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Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

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Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#31

Post by metaobserver »

ddevault wrote: post #11
koolba wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s plenty of reason for end user software to be closed source. The biggest one is so that it can exist. Plenty of software would not be written if someone was not paid to do it. And plenty of those would not be paid if the source was available. If you disagree, vote with your wallet.

No one is entitled to a business model. If you can't exist without being ethically sound, then you can't exist - period. Capitalism is not a replacement for ethics. And in any case: you can sell open-source software.

No one is entitled to free software and should not expect others to slave off and give away fruits of their hard work for free. This entitled communist mentality is unethical.

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#32

Post by looping__lui »

Personally I found LimeLM offering a pretty amazing and sophisticated product at very decent prices. Personally, I would never want to suffer the pain of keeping licensing servers running etc. :-)

In my experience, software licensing will just “get rid of the casual piracy” - but I could never see not having a licensing solution in software work for business...

Beyond protecting software I found it similarly necessary to take down illegal software copies. There are automated tools for that luckily.

Yeah, your software will be cracked sooner or later. But it is not all black and white and there are now really great sophisticated solutions out there that minimize the frustration for paying customers whilst also protecting your IP...

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#33

Post by freedomben »

koolba wrote: post #10
ddevault wrote: post #9

It is unethical for end-user software to be closed source, and this project is wrong for enabling this.

There’s plenty of reason for end user software to be closed source. The biggest one is so that it can exist. Plenty of software would not be written if someone was not paid to do it. And plenty of those would not be paid if the source was available. If you disagree, vote with your wallet.

Minor nit, open source != free as in beer. In FSF philosophy it's not wrong to charge money. It is wrong not to include the source with the customer's purchase.

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#34

Post by ddevault »

metaobserver wrote: post #31
ddevault wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is entitled to a business model. If you can't exist without being ethically sound, then you can't exist - period. Capitalism is not a replacement for ethics. And in any case: you can sell open-source software.

No one is entitled to free software and should not expect others to slave off and give away fruits of their hard work for free. This entitled communist mentality is unethical.

It's my computer, not yours. If you want to run software on it, I get to see the source code, that's the deal. We could agree that I can't use your software under these terms, but this would exploit those who don't understand the value of the source code. This is how spyware is born. If it runs on my machine, it's open source, or it's bunk.

And, once again, you can sell open source software.

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#35

Post by looping__lui »

huhtenberg wrote: post #20

No to be harsh, but this is largely useless. The biggest issues with in-app licensing is (1) Binding licensing to the machine (or the user!) (2) Making sure that your licensing check can't be NOP'ed by a l33r haxxor within 5 minutes of the release. Tangential to that is (3) which is an ability to tolerate minor changed to the machine and OS reinstalls without invalidating the license. (1) and (3) aren't hard to solve…

Not sure whether I would agree that (1) and (3) aren’t hard. I recommend checking out LimeLM with the blogs and the (very informative!) forum.

Weirdly enough I would rank “make sure that the Antivirus software solutions do not go randomly crazy on your software protection” rather high (despite certificates and whitelisting). So I would wholeheartedly agree with your summary statement :-)

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#36

Post by mwcampbell »

ddevault wrote: post #29
mwcampbell wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a very simplistic view of ethics. Most things are not that black and white. Proprietary licensing is the most successful funding model we've found so far for software. And that funding doesn't just make some people rich (though it certainly does that); it also pays for lots of developers to do things that often don't get done in less well-funded projects. Yes, some vendors abuse the power that propriet…

I reject any argument which justifies behavior because it makes someone money that they otherwise might not. Captalism does not justify a lack of ethics.

I think you might have misunderstood my argument. My main argument is that the money from selling proprietary licenses also pays lots of developers to work on important things, which they wouldn't (often couldn't) do if they weren't getting paid for it. So the users of the software are better off because the developers were able to do important work and get paid for it. And that was only possible because the vendor could be highly confident of getting enough return on its investment to justify paying those developers. And the vendor could only get such a return on its investment because it's selling proprietary licenses, as opposed to selling an auxiliary service (which often leads to misaligned incentives for end-user software) or begging for donations.

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#37

Post by rsp1984 »

huhtenberg wrote: post #20

No to be harsh, but this is largely useless. The biggest issues with in-app licensing is (1) Binding licensing to the machine (or the user!) (2) Making sure that your licensing check can't be NOP'ed by a l33r haxxor within 5 minutes of the release. Tangential to that is (3) which is an ability to tolerate minor changed to the machine and OS reinstalls without invalidating the license. (1) and (3) aren't hard to solve…

True, but note that in many cases the goal is not absolute security but rather making it as inconvenient as possible for someone to circumvent the licensing.

In some cases the licensing security is even weak by design, e.g. Windows 95 or the early AutoCAD. This is desirable when the size of the userbase itself is of value (which is actually true for a lot of software!).

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#38

Post by ddevault »

DrJokepu wrote: post #17
ddevault wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is entitled to a business model. If you can't exist without being ethically sound, then you can't exist - period. Capitalism is not a replacement for ethics. And in any case: you can sell open-source software.

Nobody is entitled to my labor either.

Correct. But we are entitled to the source code for programs which run on our computers, or is paid for by our taxes.

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#39

Post by ddevault »

mwcampbell wrote: post #36
ddevault wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I reject any argument which justifies behavior because it makes someone money that they otherwise might not. Captalism does not justify a lack of ethics.

I think you might have misunderstood my argument. My main argument is that the money from selling proprietary licenses also pays lots of developers to work on important things, which they wouldn't (often couldn't) do if they weren't getting paid for it. So the users of the software are better off because the developers were able to do important work and get paid for it. And that was only possible because the vendor c…

Don't forget that (and this has been mentioned four times now in this thread) you can sell open source software. No need to beg for donations. Charge for the software and for the source code.

Re: Show HN: Add license key verification to your apps

#40

Post by jayshua »

ddevault wrote: post #34
metaobserver wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one is entitled to free software and should not expect others to slave off and give away fruits of their hard work for free. This entitled communist mentality is unethical.

It's my computer, not yours. If you want to run software on it, I get to see the source code, that's the deal. We could agree that I can't use your software under these terms, but this would exploit those who don't understand the value of the source code. This is how spyware is born. If it runs on my machine, it's open source, or it's bunk. And, once again, you can sell open source software .

If two people, in full understanding of the value of source code, both decide for one to provide a proprietary closed-source software and the other to run it in exchange for money - is it still unethical?
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