Home Original page

Selling Python Software

Erik Max Francis max at alcyone.com
Mon Nov 3 15:39:16 EST 2003 
"John J. Lee" wrote:

> Whie this is all true, you seem to put undue emphasis on the fact that
> it's always *possible* to decompile stuff.  Isn't the point you make
> in your last sentence actually crucial here?  The game is to make your
> opponent (customer ;-) incur more expense in decompiling it than it
> would cost to just go ahead and pay you, is it not?  And yeah, you
> also have to take into account how much it costs you to come up with
> the protection scheme, of course.

The problem here is that it is almost certain that the efforts of
dedicated crackers will be far greater than anything you can come up
with.  If someone really wants to crack your program, they will be able
to do so, and there's not much you can do to stop them.  Furthermore, in
some senses the monetary analogy, though useful, is flawed.  There are
plenty of crackers who simply _will not pay you_ no matter what happens,
even if they fail to compromise your copy protection scheme.  And, if
they fail, they may pass it on to friends who are more experience than
they are, and the fruits of that labor will be shared among the cracker
community.

In essence the battle isn't one against many -- you vs. an individual
cracker -- it's one against many -- you vs. an entire community of
crackers -- and you're hopelessly outnumbered.  Any amount of effort
you're willing to spend to come up with a sophisticated copy protection
scheme can be easily matched by a group of crackers if they so desire. 
Of course this brings up issues of how widely distributed and appealing
your application is, but the bottom line here is that this is a battle
you cannot win -- you simply hope you to avoid the fight in the first
place.

Most copy protection schemes these days, such as they are, are intended
to discourage casual violations.  Things like requiring a serial number
or the right CD in the drive are usually considered fairly good common
ground solutions, because they're well-known territory and the average
customer won't be put off too much by them.

-- 
   Erik Max Francis && max at alcyone.com && http://www.alcyone.com/max/
 __ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && &tSftDotIotE
/  \ Exercise is wonderful.  I could sit and watch it all day.
\__/  Louis Wu
More information about the Python-list mailing list