Copy protection software for Mac OS X?

Clever Monkey <spamtrap.TakeThisOut@clevermonkey.org.invalid> wrote:
> Reinder Verlinde wrote:
>> In article <1177661623.539860.216780.TakeThisOut@s33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
>> xkp <veidt1.TakeThisOut@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi,
>>> i would like to know what is the most popular way in the Mac world to
>>> protect/licensing a commercial software
>>
>> I know this is not what you want to hear, but IMO the popular way to
>> protect software is to provide a good product with good support and to
>> trust your customers.
>>
>> Require me to enter my name and a lengthy serial number at installation
>> time is about as far as I would want to go. I should still be able to
>> copy that executable to a new machine without having to go through that
>> process.
>>
> While I might agree in principle, there is little evidence to suggest
> that /other/ people feel, or act, the same way. A non-intrusive
> licensing model is often the only way to actually, you know, get paid
> for your work without pissing off the majority of your users.

Given how many successful software companies out there use nothing beyond
a name and serial number, and how few use more sophisticated licensing
schemes, I object to your use of the word "often" in that sentence.

It may be necessary, rarely, to use such a scheme in order to stay afloat.
It may be helpful in many more instances, but we simply can't know for
sure. In any case, it's obviously possible to run a successful software
company without fancy licensing schemes, since there are a large number of
existence proofs out there.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software
 >> Stay informed about: Copy protection software for Mac OS X? 

Reinder Verlinde wrote:
> In article <1177661623.539860.216780 RemoveThis @s33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
> xkp <veidt1 RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Hi,
>> i would like to know what is the most popular way in the Mac world to
>> protect/licensing a commercial software
>
> I know this is not what you want to hear, but IMO the popular way to
> protect software is to provide a good product with good support and to
> trust your customers.
>
> Require me to enter my name and a lengthy serial number at installation
> time is about as far as I would want to go. I should still be able to
> copy that executable to a new machine without having to go through that
> process.
>
While I might agree in principle, there is little evidence to suggest
that /other/ people feel, or act, the same way. A non-intrusive
licensing model is often the only way to actually, you know, get paid
for your work without pissing off the majority of your users.

For an alternative perspective (and one that might give the OP some
ideas), see here:
<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=34059>

--
clvrmnky

Direct replies will be blacklisted. Replace "spamtrap" with my name to
contact me directly.
 >> Stay informed about: Copy protection software for Mac OS X? 

Michael Ash wrote:
> Clever Monkey <spamtrap.DeleteThis@clevermonkey.org.invalid> wrote:
>> Reinder Verlinde wrote:
>>> In article <1177661623.539860.216780.DeleteThis@s33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
>>> xkp <veidt1.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> i would like to know what is the most popular way in the Mac world to
>>>> protect/licensing a commercial software
>>> I know this is not what you want to hear, but IMO the popular way to
>>> protect software is to provide a good product with good support and to
>>> trust your customers.
>>>
>>> Require me to enter my name and a lengthy serial number at installation
>>> time is about as far as I would want to go. I should still be able to
>>> copy that executable to a new machine without having to go through that
>>> process.
>>>
>> While I might agree in principle, there is little evidence to suggest
>> that /other/ people feel, or act, the same way. A non-intrusive
>> licensing model is often the only way to actually, you know, get paid
>> for your work without pissing off the majority of your users.
>
> Given how many successful software companies out there use nothing beyond
> a name and serial number, and how few use more sophisticated licensing
> schemes, I object to your use of the word "often" in that sentence.
>
The article I quoted addresses this very situation. Did you read it?

> It may be necessary, rarely, to use such a scheme in order to stay afloat.
> It may be helpful in many more instances, but we simply can't know for
> sure. In any case, it's obviously possible to run a successful software
> company without fancy licensing schemes, since there are a large number of
> existence proofs out there.
>
Again, the article I quoted suggests this, as well. The problem was
that, for this particular company, they found that the number of people
who simply grabbed serial numbers off the web was much higher than they
anticipated. As in, the opposite of their assumptions, which was that
people are by and large honest and will gladly cough up the $19 or
whatever. This surprised them.

The received wisdom that the majority of your users will behave honestly
if you treat them a certain way was exactly what this particular person
found was not the case. So, unfortunately, this assumption may not be
as true as we might like it to be.

It is true that we may not know for sure if people are abusing your
licensing, but this also means that there is little evidence that the
opposite is true, and the majority of your users are actually paying for
the software they use.

Yes, software companies continue to be in business. Some have decided
to allow for volume sales, or higher per-unit prices, to cover the cost
of losses. In the realm most of us live in, however, the margins can
get quite thin, and few smaller shops can afford that for very long. In
this case a small developer company decided they couldn't continue to
bleed licenses if they wanted to keep their children in diapers and
shoes. This, despite a very liberal sort of license accounting that
depended on, and assumed a basic honesty and diligence on the part of
most of their user base.

If the question is "are a majority of my user base using paid copies of
the software", then the answer is not very well known unless you collect
some empirical evidence (i.e., the license logs collected in the quoted
article).

Anyway, the reason I mention the article is to direct the OP at a modest
licensing scheme that attempts to find the balance between treating your
customers fairly, and ensuring you are actually getting paid for a
larger majority of those installs in use.
--
clvrmnky

Direct replies will be blacklisted. Replace "spamtrap" with my name to
contact me directly.
 >> Stay informed about: Copy protection software for Mac OS X? 

Reinder Verlinde wrote:
> In article <B7pYh.7042$13.6334@nnrp.ca.mci.com!nnrp1.uunet.ca>,
> Clever Monkey <spamtrap.DeleteThis@clevermonkey.org.INVALID> wrote:
>
>> Reinder Verlinde wrote:
>>> In article <1177661623.539860.216780.DeleteThis@s33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
>>> xkp <veidt1.DeleteThis@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Hi,
>>>> i would like to know what is the most popular way in the Mac world to
>>>> protect/licensing a commercial software
>>> I know this is not what you want to hear, but IMO the popular way to
>>> protect software is to provide a good product with good support and to
>>> trust your customers.
>>>
>>> Require me to enter my name and a lengthy serial number at installation
>>> time is about as far as I would want to go. I should still be able to
>>> copy that executable to a new machine without having to go through that
>>> process.
>>>
>> While I might agree in principle, there is little evidence to suggest
>> that /other/ people feel, or act, the same way.
>
> I do not deny that there is a difference between what I feel and what I
> do (I may well use a program that has more stringent copy protection,
> but I won't like it), but the OP asked about popular copy protection
> mechanisms.
>
Yes, and that is why I quote the article. It has a long introduction,
but ends up talking about a home-grown licensing technique that allowed
them to handle "license creep" while not treating their customers as
pirates.

All I'm talking about is a middle-ground here, folks. I'm not saying
anything that hasn't been said elsewhere.

The fact is, there is a complex psychology going on here that makes
/some/ of us less diligent about /some/ of the software we use.

For some shops, the assumption that people are by and large honest about
this stuff was not borne out by the evidence.

Did revenues increase? Who knows? They did have a better understanding
of their users, and could be reasonable certain that the licenses they
saw being used were /paid/ licenses? Yes, in fact they did. Those
licenses representing money, and they could track them over time to come
up with all sorts of metrics.

The other side of this discussion is another assumption that people who
are willing to pay for your software may continue to support your
development. Again, this is slightly true in my case (I find after a
reinstall or move to a new system I often forget to install that neat
piece of software I paid for because it is no longer all that
interesting to me) and something that Panic, Ambrosia, et al, are
banking on.

If this is true, then keeping out the obvious license abusers is a good
way of cultivating and maintaining /that/ customer base.

I'm certainly not interested in some pointless argument over this; I
pointed out the article for one reason: it actually addresses part of
the OPs question.
 >> Stay informed about: Copy protection software for Mac OS X? 

Clever Monkey <spamtrap.RemoveThis@clevermonkey.org.invalid> wrote:
> Michael Ash wrote:
>> Clever Monkey <spamtrap.RemoveThis@clevermonkey.org.invalid> wrote:
>>> While I might agree in principle, there is little evidence to suggest
>>> that /other/ people feel, or act, the same way. A non-intrusive
>>> licensing model is often the only way to actually, you know, get paid
>>> for your work without pissing off the majority of your users.
>>
>> Given how many successful software companies out there use nothing beyond
>> a name and serial number, and how few use more sophisticated licensing
>> schemes, I object to your use of the word "often" in that sentence.
>>
> The article I quoted addresses this very situation. Did you read it?

Certainly, I've read it several times in the years since it was posted.
I'm not sure what you mean though. I merely object to your claim that such
schemes are "often" the only way to survive in the business. It may have
been necessary in this one case, we don't know, but that doesn't disprove
my point at all.

>> It may be necessary, rarely, to use such a scheme in order to stay afloat.
>> It may be helpful in many more instances, but we simply can't know for
>> sure. In any case, it's obviously possible to run a successful software
>> company without fancy licensing schemes, since there are a large number of
>> existence proofs out there.
>>
> Again, the article I quoted suggests this, as well. The problem was
> that, for this particular company, they found that the number of people
> who simply grabbed serial numbers off the web was much higher than they
> anticipated. As in, the opposite of their assumptions, which was that
> people are by and large honest and will gladly cough up the $19 or
> whatever. This surprised them.

Certainly. But again, one company does not make an "often", and maximizing
revenue is not the same as making a living.

> The received wisdom that the majority of your users will behave honestly
> if you treat them a certain way was exactly what this particular person
> found was not the case. So, unfortunately, this assumption may not be
> as true as we might like it to be.

Maybe I just hit the scene too late, but I never received this wisdom.
Common wisdom in my circle is that piracy happens, it's pretty common, and
it's hard to defeat. Any anti-piracy measure which makes life harder for
legitimate users in any way is something that should be considered
extremely carefully. Pretty much by definition, pirates are people who
don't want to give you money anyway.

> It is true that we may not know for sure if people are abusing your
> licensing, but this also means that there is little evidence that the
> opposite is true, and the majority of your users are actually paying for
> the software they use.
>
> Yes, software companies continue to be in business. Some have decided
> to allow for volume sales, or higher per-unit prices, to cover the cost
> of losses. In the realm most of us live in, however, the margins can
> get quite thin, and few smaller shops can afford that for very long. In
> this case a small developer company decided they couldn't continue to
> bleed licenses if they wanted to keep their children in diapers and
> shoes. This, despite a very liberal sort of license accounting that
> depended on, and assumed a basic honesty and diligence on the part of
> most of their user base.

Sure, I understand this, but Ambrosia is in fact a rarity in using the
scheme they do in the business that they are in. If you go out and buy Mac
software, whether it's shareware, commercial, boxed, downloaded, whatever,
the vast majority doesn't have this sort of scheme. Perhaps they're all
slowly going out of business, but I see no evidence to suggest this.

My personal suspicion is that Ambrosia gets hit harder than most because
most of their products are games which tends to hit the teenage pirate
demographic much more than other sorts of products, but I have no real
evidence for this.

> If the question is "are a majority of my user base using paid copies of
> the software", then the answer is not very well known unless you collect
> some empirical evidence (i.e., the license logs collected in the quoted
> article).

That is the absolute wrong question to be asking if your goal is to stay
in business and make money, but a lolt of developers focus on it,
unfortunately.

Many people find it hard to accept (I'm not saying you're one of them,
just that this is a common attitude), but it's irrelevant to your
personally whether your userbase is 1% pirated, 10% pirated, or 90%
pirated. What matters in terms of cash flow, which ought to be your main
goal, is how big the paying userbase is. In other words, it's better to
have a userbase of 2X with a 60% piracy rate than it is to have a userbase
of X with a 25% piracy rate.

Now the piracy rate can be helpful to know when you're thinking about
implementing some anti-piracy measure, but it's not that helpful. You have
no idea how many of these pirates will end up buying your software because
of it, how many will find a crack and keep using it, and how many will
just abandon the prorduct.

That last category may make you feel good, but it's very important to keep
in mind that you don't actually lose anything to a pirate who uses your
software and has no intention of buying. By chasing him away you lose at
least a little, in terms of vague things like mindshare and his
recommendations to other people who might pay in the future.

> Anyway, the reason I mention the article is to direct the OP at a modest
> licensing scheme that attempts to find the balance between treating your
> customers fairly, and ensuring you are actually getting paid for a
> larger majority of those installs in use.

Certainly, and I think it's great to have all available information. But
it's important to know what people are using too. From my experience on
the platform, the vast majority of products that I'm exposed to use either
a license code or a name/code combination with no online verification. A
tiny minority use some kind of activation system like Ambrosia does, and I
try to avoid those products simply because I don't like the idea. It's
possible that all these other companies are losing out by not implementing
a similar scheme, but I doubt it, and I am personally grateful that they
don't.

--
Michael Ash
Rogue Amoeba Software
 >> Stay informed about: Copy protection software for Mac OS X? 

In article <B7pYh.7042$13.6334@nnrp.ca.mci.com!nnrp1.uunet.ca>,
Clever Monkey <spamtrap RemoveThis @clevermonkey.org.INVALID> wrote:

> Reinder Verlinde wrote:
> > In article <1177661623.539860.216780 RemoveThis @s33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>,
> > xkp <veidt1 RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> Hi,
> >> i would like to know what is the most popular way in the Mac world to
> >> protect/licensing a commercial software
> >
> > I know this is not what you want to hear, but IMO the popular way to
> > protect software is to provide a good product with good support and to
> > trust your customers.
> >
> > Require me to enter my name and a lengthy serial number at installation
> > time is about as far as I would want to go. I should still be able to
> > copy that executable to a new machine without having to go through that
> > process.
> >
> While I might agree in principle, there is little evidence to suggest
> that /other/ people feel, or act, the same way.

I do not deny that there is a difference between what I feel and what I
do (I may well use a program that has more stringent copy protection,
but I won't like it), but the OP asked about popular copy protection
mechanisms.

> A non-intrusive licensing model is often the only way to actually,
> you know, get paid for your work without pissing off the majority of
> your users.

That may be, but I have the impression that many companies do not
realise the cost of copy protection. If I can't run your software
because of a copy protection issue, I want that fixed within minutes =>
you need a 24h help desk that handles such issues. That costs real
money. Adding copy protection may increase revenue, but does it increase
profits, too?

I think it often would be better, from a profits standpoint, to do
positive reinforcement. Invite your paying customers for special events
(most of them won't come, but feel happy about being given the
opportunity), offer them reductions on upgrades, send them some new
templates a few times a year, send them a 'happy birthday' card via
regular mail etc.

If your product is too cheap for that, adding copy protection might be
too costly, anyways (or, maybe, you should start selling it as music via
iTunes :-))

If the OP asked about mechanisms popular by software publishers, my
reply would be 'why would you care what is popular? You should select a
mechanism that suits your needs.

> For an alternative perspective (and one that might give the OP some
> ideas), see here:
> <http://www.ambrosiasw.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=34059>

I may be overlooking things, but I do not even see them answering the
question "did adding copy protection increase revenue?"

Reinder
 >> Stay informed about: Copy protection software for Mac OS X? 

On 27/04/2007, xkp wrote in message
<1177661623.539860.216780.DeleteThis@s33g2000prh.googlegroups.com>:

> i would like to know what is the most popular way in the Mac world to
> protect/licensing a commercial software
> What i need a 3rd part software to
> protect/licensing my product (not just the installation process),
> and to rely on it as the only way for licensing it.

Mac software generally doesn't do this. The most common form on
protection of software in the Mac world is to use some form of activating
serial-code. The code will have some form of check-digits in so a random
one won't work. It may also be tied to a particular username typed into
the same dialog, so that the right code with the wrong name won't work.

If the publisher discovers that a certain serial code is being abused they
simply put a block into the next version of the software so that that code
doesn't work.

Simon.
--
http://www.hearsay.demon.co.uk
 >> Stay informed about: Copy protection software for Mac OS X?