The Problem with Software Registration

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@N: “XPS 420”

I was comparing 17" laptops - Macbook Pro vs. Dell Precision M6300.

But to your point (and KenW’s), Apple’s got a huge gap in the midrange workstation area. I agree wholeheartedly.

My point was that it’s not always true that Apple is more expensive, comparing (pardon the phrase) apples to apples.

I’m not sure I understand the animosity - surely some competition is a good thing, no?

And before anyone accuses me of being a platform bigot, I’ve used PCs since they hit the market, Windows since the 2.1 days, Linux on and off since god-knows-when, and Macs on and off since they hit the market.

We have packaged software that we sell for Windows - why? It’s where the sales are. We’re doing some investigation into Mac ports, and we’re in the iPhone Beta Dev Program - so, now we’re using some Mac hardware. (Although I made my laptop switch before doing any Mac development.) We’ll continue using the Mac platform - with Windows virtuals - as long as it (a) works, (b) is reasonably cost competitive, and © we can earn a living on it.

(@Sigivald: Glad I’m not the only one out there.)

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I would donate to FileZilla. But not through PayPal. Never.
I donated more than $190 to Linux NTFS recently, just because the developer answered my e-mail with his bank account details.

Living in Europe, I don’t accept that my personal data be processed in the US. A country that legalized torture. Read PayPal terms of use!

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I totally agree about sponsoring your favorite software by donating to the company/developer. But on the other hand I also like the company/developer to “trust the customer”, as Paul Souders mentions.

If you trust your own product and services, count on it your revenue will follow. The world isn’t that bad a place.

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I can’t believe SmartFTP even bothers with a license that you have to keep track of. It makes no sense. It’s essentially operating on the honor system anyway, why even bother with the license file?

You’d think all these guys would get together and open source a purchase registration library they could all share.

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I’m in the same boat. I jumped through hoops to buy Handy Backup and every time I format or upgrade I have to contact them to reacquire a new key. As I do that sort of thing often it’s annoying.

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@Rudolf_the_Red : tried typing ftp://sitename into the K file manager and seems to open up a nice drag and drop folder view with image thumbnails and everything… works just like any local folder.

i.e. this functionality is built in to the file manager (as it is at least partially in Windows?) so you don’t need an separate FTP client program at all …? This is done via KIO for HTTP, FTP, SMB, SSH, FISH, SVN, TAR etc … all though one interface…

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@T.E.D.:
How many people who use open source as part of their ‘stack’ are
actually a) capable and b) prepared to seriously pick up their
abandoned pet project

Free Software worst case: You have to pay someone else to do it for you.
Proprietary Software worst case: It can’t be done at any price.
If my business was on the line, I know which problem I’d rather have.

Well, maybe me too, in that scenario - but my point still stands - how many people using open source are using it because they are genuinely able/likely to pick up and work with the source if the project ever dies? Not just the gifted few developers (of which we will have a disproportionate number posting on here, almost by definition) - but the ‘great unwashed’ for whom oss is possibly an easy way to get a short-term fix at no cost to themselves?

Yes, I know there are a bunch of killer developers out there just waiting to take ‘Project Z’ and make it their own, helping to make the world a better place in the process - but if we’re not talking ideals here, and we’re not talking some speculative idealised fantasy world, I wonder how many ‘real world’ 9-5 developers would actually take an oss project and make significant changes to it themselves…?

Time and time again I know what the correct answer to any given problem is, in terms of using open source software, open standards, redistributable libraries etc - and then I have to balance that with the ‘Planet Earth’ realities, in which it’s often hard to justify a free choice to a for-profit business board, and it’s hard to defend a ‘free’ choice at 3 in the morning when you need some support and there’s no-one around, and it’s hard to explain why by going free it meant you might wait a week for an answer… all things that can (and often are) wrong with for-profit software too - but increasingly I hear this whole mantra about how oss gives you the ability to change the program yourself (often from developers who would be incapable of doing just that, or who work for companies who would never dream of paying their staff to do such a thing to then see the results given away for free again, in compliance with the GPL etc) or you get the whole thing about how it gives you community support (which again is no comfort at 3am when you basically decide that you’d much rather have paid someone to make sure they were answering your urgent calls, than to submit posts to a forum and await someone to take pity on you).

I don’t doubt for a moment that the oss route is purer, and probably more internally ‘rewarding’, but I do seriously doubt just how many developers have actually ever picked up an abandoned oss project that their company relied upon, and then moved it forward, and then given it back to the community afterwards.

I’m not saying paid-for software is better (often it isn’t) - I’m just saying I don’t buy the theory that legions of programmers out there will be hacking away at ‘MyAwesomeCVSClone’ on Sourceforge when the founding fathers of it finally get bored, in doing so passing-back all the changes that they made to the other users of MyAwesomeCVSClone around the world. I’m sure it /does/ happen - but I think it’s often used as a justification much more than it’s actually done as practise

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Jeff, you should stop blurring out the numbers in your picture; they’re easily reconstructible:

http://dheera.net/projects/blur.php

Simple solution: just black them completely.

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Jeff how about a discussion about software updates…
Registration and then … what about all the updates software distributors want? When I log in, sometimes for just a quick use, almost every time something wants to be updated, often more than one at a time. It’s very annoying. Some want to do it while in the middle of using it like MS Media player or adobe. Often it is security SW or OS SW. Then it’s a roll of dice as to whether a restart or reboot is required. Sometimes, I wonder who’s computer I am using. Their’s or mine. It is getting worse everyday with every new or old product. I say enough already. I know I can turn some of the automatic stuff off and I do, but it is often just replaced with a reminder, again and again. Grrrr…

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This is so true. I wish a donate system existed for musicians and artists.

Even better would be one that donates to each aspect of a film, eg if you liked the directing better than the music etc, then a larger cut would go to the director, etc.

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I recently saw this pain with my favorite PHP editing software Active State’s Komodo. I just paid for it last year, but got a new PC. The license link no longer works because they have a “new” version. That new version no longer provides a commercial vs. home user, so my “upgrade” cost is $250, compared to $45 I paid last year.

So I figure I would try the trial after an email from them told me that there was nothing I could do to use the old version.

Did I notice a big difference? Not really, in fact the extra features make my life worst by trying to guess what text I need, when most of the time it is not right, and I have to delete it. Fun!

I got my revenge though… it is a 21-day trial and every 14-20 days for the last few months they have released a new version. I update my software, and presto, my trial is restarted automatically. No idea why, but I do not feel that sorry for them at this point.

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The worst registration I’ve ever run into is Zbrush. Their software bangs the server every time you start the program. It has a nasty fit if it can’t talk to the server or if your key is invalid because you’ve moved it to another machine. What makes it worse is that once you have an invalid key, it is almost impossible to enter in another one.

The software doesn’t even cost that much, and they have a crazy anti-theft scheme.

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I didn’t find registering SmartFTP that bad, but I guess I just assume that online buying from anywhere other than Amazon is going to take a few minutes. And the time that SmartFTP has saved me over using FileZilla, or WS-FTP, or any of the others I tried was well worth the time and money.

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+1 for 7-Zip. IMO, this handy little tool is easier to use than winRAR and light years more flexible than WinZIP. The install is simple, there is no ‘Registration’ option. For all this, I would gladly donate $40, and perhaps a Labrador puppy.

For all its woes, Microsoft has done a decent job with its activation setup. Vista volume licensing could use better documentation, but once you learn how to line up the hoops just right, it goes pretty painlessly for additional activations.

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I keep all my software license keys in a Word document. I should probably convert that to an Access database to make it easier to search.

The only open source software I would consider studying and working to improve are web applications. Customizing ecommerce shopping carts is highly profitable and steady work. Currently I mostly experiment with widgets although I would be interested in contributing to a decent social networking web application.

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  1. Profit!

Don’t you watch South Park? :wink:

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My $.02…

  1. In many cases open source apps are dodgier than their commercial equivalents, but for tools that developers use they’re generally at least as good–if not better-- than their commercial counterparts. (It’s the “eating your own dog food” effect.) So purchasing development tools or system utilities seems pointless.

  2. There is a common argument that if I purchase a CD I should have the right to listen to the songs on that CD whenever I want, where ever I want, and on any device I want. Legally that’s not true, but every attempt to lock the tracks down (except iTunes) has been met with stiff resistance. Why should people feel different about the software they purchase? Once I pay for the software I want a single installation file that I can use on any machine at any time. There are legitimate reasons why I might want to use my software on someone else’s computer. Registration keys are tolerable, but activation is absolutely unacceptable.

  3. Most of this software is cheap. If I need to buy a second copy to reduce my hassle factor, then either I’m going to bail entirely and look for free alternatives, or I’m going to pony up $50-$100 for a second copy. I’m not sure driving customers to look for alternatives is worth the small amount of incremental revenue it might generate. (The music industry is once again a good model for how to do this very badly.)

  4. I’m not convinced that basing a business on selling development utilities is a good idea. If your product is useful, you’ll be forced to compete against products that are a) just as good, b) completely free, c) and never die or have support end or don’t get upgraded to the newest version of the OS, etc. Buying software like this isn’t necessarily good for the software industry–it just keeps a bad business model on life support.

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The real question is why your operating system doesn’t come with decent support for FTP.

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@Jan Goyvaerts: Can we have further details about Jeff’s past software purchases, and the domains he holds email accounts with, please? :wink:

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“Yes, a few developers release ‘pro’ or ‘enhanced’ versions, but generally the transaction is bone simple: ‘to run our software without limitations you need to buy a magic number.’”

OTOH, there are illicit serial keys all over the place. There are even fancy Mac programs designed solely to manage sets of them, so they can be distributed monthly so people have the latest update. If you’re a developer, you need to constantly be on the lookout for shared serials, and provide updates that kill them, or check at startup for a kill-list on your webserver.

Mac software dev isn’t the utopia you portray.