Re: How to create a serial number for a software?

On Thu, 10 Jan 2008 18:18:57 -0800, sheperson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx <sheperson@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

[...]
I want my software to generate a code based on the hardware used and
then when the customer enters that code in my web site, the web site
gives a valid serial number which activates the software (or something
like that).
Any help or idea will be appreciated.

Google can find you lots of information. In this newsgroup alone it's been discussed to death, including very recently. Search for things like "license", "copy protection", "obfuscation", "unique id", etc.

The bottom line: what you're talking about is basically the same as Microsoft's "Product Activation" anti-feature, and even they can't get it to work perfectly.

A better approach is to write software that motivates people to want to motivate _you_ to keep writing software by paying you for it, and to provided added value for the cost of the software in the form of customer support, documentation, and other added benefits.

Do not forget: whatever copy protection you incorporate, someone will figure out a way to bypass it. At that point, the only people who could possibly be inconvenienced by the copy protection will be your paying customers (and make no mistake, if you have any significant number of customers, copy protection _will_ inconvenience at least some of your customers).

Pete
.

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