Re: trial and licensing schemas

In article <2007072021521475249-wizumwalt@gmailcom>,
William Zumwalt <wizumwalt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On 2007-07-20 21:18:35 -0500, Michael Ash <mike@xxxxxxxxxxx> said:

William Zumwalt <wizumwalt@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I have a cocoa app that eventually I'd like to release publicly next
year and want to start thinking about how to put in the trial days and
get ideas for licensing. It's a ways off, but would like to start
thinking about this.

I can imagine that for trial days, it would be something like X days
added to the current system time of the first run, but when thinking
how to protect from multiple installs, etc... it can get pretty
complicated.
[...]
What it comes down to is that you should be unobtrusive and try to take
advantage of the 90/10 rule. Find the 10% of your effort which will get
you 90% anti-piracy effectiveness, then forget about the other 90%. It can
be tough to ignore piracy when you know there are other things you could
be doing, but in the end improving your app will get you more money than
making it harder to pirate.

One approach I like is to avoid trial periods and find some other way of
limiting the app. Trial periods put pressure on customers and leave you
vulnerable to exactly the sort of things you mention, whereas an app which
always watermarks saved files unless you enter a license gives the user as
much time as he wants to evaluate it, and can't be defeated by a
reinstall.

I think you should also read
<http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/default.asp?W20>

[...]

The only reason I was thinking of putting in a timer is because this is
software that hasn't ever been released or tested other than by me and
I'd like to not have bad buggy copies floating around and always want
my users to have the best up to date copy. That's how I saw another
project do it, x-torrent I think it was. I'd download a copy and report
bugs, it'd expire, workable w/ bugs, but eventually expired so I'd have
to grab another copy and do it all over again.

For that, you probably are better off with
<http://www.red-sweater.com/blog/371/suicidal-code> than with anything
complicated like 'x days after the first install'. Just hard-code the
end date in. I would also soften the expiration time by running a few
days more with reminders ("this software will expire on x-x-x. If you
intend on using it after that, please obtain the next version from
http://...";).

Reinder
.

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