Application Licensing (for honest folk)

Any common wisdom on reasonable approaches to lisencing a VB App written for the medical profession.

I amm assuming that by and large, the potential customers are honest folk who are not adept "hackers". I would consider even the simple changing of the system date to start the app then changing it back after it is started a "hack".

I have some ideas which all end up relying on an individualised license file (probably just a small dll) which require the user to run a license app on their machine, call a support centre to give them the auto-generated code, which the support staff use to generate a license file which is then emailed.

The problem is: It's all sounds a bit too reminiscent of *some* programs that generally everyone hates.

I am certain that some of the experience developers out there have a few ideas, and I'll bet there are even custom controls I can hook into that do it for me!

Any clues are welcome. Any advertising of your own modules is also welcome. I'm in the market :)

Cheers
Paul Lewis
[email protected]

I've heard of a Control called ActiveLock which will Lock an App after a certian number of days.

About the licensing, you could hide the information in the
Registry with many other keys that are similar to it. For example.

FFDNBBGFBGFBr5ty54bfgH
GHFDG$TWHTHTBGH^TY%YGF
FGFG$ETERGRTTEGRGFDGFD
GDRG%EYEHGHGHGHDHGFDGS

The more you add, the moe hidden and confusing it will be to the hacker. But This solution may not be the best because it uses a lot of Registry sapce.

Here is the site if you want to Download ActiveLock. It's Freeware.

http://www.activelock.com/

Yeah we trialed mvBase and it work ok, until we had to reload to a busted server. Needed another friggin licence number.......we canned the product after that.

Just a thought really, am going to have a look at Meg's Control, though probably want bother. People are more than happy paying us a maintenance agreement. If they ring for advice and are not a listed customer on our database...they are out of luck....

I will follow up on MegaTron's link to the freeware control. I take it form Jethro's reply that the mvBase = activelock?

Ultimately, nothing would stop hacking if the app became "mainstream", so I guess the secret to success is to stay humble and not sell 1,000,000 copies right?

Shouldn't be a problem :)

If I discover anything more relating to this topic I will post here as my search on the froum found only one similar topic which related to discovering the hard disk serial number (the format one, not the printed one) to use it as a pseudo "unique-identifier" for the machine.

If anyone else has suggestions, feel free to reply still as I haven't started any coding as yet :)

Cheers again

Paul Lewis

It is an Nt version of Pick. Was using as an example of how some companies licensing goes over the top and causes loss of sales of that product.

Meg's control is something different....