>A similar issue was raised late last year at the Indian Masters in
>Delhi, India... Their C compiler C18 has a 60 day limit after which it
>loses some optimisation and features. Somebody pointed out you could
>keep the compiler full-featured after 60 days if you changed the PC's
>system clock to point back. The Microchip engineer didn't have anything
>to say about this and passed it over. It seemed he knew about this
>protection scheme failure. Which means Microchip knows about it, and
>since they haven't done anything to improve the protection so far, they
>don't mind the compiler getting 'cracked' this way.

Or just re-installing it - or does this not work anymore? Besides which 
there is not a lot of work involved in identifying how it knows it is the 
demo one, and making it so that it accepts a registered update.

>So maybe Microchip doesn't really mind cloning of its programmers, or
>that its software protection being bypassed this way. They are in the
>business of selling microcontrollers and maybe believe that giving away
>free/cheap software, easy-to-clone programmers helps the sales of these
>microcontrollers.

The simple protection of the C18 compiler suggests they are happy put the 
effort into developing tools that help sell more chips, and that customers 
are happy to evaluate and purchase such tools, but they are not going to put 
a lot of time into attempting to stop hackers cracking any protection 
scheme, as this is not the primary income stream, and the tools are only 
useful for use on what is their main income stream.

If they can make some income out of the secondary stream of tools, then 
fine, that supports the development of the tools, and if hackers bypass the 
protection then they are probably going to use the tool on chips that form 
the main income stream, but if they don't then microchip have lost nothing. 

-- 
http://www.piclist.com PIC/SX FAQ & list archive
View/change your membership options at
http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/piclist