[DXBase] Thinking outloud/Food for thought

2002年11月26日 18:11:04 -0600

Jack,
I saw Courtney's earlier post that mentioned the software piracy of
DXbase issue. It really burns my xxx that we have thieves out there and
while I know it's costly to prosecute, I think you ought to go after
anyone once you have the evidence needed. I've heard of some attorney's
who will do this pro-bono as well. Think they are funded by the
Software Piracy Association.
Anyway, if it were my business, I would take whatever steps you can to
help reduce this. It occurs to me that as long as you distribute the
software on disks or CDs, that the thieves are going to steal it. So
seems to me that as a first step, you gotta stop sending it out on CD. 
There are some pretty good encryption packages out there that allow
people to download and install from the web. I know some of them have
been cracked, but usually they got cracked because the encryption wasn't
implemented as well as it could have been. They usually come in two
flavors:
1. User can download and install but it will only run on the machine
that they install it to. Much like Microsoft XP where it is tied to
hardware and that's that. If user changes major hardware, then they
gotta re-register. Perhaps you could allow a user to run on up to two
machines for one fee, and an additional fee for more than two machines.
Just because someone owns 71 machines doesn't mean they gotta run DXbase
on each one of them... hihi...
2. User can download crippled version and must get a key from you to
unlock all the features. This helps some, but then somebody could just
give the key away to their buddies and your back to having the thieves
steal your work.
In either of these cases, users can download it as often as they want
without additional charge as long as they are registered.
There may be some good reason for objecting to either of the above, but
I can't think of any unless you are the pirate trying to insure that you
can continue to pirate somebody else's work. Again, if it was me, I'd
go with option 1 and let the thieves start spending their money for
DXbase or else go steal someone else's product.
Just my two cents worth of opinion.
By the way, I also saw the comments about dropping upgrade support for
old database formats. It never occured to me but I like this idea too.
If someone opts to skip upgrades, then it's only fair that they pay the
additional cost for their decision. Why should I pay ( indirectly ) for
someone else's decision. I say, support importing from only the
previous version and if somebody needs support for older versions, then
sell them the conversion package. I can't imagine why somebody would
skip any of the last few upgrades anyway. They were crammed with lots
of nice improvements and well worth the few dollars to upgrade. Just
doesn't make sense, but oh well.
de Joe WA6AXE