Re: License check in my application
Re: License check in my application
- Subject: Re: License check in my application
- From: Gregory Weston <email@hidden>
- Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2007 21:29:59 -0500
I'm replying off-list because there's nothing Cocoa related about the
question or the answer.
You wrote:
I am trying to add a license check into my application. I would like
to give a code with the application, when the user starts the
application for the first time they are asked for this code. Then the
application could send the user to my web page where I can take the
code and a unique ID for that computer, so that I know what computer
is linked to the code. My web page could then create a license key
that will allow my application to run on only that computer.
My problem is that I don't know how to do any of this?
The steps as I see them
1. Get the unique ID.
And that's the show-stopper right there. There is no "the unique ID"
reliably available via software from any Mac ever built. Your best
option is to gather several characteristics of the machine and cache
them as a group. If you intend to try to lock your software to a
given machine, you'd consider it a different machine if "enough" of
those characteristics change from one launch of your app to the next.
Selecting a good set of characteristics to monitor and deciding how
many of them have to change to disable the app is up to you. But not
that if you see changes that don't trip over your threshold you
should update the cached data so someone doesn't suddenly lose their
access to the app just because they've iteratively swapped out enough
things to raise a red flag.
2. Send the unique ID and code to the web page.
Sending's easy, but of course you also have to have a server running
that knows how to interpret and respond to the information.
3. Save the license key, and check for it each time the application
starts.
Trivial if you're licensing per user. Less trivial if you're
licensing to the machine, because then you have to authenticate in
order to be able to write to an appropriate place from which every
user can read.
So I think what I'm really saying is that while your question seemed
to be about actually implementing your plan, it's my opinion that
your plan needs more fleshing out before the implementation really
suggests itself.
G
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