It may be that proprietary software is less viable
How do you define proprietary? Unless it’s open source, is not all software proprietary?
wow there is a lot of stupid in these comments. my sympathy
i find the replies to “Every Mac is the world’s largest hardware dongle.” very funny, thanks. The reason Jeff mentioned that is OSx wont run unless it’s on apple hardware… so like the “key” is in the hardware… just like a dongle…
Funny thing about the Windows validation services. My coworker needed to validate his copy of windows for a developer download. At the time the genuine advantage servers were down, windows validation considered his copy of windows invalid due to the lack of response. Immediately his system crippled itself and he was unable to work from home the rest of the weekend.
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2007/08/25/windows-genuine-advantage-validation-servers-down/
It was a fun weekend. Not.
There is less piracy of Vista because many of those that would pirate an OS cant afford decent graphics cards. 
jk
Dan
It is a mistake to credit Bill Gates with dropping out of Harvard. He did not. He was expelled from Harvard for improperly using the schools computer systems for personal business. He was warned multiple times and eventually expelled. The only evidence …for this is Prof. Fischer. Fischer taught an Intro to Communications class …at Boston College. He was at Harvard during the tenure of Gates and claimed to be personally familiar with the situation involving the library computers.
http://www.pennylicious.com/#comment-183#comment-183
http://neil.franklin.ch/Usenet/alt.folklore.computers/19990222_Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
I agree with the “if the software is delivered digitally” allow us to retrieve our key somehow. I’m going through something similar with an Office 2007 Pro key I can’t find.
well… I can’t believe people are still struggling with licence keys…
free software baby, free software…
To all you folks talkig about “t only runs on Macs so that’s already copy protection” and especially you Jeff with the your"Are you kidding me? Every Mac is the world’s largest hardware dongle"
How is running software A on any specific hardware+software B copyprotection to software A?
I can install my Leopard on as many Macs as i like without it ever failing, same as i could with Tiger and all the other big cats, and even classic Mac OSs before it as long as the hardware is supported. (Windows also only installs on supported hardware, it just supports more hardware) Fact of the matter is my copy of Leopard would install just as fine on my neighbours Mac as on my own, so in effect there is no copy protection.
There’s a lot of folks i would’ve expected a statement like that from, but not you Jeff. that’s very dissapointing and it definately bites into the percieved trustworthyness of your blog. Dont turn in to some OS flamewar inducing blog for stupid people like so many have before you, I expect more from you!
I’ve built an activation system for work. Each cd key had 3 levels of checking:
- Checksums. Every group of digits had its own checksum to detect typing errors.
- HMAC: A larger “validation code” was stored in the key, so if a person just fiddled with the check digits to get all the things to say ok, then we could still check if the key was invalid on the client side. (though since a HMAC is symmetrical, you can reverse engineer it and create valid keys)
- Each key encoded a unique, non-guessable number. So on activation, we check to make sure this number is valid. This is the only measure that actually provides any real promises for security, the other parts trust the client.
I hated doing it though, it really isn’t the sort of thing I want to be spending my time on when I’m at work. I’d much rather be making things that will actually make people happy, rather than making hoops for them to jump through. And now we have to maintain an activation server, and handle the added tech support costs, and all that sort of thing. All this, and I’m still not convinced that it is going to do anything to increase our sales (and no, decreasing the rate of piracy is not the same thing as increasing sales).
Linux
So why, then, do software developers insist on 20+ character
registration keys? It’s ridiculous. Are they planning to sell
licenses to every grain of sand on every beach?
Elliptic curve keys with feature bits inside… 25-digit isn’t too bad anyway if it’s broken into 5x5 groups and you can paste.
Don’t passively-aggressively inform me that “the key you entered
appears to be valid.” Is it? Or isn’t it? What’s the point of unique
registration keys if you can’t be sure? I guess paying customers
can’t be trusted.
There’s two reasons for this: either the real check is done server side (yeah, installer could contact the server I guess), or a quick check is done now and a more thorough check later, as an anti-cracking measure. Not that big of a deal either, imho.
But you do have a very important point wrt. the characters in the serial and the font used for printing, as well as NOT having 5 bloody tab-requiring input fields and no clipboard paste support, grr.
I’m not sure why the big fuss over entering the key every time you MOVE your software to a new computer. By far the bigger hassle is going through the reinstall (now which features did I install last time?) and configuration of the reinstall (how did I set up that feature?). Granted, it does take time to find and enter the key and that time does add up. I have started writing notes about what I have installed and how I have configured it so I have some chance of redoing it later.
"Granted, it does take time to find and enter the key and that time does add up."
It’s when you lose the manual/somebody’s pulled the sticker off that you begin to swear, swear like a trooper.
"I can install my Leopard on as many Macs as i like without it ever failing"
Yes, but each time, you’ve paid Apple for the Mac. Basically, all Mac products you buy now come free with any new Mac you buy.
But woe betide you if you stray from the path of the one true OS. That Leopard won’t roam the jungle of Linux, or the swamp of Windows.
“I’ll choose biased data over no data whatsoever, every time.”
No data means nothing. Biased data is wrong. Often, it’s crucially wrong. Sometimes, it’s perniciously wrong.
Most interesting that MS believes the lack of Vista piracy has more to do with “Genuine Advantage” and not Vista sucking, so no one wants it. If I were them, I would be concerned if people aren’t pirating my software . . .
Hey Now Jeff,
In these days of p2p file sharing key generators, it seems that many apps are so easy to use for free. I wonder the future for this what is the best way to enforce this. As previously stated the honor system isn’t the best option here. @ Michael B the URL registration seemed interesting. How many people reading this have click a generate key button, copied it and pasted it? A metric of the top of my head 95.07%. FYI - I prefer inaccurate data over no data.
Coding Horror Fan,
Catto
Great synopsis, but I’ve got a point to make regarding software piracy in relation to the free market economy: The mere fact that piracy exists means there is a DEMAND for the product! Piracy doesn’t mean people want to pay NOTHING, it means the price is not right.
Software developers should be paid for their work, but I think most of them simply charge too much. How can Microsoft justify charging X dollars for a Windows license (which they can print an infinite number of) when someone in Iran or Venezuela has to pull two FINITE barrels of oil out of the ground to pay for it?
I don’t have all the answers, but I think there needs to be a lot of work done in the Intellectual Property area. It makes everyone crazy including me.
I’ll admit that I’m a strong open source supporter, but I wouldn’t pay for a copy of Microsoft Windows even if it was $1!
Serial numbers don’t work to prevent piracy. Pretty much every single serial-number “protected” application has a keygen, or a list of serial numbers somewhere on the internet (Search for “[app name] serial”, skip past all the viruses and chances are, you’ll find a serial number)
They are also extremely annoying - not so much that I have to type it in when installing, but that I have to keep track of this little bit of paper.
Many times I’ve taken a disc out it’s case (or put a couple of games in one case) and tried to install it somewhere else (i.e not at home), only to realize I don’t have the otherwise pointless manual which contains the serial number…!?
The ironic(?) thing is, if I pirated the game, it wouldn’t be an issue, as there would be a keygen in the disc-image I burned to a DVD - And I can then copy/paste the serial number.
When I moved to Australia for a year, I forgot to bring my Final Cut Studio discs to install on my laptop. Luckily my sister was flying over not long after, so I got her to bring the discs, and what I described as the serial number leaflet. When she arrived, I was handed the discs, and the wrong leaflet - it had a serial number on it, but not the one I needed to install Final Cut - thankfully I was able to phone my parents to read the serial number over the phone, but it’s extremely annoying. Had I downloaded Final Cut, the serial number would have been on the disc, and it wouldn’t have been an issue…
"Microsoft recently stated that the piracy rate of Vista is half that of XP, largely due to improvements in their Windows Genuine Advantage program"
Vista really isn’t hard to pirate, it’s on pretty much every torrent site that will accept it. In fact I have it burned to a disc somewhere - but I don’t actually use it (I installed it, played around for a while, and restored XP).
I imagine a lot of people using it because it was pre-installed on the machine. I don’t know many people who have gone out and bought it, or even downloaded and regularly use it.
If you effectively force people to buy an generally-unwanted product with a new computer, a lot more people are going to be using it legally (from with the new computer) than are downloading it illegally, thus the improvement in pirated to legal users… It’s nothing to do with “better anti-piracy”
Anti piracy methods are only effective (and should only be used to) prevent pirated copies being available within the first day or two of sales. After that, pretty much any game is going to get cracked.
After those few days, you may as well make it as easy for users to buy your software, otherwise you’re going to force them to go down the far more convenient piracy route…
- Ben
There better than a dongle…
“Software developers should be paid for their work, but I think most of them simply charge too much. How can Microsoft justify charging X dollars for a Windows license (which they can print an infinite number of) when someone in Iran or Venezuela has to pull two FINITE barrels of oil out of the ground to pay for it?”
Ah, the old “it’s cheap to copy = it’s cheap to create” fallacy. I can print 1000 copies of Terry Pratchett and Neil Gamain’s “Good Omens” an hour with a cheap printer and MS Word ‘98. I’m relatively certain I couldn’t have written the book.
Remember, when they talk about Gates’ wealth, they don’t mention how much of it is actually tied up in Microsoft.
When you crack Vista, you’re not ripping off Bill Gates. You’re ripping off the hundreds of Software developers who go to work every day at Redmond. Bill will be fine. They will be fired.
And then, as they are better coders than you, with better resumes, they’ll take your job.
“Microsoft recently stated that the piracy rate of Vista is half that of XP, largely due to improvements in their Windows Genuine Advantage program”
Not to mention the spike in people punished due to false positives. Like me, just recently. Made an overnight Linux user out of me. I don’t mind software licensing, or product keys, or even M$ checking to see if the key I’m using has already been used. They need money to keep cranking out mediocre beta-test products to the market.
I mind the fact that they arbitrarily deactivated an OS that I paid money for. And I mind the fact that M$ couldn’t/wouldn’t give me reasonable assurance that they wouldn’t do it again.
Installed Ubuntu that same day, haven’t looked back. There are- and should be- consequences for treating legitimate customers like criminals.
Considering Microsoft’s business model: Make every PC manufactured has a licensee for Windows whether or not Windows is actually installed on that PC. I find it hard to believe that Microsoft really has a problem with piracy with Windows in the Western world.
Microsoft may have a problem in the developing world. However, one of the documents in the Netscape case was a series of memos concerning Microsoft’s market share in China. Reading through these memos, you realize that Microsoft wasn’t concerned with the sales of Microsoft Windows and Office in China, but that not enough people were pirating Microsoft Windows and Office.
At that time at least, it was more important to Microsoft that people in China steal their software, use it, and like it, than not steal it, and get use to something else. As the memos pointed out, sooner or later, the Chinese market would become more legitimate, and all those stolen licenses would be paid for.
I predict that the licensing cost of Windows Vista Home Basic will drop to less than a dollar by the end of next year. As the price of PCs continue to drop, and improvements are made in alternate operating systems, PC makers will find it harder and harder to pay Microsoft for a Windows license. In order to keep Windows as the prime operating system on all PCs, Microsoft will drop the price of Vista Home Basic to almost free to compete with open source alternate operating systems.
Instead, Microsoft will give users the option to upgrade to Windows Vista Premium on line, and offer other on line offers as a way to keep the money rolling in. A few users may figure out a way to game the system to be able to pirate Vista Premium, but without DVDs and CDs of the OS running around, it makes it much harder to “share”. Most users who do upgrade to Vista Premium will be licensees.