How to deploy a commercial portable application?

Question

Hi,

We plan to sell a Windows portable application. By 'portable' I mean that it can be run from any Windows computer without installing it. For example from an USB stick etc. However the application while (theoretically) it can work anywhere, is targeted to LAN environments.

What solutions do you see that while keeping this advantage (in a more or a lesser degree) to still make money from it?

PS: The application is/will be written in Delphi.

Answer 1

Some alternatives:

• Use a dongle, where the user of the software must plug in the dongle before your application can work.
• At startup read a configuration file and if this is invalid or missing, halt the application or reduce its functionality. The configuration file should contain information about the user or company that licensed your software, and also a checksum to prevent users from changing the file. With such a file, serious companies are less likely to distribute this configuration files to others. Of course, you should then create one such configuration file per user that licenses your software.
• Optionally, include specific computer information (type, memory, bios date, system guid, ...) that prevents the application from being run on other computers.
• Make sure you make money from the service you can deliver, not only from the software you are selling. This service can include: providing upgrades, taking suggestions for improvements, assisting with problems, helping with domain-specific knowledge, ...

Answer 2

• You can use some sort of license file and a "phone home" option that makes sure the same license is not used at more than one place concurrently.
• If you have a large ordfer, you could try to get a memory stick with a special serial number and/or value in it that you can read out in the software (eg the exe must reside on a special memory stick)

Please note that a lot of users get quite annoyed by these things (we've used the first option)

Also please note that if commercially interesting, your app will be hacked. Make sure the effort someone has to take outweighs the profit the could make

Answer 3

If you are offering your product for sale and not for free, then you will most likely make money from it. If what you are asking is how to maximize the income and prevent piracy, then that is a more specific question.

The key to making money with software is to make the purchase route less painful then the piracy route. Usually the biggest hurdle to purchasing software is the price tag (but not always, some people just will never buy software and always pirate, but you can't do anything about that). And the biggest hurdle to piracy is some sort of DRM scheme, which is actually the second largest hurdle to purchasing software. Often times DRM only annoys the legitimate purchases, while the pirated version has all the DRM removed with less effort then you spend to put it in. Thanks to the wonder of electronic duplication, once the DRM is removed, then everyone can have a DRM free copy.

So you want a solution that only annoys illegitimate usage, but not legitimate purchases. This is much harder to do then expected.

Depending on the price tag for your software you might consider deploying it on a keyed USB drive (i.e. Dongle or USB stick with some special key). Then it is portable, but only on the hardware you provide. The user never has to worry about a secondary authentication scheme, and the DRM only becomes an issue when the hardware (which is harder to duplicate) is changed.

You say that it is only for a LAN environment, which doesn't necessarily mean that the computers will have internet access (and if they do, they probably have a proxy requirement) which means "phoning home" will be problematic. If you want the product to only be used on a specific LAN then you might require a license server to be installed on the LAN. Then the software could always check with the license server to make sure it is authorized. That won't work if you want it to run on multiple LAN's though.

Conversely if your price is low enough then most companies and people would rather buy the correct licenses and not risk the piracy. In actuality, depending on your clientele, most people will prefer legitimate licenses when they can, and DRM can actually discourage them from buying licenses.

Answer 4

One approach that also helps some is by custom branding. Each copy you sell would have compiled into it the name of the company it was sold too, which can be displayed as part of the splash screen as well as the about screen (along with a button to view the license terms). Most often this branding is done by using an external file which contains the information encrypted that when placed in the same directory as the executable is used to unlock the application as well as possibly provide additional functionality.

Unfortunately with todays software firewalls, most of the simple solutions to disallow running multiple copies on a network are not practical while still maintaining true portability, or requiring internet access to a server that you fully control.

Yes, piracy is a problem, but if you continue to offer great support and there is an additional "visible" benefit to purchasing, you can help offset this in your favor.

Answer 5

If you need trial protection, you can count uses/days if you have any sort of database where the user will have invested time and data, and won't want to lose it. Just encrypt the counter and place in the database somwhere. The user can then only reset the trial by wiping out the database. Depending on the type of app, this may be effective, or not.

Another approach is to not have a portable trial at all, but offer it as an incentive for purchase. i.e. conduct the trial on the desktop, and when they purchase a license, they get a license key that allows it to run on portable devices.

I recommend the PortableApps.Com framework for launching your app. It's free. You need to make your "launcher" open-source, but not your app itself. You can still run on a bare drive, if you follow their pattern.