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Re: Best place to hide license files
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Re: Best place to hide license files


  • Subject: Re: Best place to hide license files
  • From: Craig Hockenberry <email@hidden>
  • Date: Mon, 19 Apr 2004 11:34:40 -0700

> From: "b.bum" <email@hidden>
> Subject: Re: Best place to hide license files
> 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.

As a developer who's taken both the "hide it well" and "keep it simple &
open" approaches to writing license files, I can say that Bill's comment is
100% correct.

The first version of my app used a very complicated scheme for encoding the
license, tying it to a MAC address, and expiring registration codes mailed
to users (which in turn generated a license file that would not expire.)

The only benefit I saw by implementing this complex mechanism was about a 5
month delay before cracked registration codes started showing up.

The downsides, however, were many: pissed off customers, general confusion,
machines becoming unlicensed because of system configuration changes, etc.

We now just put the registration information as a key/value pair in the user
defaults plist. We've not seen any reduction in sales because of this simple
mechanism.

-ch
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