Selling software
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I'm finally getting round to selling software on the net. I've looked at swreg.org (a rather convoluted site!) it doesn't explain how the actually process works. Does anybody of good shareware venders? TIA Normski. - Professional Windows Programmer
I couldn't seem to access much of their site - not a good sign imo. I'm starting to scour the net for shareware vendors as well. So far, RegSoft (www.regsoft.com) seems worth a look. I have also noted that quite a few shareware authors use them as well. As a slight aside, what do people think about software protection mechanisms. I've started looking at Armadillo. Anyone got any thoughts on this or s/w protection in general? Free
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I couldn't seem to access much of their site - not a good sign imo. I'm starting to scour the net for shareware vendors as well. So far, RegSoft (www.regsoft.com) seems worth a look. I have also noted that quite a few shareware authors use them as well. As a slight aside, what do people think about software protection mechanisms. I've started looking at Armadillo. Anyone got any thoughts on this or s/w protection in general? Free
The problem with software protection is that if it's possible to engineer it, then it's possible to reverse engineer (crack) it. The moment you spend a lot of money on a protection system, you'll find that some 13-year old kid cracked it in 30 minutes, because you placed too much faith in it. Quite some time ago, a friend of mine wrote a hex editing package called Hex Workshop. Originally, he did not have any copy protection at all, and found it appearing all over the Internet. He added a simple 30-day trial period, and registration through a serial number, similar to what WinZip uses, and immediately the registration rate doubled or tripled. Yes, people will come up with cracks and key generators for your scheme, but they will anyway. A good example of going overboard on protection is CloneCD. The author actually encrypted part of the executable, so that it will not run without the correct key. When you register, they use your name as a seed for encrypting the key. The problem with this is that everyone has the same decryption key when they register! There is now a key generator floating around for CloneCD that unlocks its full functionality. One of the more interesting protection schemes I ran across recently only works for software that requires access to the Internet to run. If you're not connected before the program runs, it will connect for you. The idea was that the author pulls a small piece of code out of the application and puts it on a server. When the application needs to execute that piece of code, it actually reaches out the server, and the server runs it. This is very similar to the way a Web Service would work. The result is, if you cannot authenticate with the server, then you cannot run that piece of code, and the application doesn't work. There's nothing to crack as the code is never resident on the client computer, at all! Let me know what you end up choosing as a protection method. I would be interested to know. -- Paul "I drank... WHAT?"
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The problem with software protection is that if it's possible to engineer it, then it's possible to reverse engineer (crack) it. The moment you spend a lot of money on a protection system, you'll find that some 13-year old kid cracked it in 30 minutes, because you placed too much faith in it. Quite some time ago, a friend of mine wrote a hex editing package called Hex Workshop. Originally, he did not have any copy protection at all, and found it appearing all over the Internet. He added a simple 30-day trial period, and registration through a serial number, similar to what WinZip uses, and immediately the registration rate doubled or tripled. Yes, people will come up with cracks and key generators for your scheme, but they will anyway. A good example of going overboard on protection is CloneCD. The author actually encrypted part of the executable, so that it will not run without the correct key. When you register, they use your name as a seed for encrypting the key. The problem with this is that everyone has the same decryption key when they register! There is now a key generator floating around for CloneCD that unlocks its full functionality. One of the more interesting protection schemes I ran across recently only works for software that requires access to the Internet to run. If you're not connected before the program runs, it will connect for you. The idea was that the author pulls a small piece of code out of the application and puts it on a server. When the application needs to execute that piece of code, it actually reaches out the server, and the server runs it. This is very similar to the way a Web Service would work. The result is, if you cannot authenticate with the server, then you cannot run that piece of code, and the application doesn't work. There's nothing to crack as the code is never resident on the client computer, at all! Let me know what you end up choosing as a protection method. I would be interested to know. -- Paul "I drank... WHAT?"
Paul A. Howes wrote: Hex Workshop Cool piece of software :-)
"When a friend hurts us, we should write it down in the sand, where the winds of forgiveness get in charge of erasing it away, and when something great happens, we should engrave it in the stone of the memory of the heart, where no wind can erase it" Nish on life [methinks] "It's The Soapbox; topics are optional" Shog 9
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I'm finally getting round to selling software on the net. I've looked at swreg.org (a rather convoluted site!) it doesn't explain how the actually process works. Does anybody of good shareware venders? TIA Normski. - Professional Windows Programmer
> Does anybody of good shareware venders? www.shareit.com