MANAGER@SKIDMORE.BITNET (Leo Geoffrion) (07/01/88)
>a friend of mine has a problem with his software. He wants to protect it >against using without having his licence. I'm working in a research >institute and therefore not involved in working with these mechanisms... > ( discussion of options followed here... ) (FLAME ON) Please tell your friend to forget it! Protecting VAX software makes little sense. I suggest that your friend take his/her lessons from the experiences of the microcomputer world. Specifically: 1. Protecting software only angers the honest customers, who sooner or later get stung by the protection scheme. 2. Any dishonest system manager will quickly devise a scheme to defeat the protection. The micro world is full of well-known "protection crackers". 3 VAX owners are usually institutions, not individuals. In my experience institutions tend to be more honest than individuals (probably because they make better targets for lawsuits). 4. Previous INFO-VAX discussion on this topic has shown that there is no such serial number that is reliably available. For example, when DEC replaces my sick cpu board, the hardware serial no. would then change. Does that mean my software will break???!!! Finally, if he/she is determined to implement some form of licence protection, please examine the license management module that is being introduced in VMS5. Then, at least, one standard module will serve all software, instead of each developer implementing a unique protection scheme. As a matter of policy, I would purchase this person's software ONLY if I cannot obtain comparable nonprotected software from another source. At a time when most microcomputer vendors are recognizing that software protection is a futile practice, it's very depressing to see how developers of the larger systems are repeating their folly.