On Sat, 2007-03-24 at 13:30 -0500, Olin Lathrop wrote:
> Herbert Graf wrote:
> > Again, people can do whatever they want with their software, I'm just
> > stating my view on the subject to help them decide on whether they
> > should waste their time on these things.
> 
> OK, but what you want has a cost, and in a perfect capitalistic system that
> gets passed on in the price of a product.  Let's say there's a piece of
> software out there that you would like 3 people at your organization to use
> unpredictably for up to a few hours at a time about 3 times/week.  The
> software vendor has spent considerable effort to produce some features you
> really want that are either not available or considerably more clumsy in
> competetive products.  What if there were different prices for different
> levels of protection:
> 
> $50 - Hardware USB dongle that looks like a small thumb drive.  You download
> the software for free or buy the CD for minimal duplication charge, but the
> dongle is what you're buying.  The dongle must be plugged into the USB the
> whole time the software is running.
> 
> $70 - One time web registration so the copy on your computer is node-locked.
> The vendor states up front that the license becomes invalid if you change
> motherboards or possibly reformat the boot drive.  The registration can be
> done online if you have internet access, or via email or via phone.  Once
> registered, the software runs forever on that machine without any
> interaction with the vendor.
> 
> $150 first, $50 additional - Simple unique key you have to type in.  The key
> is on a sticker on the CD case.  The vendor ships every CD with a different
> key, or you download the software and get a unique key when you pay on the
> web page with a credit card.
> 
> So what would you do?
> 
> #1 - $150.  Buy 3 dongles, totally legal.
> 
> #2 - $50.  Buy 1 dongle and share it, totally legal but inconvenient.
> 
> #3 - $210.  Three node-locked licenses, more convenient than dongles but
> licenses can't be moved to newer machines.  Totally legal.
> 
> #4 - $250.  Three CD-key licenses.  No hassle, can be easily moved, totally
> legal.
> 
> #5 - $150.  One CD-key licesnse and use it on all three machines.
> 
> #6 - $0.  Use a CD-key you found on the web.  You weren't really looking to
> do this, but you ran accross it accidentally and there it is.  Who's ever
> going to know?
> 
> #7 - something else?
> 
> Let's further say the vendor has reasonably accurately adjusted the prices
> to cover the loss from theft of each of the license types.  This is
> hypothetical, so let's not argue the vendor got it wrong.  I'm asking about
> your reaction to such a pricing/licensing scheme.

Personally? #7 - I would seek another vendor. The vendor is treating me
like a criminal, asking me to "pay them off" to get them to stop
treating me like a criminal, so I'd go elsewhere.

On top of this they've already wasted the money developing the dongle,
so that effort is in the price of the software, whether I go for a
"dongle" license or not.

I have a feeling that a person CAN'T understand this issue until they've
been impacted by it. Dongles/activation seem SO simple on paper, and
99.5% of the time there are zero problems. However, it's when something
DOES go wrong that things go down the crapper.

I HATE wasting my time figuring out compiler bugs. Wasting time because
of licensing issues like this are 10 times worse then trying to figure
out compiler bugs in my book. Why? Because bugs in software are not (I
would assume) put into the product purposely. These sorts of protections
ARE put in purposely to punish people trying to do something wrong,
instead more often then not they punish the people PAYING you for your
software, and the vendors KNOW (or SHOULD know) that it will hurt their
customers. 

Don't get me wrong, software vendors have a hard choice to make, what's
the better solution:
- kill sales, piss off customers but pretty much ensure you're not at
all pirated
- loose sales that probably would have never BEEN a sale, don't piss off
your customers

It seems simple, but it's not. I'm just trying to ensure that any
software vendor here understands what these issues look like to the
paying customer treated like a criminal and wasting hundreds of hours
solving issues that should, in my opinion, not be there at all.

TTYL

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