Licensing source code.

[SupremeSpod]

Chaps, I have software that I wish to licence to my customers. I wish to add licensing to the software so that the user is reminded when their licence is due to expire.

The software that I wish to licence is delivered to the customer as a toolkit in Java and .NET flavours so that they can develop their apps using the supplied toolkit.

Code obfuscation isn't the answer as our code is written the way it is for performance and no impact on performance is acceptable.

Due to the nature of our software it will be used in systems that do not have access to the outside world so a licensing server is out of the question.

Use of a dongle is also not permitted.

We know that someone, somewhere will try and reverse engineer our code but we'd like to make this task as difficult as possible.

Any ideas?

[d000hg]

Just a thought, but if you're selling to business do you need technical license-enforcing measures? Can you rely on knowing who your customers are and when their licenses expire, and contacting them to remind about renewals?

That's be the path I'd pursue personally, sorry I can't help with what you actually asked

[SupremeSpod]

Just a thought, but if you're selling to business do you need technical license-enforcing measures? Can you rely on knowing who your customers are and when their licenses expire, and contacting them to remind about renewals?

That's be the path I'd pursue personally, sorry I can't help with what you actually asked

We already use such a mechanism. However, we know for a fact that major customers are using more installations than their fees permit. When we remind them, they do pay up and are most apologetic.

What we're looking for is a way where we can permit a customer to use our toolkit for a trial period and then ensure that they have to pay us if they continue to use the toolkits after their "Evaluation" licence has expired.

That and the fact that our Financial Controller is convinced that we're being screwed over.

Looks like we may have to develop our own solution...

[vetran]

LMGTFY

IntelliLock - .NET Licensing & Protection

[Sysman]

A quick search came up with this one: QuickLicense for Windows and Mac, which has all sorts of options.

Even if you decide to roll your own, having a look at the competition first will help you decide what sort of features you really want to include.

From my previous forays into this area, security by obscurity and proprietary algorithms are not well regarded. I'm sure you know that already, but it's worth repeating.

[SupremeSpod]

LMGTFY

IntelliLock - .NET Licensing & Protection

Our deliverable is a toolkit in the form of source code... In Java and C#...

Thanks though.

[pmeswani]

Our deliverable is a toolkit in the form of source code... In Java and C#...

Thanks though.

License by something like Software License Dongle?

[pmeswani]

License by something like Software License Dongle?

Alternatively, build a central management system whereby the product must register against an internal central system in order to maintain the respective license per seat / system / user.

[VectraMan]

Our deliverable is a toolkit in the form of source code... In Java and C#...

Thanks though.

So you want to restrict access to text files?

[SupremeSpod]

So you want to restrict access to text files?

We have various assemblies that would be a piece of piss to reverse engineer so they may as well be text files

We can't rely on Microsoft's "SVM" either...