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Serial Numbers and Licensing Kits

Someone suggested on cocoa-dev the other day that OS developers should include licensing kits in their OSes so that developers don't have to "roll their own," often relying on "bad" things like the MAC address of the ethernet port or the hardware's serial number.

The downside to that, of course, is that if someone cracks the licensing kit, it follows that any software using that licensing kit becomes cracked at the same time. Sure, it may take ten times longer to crack a kit than it may take to crack the toughest apps out there, but if cracking that kit yields access to twenty apps, the time was obviously well spent (for a cracker).

Freshly Squeezed Software continues to take the approach that we'll develop reasonably secure licensing methods. We don't spend inordinate amounts of time trying to thwart the few who might crack our software. We realize that, odds are, they're not looking to use our software, but merely delight in the challenge of cracking it.

In short, we adopt a very thin licensing structure that - we hope - simply encourages the honest people to pay. That's all we believe you can hope for, because as licensing methods become more severe, the risk of pissing off real customers becomes increasingly severe.

2 Responses to "Serial Numbers and Licensing Kits"

  1. That's cool. Our philosophy is pretty much the same. Don't treat users like criminals. The licensing system should be enough so that the honest people can stay honest, but beyond that it's wasted time.

  2. Please send me the serial of Ulead Video Studio 7 and P.C. Cillin 2003

    I 'll be thanking you