richard@pnet02.CTS.COM (Richard Sexton) (07/22/87)
Ah yes. We have those little suckers on Apollos. "Node ID's" they are called.
Our users are about to attack us with blunt instruments, because they are SUCH
A PAIN IN THE *SS.
To be honest, yes, they probably do prevent some software theft, but the kind
of customers we get are the law enforcement agencies themselve, and aerospace
companies, who seem to have unlimited budgets.
The problems are: when you upgrade your apollo to a newer or faster one, you
have to wait for the software vendor to get you a new copy. sigh.
Or if you have a single user license, and you want to run your software on
anothe node (in the same network) you cant.
Of they move you to a different office (and this is the good one), they have
to move the machine as well, beacuse THATS THE ONE THE SOFTWARE WORKS WITH.
Our users have made it clear that this is behavior up with which they will not
put, and we are listening very seriously.
No, sorry guys, ID ROMS (or pals, whatever) are NO harder to crack than those
stupid dongle thingies.
You cant MAKE somebody not bootleg a program. You might be able to get him to
NOT WANT TO bootleg it, by offering some service above and beyond what the
program does, ie. free updates, or a picture library in the case of Dpaint, or
new fonts in the case of type composition programs. This would work especially
well for a program that you could produce works of art (or whatever) that you
could send in to the publisher, who could then freely distribute them to PAID
up customers. Yes, they will get pirated, BUT, you could only submit stuff if
you are a paid up customer. In that case, they might think its worth buying a
legit copy just to get ones "name up in lights" as it were. Sure, they could
get a friend to submit it, who owns a legit copy, but whose name goes on it.
The guy with the legit copy, not the guy who did the work.
Just an idea...
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