Copy protection and licensing tools.

Question

I'm new to stackoverflow.com after hearing about it from Jon Skeet on DotNetRocks.This seems like the perfect place to ask this question.

I am in the middle of trying to find a 3rd party Copy protection and licensing tool. The company that I work with have 4 products that need to be protected. We want to supply a Trail license (with extensions). A single user license and a floating license (where the client purchases a number to run over a network). We also want to be able to supply both the Single and Floating license as a subscription license.

I have trialled DeployLX and although it seems to give everything that we need, and they are quick to answer emails, their documentation is truly awful with NO examples of how to achieve results. Has anyone any experience with DeployLX and if so, would you recommend it? Could you point me in the direction to find some real help on it? Finally, would anyone have any recommendations of a 3rd party licensing tool to use for very quick development. Thank you so much,

Answer 1

If you truly want a 3th party tool you can go for the Reprise License Manager (RLM) and allows you to hand out trial licenses, single user licenses and floating licenses. From their site:

Activation keys can enable any license type including trial licenses, single-seat licenses, and floating licenses. They can also be used for bulk activations at your largest and best customers or through your distribution channel. Bulk orders require only a single activation key that can be re-used until the all the ordered licenses have been fulfilled. That's it.

However, like any protection scheme, a truly devoted user will be able to bypass any protection, so don't put a large amount of money into the licencing scheme/program you are going to use.
Of course I don't know who your intended audience will be, but it will be very, very unlikely that that will be the case for your program.

Therefore it could even be enough to write your own (basic) tool instead. (it can actually be cheaper than buying the tools from a 3th party)

The company I worked for actually used a usb dongle for example that we developed ourselves.I know most people don't like dongles, but in this case it was quite handy as it was actually used for a special purpose media player that we also delivered and the USB key also held the program on it. The USB keys could thus be used as a demo on any pc, but also, and without any modifications, be used in the real application (ie the real players), once the client was satisfied

Of course many other possibilities exists without dongles, if you want to develop it on your own...

Answer 2

There is no silver bullet in software protection. But you could consider using one of the following tools:

• ASPack or ASProtect software. They are one of the best protection tools on the market and are very flexible.
• Armadillo or its light version called SoftwarePassport. It's more expensive but it has better API and is easier to use.

You could also check this resource for additional information: http://www.fravia.org/

Answer 3

Check this out

http://www.microsoft.com/SLPS/

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb931699.aspx

" ....Microsoft® Software Licensing and Protection (SLP) Services is a software activation service that enables independent software vendors (ISVs) to adopt flexible licensing terms for their customers. Microsoft SLP Services employs a unique protection method that helps safeguard your application and licensing information allowing you to get to market faster while increasing customer compliance ...."

Answer 4

First, sorry to inform that Microsoft SLP is not accepting new customers. I had heard it cost an arm and a leg to license anyways.

Second, a few of the options for 3rd party licensing are Reprise License Manager (noted already), FLEXNEt, Aladdin HASP SRM, and Nalpeiron. All should be able to handle your needs.

Answer 5

There's also EZIRIZ Intellilock.

Answer 6

There's also Agilis's licensing tools. They support .Net. www.agilis-sw.com for more.

Answer 7

Try the OffByZero Cobalt licensing solution for .NET. It's produced by a company I co-founded, and is very quick and easy to use. We've produced a screencast that shows how you can integrate an existing app (in this case a simple text editor) in around four minutes.

Answer 8

Give CryptoLicensing a try. It does everything you need including trial licenses with extensions, network based floating licenses as well as subscription licenses.

Answer 9

I would also recommend giving LM-X License Manager a try. It's simple to use and has all the features you're looking for and much more... It's been developed by X-Formation.

As for the documentation, it's clear and very well written with examples.