Hello Erik, all right then. I've written a commercial Desktop application in Haskell for the Win32 platform. The one thing missing is Software Copy Protection, ie. a software licensing mechanism. When I google for "Software Copy Protection" I get a lot of results, commercial products themselves, which is fine, but I can't tell which ones are any good or worth their money. I've never seriously done C#, VB or whatever people mainly write Win32 apps in, so I don't know any mailing lista or forums where I could ask this question. This list has pretty much been the only list I used for more than 2 years now. I've never seen a similar issued raised here before so I thought the CUFP mailing list is a better place for this. Can anybody here recommend a good software for this then? I do not want to code it myself and would prefer a ready to use solution, it it's not free that fine too. Best regards Günther Am 22.03.10 22:23, schrieb Erik de Castro Lopo:

Günther Schmidt wrote:

...

I have some questions that are related to commercial software development (in Haskell) which I don't think fit well on this list.

Really? This is haskell-cafe. If its even tangentially haskell related I'm sure this this list would be fine.

According to http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Mailing_Lists

haskell-cafe@haskell.org (archives) General Haskell questions; extended discussions. In Simon Peyton Jones' words: "forum in which it's acceptable to ask anything, no matter how naive, and get polite replies."

Cheers, Erik

Fundamentally, Software Copy Protection (as well as DRM) is an unsolvable problem. It's basically like saying that you want to give someone something and not give it to them at the same time. With physical products there are physical properties that you can use to accomplish some aspects of this. But with information products and the possibility of essentially zero-cost copying you don't have these physical constraints to help you. Copy Protection (CP) and DRM advocates have tried to use cryptography to solve this problem. The idea being that cryptography lets you hide information from people, so it should be able to help with this problem. Encryption allows Alice and Bob to communicate secretly without Eve, Mallet, etc from being able to read their communication. This is all predicated on the idea that Alice and Bob trust each other. (I'm only going to reveal my secrets to you if I trust that you're not going to publish them for others to read.) The problem that CP (Alice) is up against is that Bob and Eve are the same person! If you can't trust the person to whom you're sending something, then the only secure solution is not to send it to them. This can be done by delivering software that simply doesn't have certain capabilities. You typically can't just disable the capabilities in your software. You have to ensure that the code implementing those capabilities is not present. Software as a service is another solution to this problem. On Mon, Mar 22, 2010 at 6:09 PM, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:

Günther Schmidt wrote:

...

I've written a commercial Desktop application in Haskell for the Win32 platform.

The one thing missing is Software Copy Protection, ie. a software licensing mechanism. When I google for "Software Copy Protection" I get a lot of results, commercial products themselves, which is fine, but I can't tell which ones are any good or worth their money.

I've never seriously done C#, VB or whatever people mainly write Win32 apps in, so I don't know any mailing lista or forums where I could ask this question. This list has pretty much been the only list I used for more than 2 years now.

I've never seen a similar issued raised here before so I thought the CUFP mailing list is a better place for this.

Can anybody here recommend a good software for this then? I do not want to code it myself and would prefer a ready to use solution, it it's not free that fine too.

Well that certainly is an unusual question.

There are large companies like Apple, the RIAA and the MPAA who have put large amounts of time, money and effort into copy protection schemes only to have them broken, sometimes in as little as a day or two.

In addition, by the time you have a copy control mechanism that is partially effective your users may find the experience so painful that using cracked copies is easier. There is a common theme here:

   http://i.imgur.com/GxzeV.jpg    http://www.bradcolbow.com/archive.php/?p=205    http://xkcd.com/488/

Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/ _______________________________________________ Haskell-Cafe mailing list Haskell-Cafe@haskell.org http://www.haskell.org/mailman/listinfo/haskell-cafe

Günther Schmidt wrote:

Hello Erik,

the software I wrote and am about to sell was developed for use by German Hospitals only. It's being used to calculate a departments share of the revenues paid by the insurance companies for a case and needed every 6 months by the hospitals when it enters budget negotiations with the insurance companies. It could for instance not be used by Hospitals outside of Germany.

I think it is unlikely that the Hospitals would try to "hack" my application but thanks for the concern.

Since the number of people wanting to use your application is small, even the most primitve copy protection mechanisms would probably suffice. Erik -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Erik de Castro Lopo http://www.mega-nerd.com/