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I have a discussion point about Codegear's licensing.
Delphi 2009 is sold (more correct: licensed) under two different types of licence:
Commercial license
Academic license
The Commercial license (full and upgrade) is much more expensive than the academic one!
The commercial license has the drawback of the higher price, but its advantage is that commercial applications can be made.
The acedemic licence has the advantage of the low price, but there is a catch: you have to prove that you are a scholar, student or a teacher! Or else you won't obtain your license! The non-commercial nature of this license is a non-issue!
I'd like to see a third one:
-- Non-Commercial license
This license should be as low in price or somewhat higher and the license cannot be used commercially. The license should be tied to the person who purchased it like the already existing types of license.
Does this license have advantages:
Hobbyists have access to Delphi, C++ Builder and other Codegear software.
Illegal usage might be decreasing due to the more affordable pricing.
It's an ideal license for creating and maintaining opensource software with the latest Delphi.
What do you think about this matter?
Turbo Delphi is free to use.
What do you think about this matter?
1) Open Source is commercial. You can sell open source software.
2) Hobbyists can sell software too... and I can't see why hobbiysts are willingly to spend lots of dollars for a camera, a guitar, a bike, whatever you like but can't spend $450 for an IDE - just because you can't copy a camera or a bike??
3) Most people would buy the "non-commercial" version and develop commercial software anyway - how could CodeGear track it? Tracking costs money, and can offset any earning.
4) Illegal usage won't decrease but for 3) - people using illegal software don't like to pay even $30.
There previously was a Personal license that fit that niche. Also the Turbo and Turbo Explorer versions fit that niche. The issue is there are 4 groups:
Buys based on features first, price second (enterprise, etc.)
Buys on price not features - needs to be cheap, preferably free (hobbiest, etc.)
Only for free, with no qualms about licensing (pirates.)
The 3rd group is characterized by the fact the pirate the Architect version when they are only using features in the Professional version (or free version if one existed). They will never convert to a paying customer, although may convert to a free version if it has all the features they want (although unlikely.)
The issue with trying to maximize the 2nd group (turn all of them into customers) is you don't want to move people from the 1st group. If someone is buying based on features, and you offer a lower featured version for less money, they may be happy with that version and just buy it. Why not save money?
Non-Commercial is too nebulous of a license as has been pointed out by others. If you cripple the features too much then it is a wasted effort to make the offer since no one will want it and reflect poorly on the professional version. The only thing that would work is a nag-screen, but that would be really annoying too, and by the very nature of the users would be easily bypassed.
So the bottom line is the money that keeps a company afloat is in maximizing the 1st group. Attempting to appease the 2nd and 3rd groups can actually result in lost money. Although I agree that if they want to target more hobbiests then they really need a free / low-cost offering (an updated Turbo and Turbo Explorer).
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I'm having some trouble recently with the open source licenses. I started to feel like if they are somehow tricky! So, I'm just asking about the rights, attribution and so on..
Know, if I for example used a Ruby Gem, licensed under GPL, I install the gem, use it, my web app works! But there is no referring to the Gem, how is behind it, its license. I can't just believe that I have to include those for every gem I'm using. Do I have to? Or can I just use it silently?
So, a website with Rails (MIT), some GPL ruby gems, and so on, what should I include publicly? I think I'm not going to modify the source code of any of those gems.. Yeah, and if I have to attribute in my web pages, do I have to link to the licenses or even worse distribute my source code under the same license?
Also, if I found a tutorial or something like that that is licensed under Creative Commons BY-NC, should I distribute my whole work or put it under the same license, if I wasn't going to run them outside my own server? What if I wanted to distribute my software, which used ideas (and modified code) from the tutorial?
What about using formulas, which are more general than being owned? One-liner commands from stackoverflow when a gem doesn't install - Should I attribute that I used that to install the gem?! I think of course not, but just asking to make sure of the whole thing..
A website is normally the output of a program. Like you save a text-document with your word processor in disk, the document itself does not fall under the reciprocal license of the proprietary word processor (MS Word) or the reciprocal and permissive licenses of the free software word processor (Open or Libre Office Writer).
Only in case you create and distribute derivative or combined works (e.g. packaging multiple programs together in one package) you need to care about the licenses.
That for sure always depends on the concrete things you do. You need to document these concrete things, then go to your lawyer and then find out for the stuff you exactly do if and how copyright is in effect and based on the licenses used and if in effect, which steps you need to do.
Here on SO we are all only software developers (or if lawyers, not your lawyer) so we can not give you any legal support.
Usually stuff about licences can be a little confusing with open source software being released under different licences and usually the license documentation is usually written in lawyer jargon which proves difficult to understand for a lot of people.
Luckily this kind of question has been asked alot of times in SO. Just look at the licensing tag and order the questions by votes and you should find a few questions that pretty much answer your questions. In particular look at this question.
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I am looking a tool for protect and licensing my commercial software, Ideally must provide an SDK compatible with Delphi 7-2010, support AES encryption, Keys generator and capacity to create trial editions of my application.
I am currently evaluating ICE License. Someone has experience with this software?
Here's my list of software protection solutions. I'm looking at switching from ASProtect to another protection so I'm also in the process of analyzing most of these programs:
Themida (Oreans)
http://www.oreans.com/products.php
There are unpacking tutorials for all the versions of Themida. There is however the possibility of requesting "custom" builds which might help avoid this.
Code Virtualizer (Oreans)
http://www.oreans.com/products.php
Allows to protect specific parts of the application with a Virtual Machine. A cracker on a forum said he "made a CodeUnvirtualizer to fully convert Virtual Opcodes to Assembler Language".
EXECryptor
Very difficult to unpack. GUI does not work under Vista. Appears to no longer be developed.
ASProtect
Small protection overhead. Appears to no longer be developed.
TTProtect - $179 / $259
13 MB download. Chinese developer. Adds about xxx overhead to the exe.
http://www.ttprotect.com/en/index.htm
VMProtect - $159 / $319 (now $199/$399)
http://www.vmprotect.ru/
10 MB download. Russian developer. Seems to be updated frequently. Supports 32 and 64-bit. Uncrackable according with one exetools post, but there seems to be an unpacking tutorial already.
Enigma Protect - $149
http://enigmaprotector.com/en/home.html
7 MB download. Russian developer. Regarded as very difficult to crack. Adds about xxx overhead to the exe.
NoobyProtect - $289
http://www.safengine.com/
10.5 MB download. Chinese developer. Regarded as very difficult to crack. Adds about 1.5 MB overhead to the exe.
ZProtect - $179
http://www.peguard.com
RLPack
http://www.reversinglabs.com/products/RLPack.php
KeyGen already available.
One thing to note is that the more protection options you enable on the software protector, the bigger the possibility of the protected file being flagged by an anti-virus as a false-positive. For example, on Themida, checking the option to encrypt the file, will most likely create a few false-positives by a few anti-virus programs.
I'll update this answer once I get more replies from a hackers forum where I asked some questions about these tools.
And finally, don't use the build-in serial number/license management of these tools. Although they might be more secure than using your own, you will be tied up to that specific tool. If you decide to change software protection in the future, you will also have to manage all the customer keys transfer to a new system.
Don't bother. It's not worth the hassle. Only a perfect licensing system would actually do you any good, and there's no such thing. And in the age of the Internet, if your system isn't perfect, all it takes is for one person anywhere in the world to produce a crack and upload it somewhere, and anyone who wants a free copy of your program can get it. (And using a pre-existing library just gives them a head start on cracking it.)
If you want people to pay for your software instead of just downloading it, the one and only way to do so is to make your software good enough that people are willing to pay money for it. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.
I have used OnGuard (using the Delphi 2009/2010 source from SongBeamer) along with Lockbox to handle encryption with success. Both are commercial quality libraries and are free to use with full source.
I did once also use IceLicense, but switched to OnGuard/Lockbox which allowed me greater control over the key generation process which we embedded directly into our CRM system.
Of course there is no %100 bullet-proof protection suite, but having some type of protection is better than having nothing.
I worked with WinLicense in Delphi 2009 and Delphi 2010 on Windows XP and Vista. It is a good product with lots of protection options, and customizations. It provides a SDK for developers, and has nice documentation and samples. It also provides a license manager for you. They provide trial download too.
As far as I remember, they offer some customer specific versions too; that means they are willing to provide a custom-built product which is customized according to your needs, but of course that will cost more.
Since WinLicense is a well-known and popular protection suit, many crackers are after it. As you know, the more famous a tool is, the more appealing it is to crackers. But the good thing about Oreans is that they actively monitor underground forums, and provide frequent updates to their products.
So IMHO, if you are supposed to buy a prebuilt protection suite, then you'd better go for WinLicense.
A little late to the post, but check out Marx Software Security (http://www.cryptotech.com) they have a USB device with RSA & AES on chip, with network based license management.
I bought a license for ICE License in 2007. Unfortunatly (as far as I know) the component haven't been updated since June 2007. Back then a Vista compatible version was in the work but never came out of beta. I don't think they updated the component for Delphi 2009 and 2010 yet.
Ionworx is an one man company which might explain the lack of updates and lack of answer to support questions (emailed them 2-3 times since 2007 and never got back to me). They also removed their support forum from their site.
ICE License is better than nothing but I would stay away from this product because the lack of updates & support.
I investigated this a few years ago, and came to the following conclusions:
All copy protection can be broken
Nag screens on load irritate people to the point where they may stop using the product
Random nag screens can interrupt the users work flow to the point where they perceive it to be a reduction in the speed of the application
Set up compiler options, so that you have a version as a demo (perhaps with save functions removed), reduce multi user versions so that only one client can connect at a time (not using, for ex:
if connection=1 then reject
but reducing the viability for multiple connections in code)
Themida has good protection, and I think it built with Delphi too ;-)
if you have a better budget, you can look at winLicense and other tools from same company.
Have a look at this question which is pretty similar, and includes many of the tools.
Take a look at InstallShield. We've been using it for a while ourselves, and it has a lot of capabilities for trial support, licensing, and others. I don't know about key generation off the top of my head as our use doesn't require keys, but there's a lot available to you from them.
AppProtect wraps an EXE or APP file with computer unique password or Serial Number based online activation. QuickLicense is a more comprehensive tool that support all license types (trial, product, subscription, floating, etc.) and support both a wrapping approach or API to apply the license to any kind of software. Both are available from Excel Software at www.excelsoftware.com.
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I'm writing a new project, and I have a choice between using a library that only exists in OSX 10.5 and later (We're on 10.6 now), but makes my life much easier, and using a library from earlier versions, but I have to a lot more of the work myself.
How does one make this decision? How do you balance new/better technology vs customers on old systems?
ETA: does anyone know of a site that compares market share by precentage of a specific OS? Since this is a consumer product, if only 2% of mac users are still on 10.4, that sort of makes my life easy. Similarly, if 25% are still on 10.4... (I know, it's almost guaranteed to be somewhere between...)
Ask your clients - how many are on older versions of the OS?
Can you afford to lose them?
Edit: (following comment)
If you don't know what your target audience is using, you have a problem. You need to get an idea of the magnitude of how many potential customers you will not be able to serve if you go with your new library.
Having said that, shipping is a feature, so if you get the product out much quicker, you can always refactor the code to use the old libraries if you think it will gain many sales.
In general you should base your decisions like that around the interests of your paying customers. You should present the issues to them and the risks involved in each alternative and let them make the decision.
Depending upon your particular application and requirements, I would personally ship this as a major update (i.e. version 2 compared to version 1) and explicitly state that a minimum of OSX 10.5 is required.
You could still support your previous version with bug fixes, just not new features that depend on library X.
Another way to think about it is that if someone is on 10.4, then they likely haven't been an active upgrader / software purchaser for the last 3 years. So the likelihood that they will want to spend money on your software is low.
Additionally, if they really want your software, they'll upgrade to 10.5 or 10.6 and gain loads of other advantages at the same time. While that OS upgrade won't be free, it will come with so many other advantages to the customer, they might not mind.
It's also important to consider how much time and effort it will take to develop your software. If these newer libraries mean that you ship the product months earlier, or with better features, that will also pay off.
As others have said, this really boils down to whether you can afford to lose customers who aren't on 10.5 yet. That said, lots of companies seem to support the two most recent versions of OS X in their new major releases, although older versions are often available for people with older systems.
If software ownership is stable and software vendor is not pushing too hard in phasing out their own obsolete software, then there are no reasons to not support.
The problem is much worse, when vendor is passively aggressive or committed the phasing out: dead download links, dead 3rd party companies, who made the hardware/drivers/compilers/libraries, unobtainable documentation, incompatible media/installer to recover/reinstall the product.
My example: pre-2000 vs 2005, it is nearly impossible to reconstruct say.. the build process of 1 mln lines of 100% saved and mothballed Visual Studio 6.0 projects from year 1999-2001, obtain all 3rd party libraries from the era, prepare proper SDK, platform itself, all patches, make results binary identical. No way.
But it pretty much works for Studio 2005.
You need to talk to both sales and support, and let them judge what the impact will be.
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My trial of Team Foundation Server has expired. Why can't I just install a fresh copy on a different server and use it for another 90 days?
I am using the same source code.
I don't want to do this, but my boss is trying to make me.
Assuming that your employer is wanting you to do this to extend your evaluation period and not to use software against the license terms then you might want to try the utility posted at the bottom of the following post instead:
http://blogs.msdn.com/bharry/archive/2008/01/15/checking-your-tfs-version-and-extending-trials.aspx
TFS doesn't currently migrate well to another TFS instance, so if you were continually moving to a new TFS server every 90-days you wouldn't have a great experience. Also you be in breach of the EULA and therefore committing a form of software piracy under most legal systems.
If you are doing this to extend your trial then the tool above will give you an extra 30 days and if you talk nicely with your local Microsoft rep then you might be able to get a longer extension.
BTW - Microsoft BizSpark is an excellent program run by Microsoft which provides all their dev tools (including TFS) and is designed for cash strapped start-ups. Contact your local Microsoft office if you want to find out more about the program.
Good luck,
Martin.
Apart from this being illegal, I would think the hassle of switching to a new server every 90 days will out weigh the cost of just paying for the software.
So you have 3 choices
pay for the software and get legal
keep switching servers every 90 days
switch to a free open source system (subversion?)
There's a 4th choice: you can go to ALL Microsoft events and hope they give out free licenses to TFS at one of the events :)
Are you using VS Team Edition? This includes TFS Workgroup which is good for up to 5 users without further licensing.
You can do this, but I'm sure there's something in employment regulations (wherever you live) about being coerced to break the law, which is effectively what you'd be doing.
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Currently we have several defect and bug tracking systems, which include Quality Centre and bespoke support systems (both team and company wide). Also we use Microsoft Project - although I haven't seen a task list in months...
But what I find difficult to understand is why our company purchases VSTS and only utilises part of it - we currently use source control, automated overnight builds and team testing functions.
How can our team convince "The Management" to use project task items, defect tracking, reports and process guidance parts of the system? Surely this would save time and money once implemented correctly ?
If you already have the VSTS licenses then why does your team management need to sign off on anything? Start the features amongst your team for small areas and gradually ramp it up. Would you ask management to sign off on which text editor you use?
Management have a basic fear of anything that in any way may disrupt productivity, and rabid adoration for anything that increases productivity at no risk to themselves. Start small and let the results sell themselves.
This is how I've introduced both Unit Testing and Wikis at previous companies. When the results begin to show people quickly want to get involved.
Tell them if they not decide to, then in one hour you start to kill hostages every five minutes 10 at the time...
But more serious do the meeting with management or write some kind of request and show what time consumption it takes to use disintegrated system, and how powerfull and underused newly bought system is, but before do soem analyses if system does really fit all current ne4eds. But be carefull with your words and names,. If it really comes out that company got underused equipmentsoftware which got negative impact on productivity and information flow in company, and it means less of valuable work even heads can fall for this. It all depend how serious is your company in that cases.
Be aware that it would be not quire fluent process to switch frome one soft yo another, people got own habbits and things that they are used to so you will have to do this in some steps which include graduall introducing people to new system