JOHNC%CAD2.DECnet@GE-CRD.ARPA.UUCP (02/18/87)
I'd like to add my voice to Mike Porter at U. Delaware (and I hope many others) to say to the person inquiring about copy protection.... "Please DON'T!" Copy protection is _always_ a pain in the proverbial to legitimate users, and _always_ hackable by someone who wants to. Mike P had two examples of problems incurred by system managers dealing with copy protected software. I'd like to add a third. If the protection mechanism depends on CPU id (SID Number) then any ECO (engineering change order) affecting the cpu or cpu upgrade (780 -> 785 for example) will invalidate the copy protection becuase it will change the SID. Some VAX CPUs have unique SIDs, some don't. In addition some CPUs SIDs are partially implemented as DIP switches, furthering the confusion.
JMS@ARIZMIS.BITNET.UUCP (02/18/87)
Go ahead and copy protect your software. Just don't expect any orders from the University of Arizona. Our policy (and the policy of many *large* *real* companies) is that we don't buy copy protected mainframe software. The only packages we have which have this obnoxious, annoying, and USELESS feature are Ingres and S1032, and this was imposed upon the package very recently, at a stage way too late to switch. Joel M Snyder, University of Arizona MIS Department, Tucson.