>I'm still trying to figure out how to protect my time investment. Hi Doug,
FWIW, here are a few random foolesh thoughts on the subject from someone who has never published shareware: * Computer software is basically as vulnerable to unauthorized duplication as are music, video, and virtually anything that can be digitalized. The time one spends designing & programming protection against piracy may be greater than the original time investment in the product if one attempts to design a 100% foolproof method. * One needs to accept the fact that "piracy happens" and determine a) how much is really at stake, and b) how much time one realistically can put into prevention efforts. Do you just need to discourage the casual snooper, or are you trying to defeat a motivated hacker? * I think the best anti-piracy approach is to key the software to a specific computer; however there is no universal way to approach this on all models & platforms. For example, my commercial application is presently designed to run only on Apple iBooks. This allows me encrypt the serial # of the user's iBook in the copy of the app I download or mail to them on CD. The app gets the serial # from Apple System Profiler when it opens and refuses to run if it doesn't match the encrypted #. I think this is about as secure as I can get; however this technique is better applied to limited production commercial software than to shareware. I would like to see RunRev support some built-in function that would return a unique identifier for every cpu supported. * I would suggest that one approach shareware as serendipitous revenue one receives as a supplement to the enjoyment & creative outlet one experiences designing & programming. If one approaches programming as time invested for potential return, one might as well do it on a commercial basis. :{`) -- Rob Cozens, CCW "Where but America can the person who lost the popular vote become President without a coup?" _______________________________________________ use-revolution mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-revolution