Re: USB-Memorystick - serial number

Hi,

J French wrote:

...
I'm also not sure how you will decrement a counter on the memory stick

A memory stick has plenty of room for encrypted files which eg can hold the sticks serial ID, a counter and more.

Personally I'm not keen on 'hardware binding' except when it is to
prevent people pinching the customers data.

On my little used XP-Pro box I have two caddy drives and a whole load
of spare hard disks

Annoyingly when I swap a drive, XP detects the hardware change and
'calls back to momma' which I find annoying - and very worrying.

It depends how restrictive the software is to hardware changes.
Checking only the HD holding the OS should suffice.
One makes a "fingerprint" of many available hardware characteristics. A severe hardware change should be considered as being detected only when substantial changes to vital parts of the pc are made.

I also have a number of machines on one KVM switch, and expect to have
copies of all utility software etc on each machine
- not unreasonable as they are not used simultaneously, I simply need
to test my code under 95/98/2k/XP
- also the machines provide a degree of backup
Your licensing approach would probably work for a lot of users, but it
would be loathed by programmers and by people who upgrade their
machines frequently (and some do).

My target market has typical office hardware and tends to stick to this hardware as long as possible (conservative people :-)). Also they are rather technical ignorant (about pc hardware) and see their pcs as plain working horses needed to get their jobs done (they are not eg gamers hunting for the latest features). No professional programmers among them.

I am more concerned of virtual machines (VMWARE, XEN etc). They are getting cheaper and cheaper (or are free like XEN). They are more and more simple to use. And more and more people learn about them as they get impact for security reasons. Eg surfing with a browser inside a virtual machine is much more safer. So in the future more and more people (the technical ignorant too) will use them. But the software installed on to a virtual machine runs without new installation on any computer, while the software will not recognize that the physical host has changed. Ok, this will kill many licensing systems, I think. So at least I would not be the only one who's licensing system breaks ;-).

Wonder why You do not use them? A typical application for VMs is software testing under different OSes or version of Oses.

Personally I reckon that putting the name of the licenced user on the
screen and all printouts is a way of protecting certain types of
software, - and for other types I would not mind some sort of generic dongle
(which is not legal in the USA I believe) that all my packages
recognize

But that would mean that the dongle is present when the software runs? This would bother me. A dongle can get lost or damaged. Then being able to use the software would stop immediately. With my approach the user has plenty of time to get a new one.

Also a dongle that has to be present when the software runs eats up ressources. Lets say the dongle is a CD (which can have licensing info on it). So whenever I use the software, one CD-drive would be blocked.
Or I want to use the software and then: hey, where is that dongle? Searching starts ;-)

--
Ulrich Korndoerfer

VB tips, helpers, solutions -> http://www.proSource.de/Downloads/

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