a reasonable licensing scheme that isn't inconvenient to
the customer and provides a reasonable level of security.
Shoving your license in a random resource fork or trying to make it
look like some other app's data file or trying to hide it somewhere in
the file system is only going to piss off some -- likely technical and
likely vocal -- users.
When I make a backup of my home account, I expect that backing up
~/Library/Application Support and ~/Library/Preferences will do the
right thing. I do not want to be surprised when random App X suddenly
breaks because it tried to hide the license somewhere non-standard.
Likewise, I don't want to be surprised when your Cocoa app -- an app
that has no need to use resource forks -- suddenly becomes unlicensed
because I tarballed or otherwised move some subtree of files through a
form that does not support resource forks (because I EXPECTED that
nothing in the subtree would be using resource forks).
And if you ask me for an administrative password upon installation,
there had better be a good reason for doing so. Shoving a license
file in /System/Library/Sounds/ is not a good reason (I ran into an app
that did that upon installing a demo -- the app was excellent, the
licensing was offensive, I did not purchase a $150 license and the app
was promptly deleted). And I'll be really annoyed when I
reformat/reinstall my system partition, your app is installed in
~/Applications, is only used by my user and it is unlicensed after the
reinstall.
Fantasy: Security and/or licensing can be enforced by obscuring the
data.
Reality: Obscuring the information just makes it more fun for the
script kiddies to find and crack your security/licensing. You'll lose
sales to people that wanted to pay for your product, but were offended
by your app's behavior.
The script kiddies and macwarez people will still steal your app.
Basically the same set of folks will pay for your app regardless of
whether you use NSA grade data hiding techniques or simply shove an
"IsLicensed = YES;" in your app's user defaults. Don't punish your
legitimate user's for the sake of trying to fix a problem that can't be
fixed-- it'll only drive away customers.
b.bum
(ranting a bit)
_______________________________________________
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.