Author: Joachim Rang
Date: 13:33:53 09/26/05
Hi, I would like to explain a little bit how we have come to the decision to require a hardware-based activation of Fruit: As the commercial idea became more concrete we realized with fear that we have to bother about protection. Fabien is totally unaware of windows-functionality and I am totally unaware of any real programming (beside html) so we didn't know how to protect that thing. However with Fruit being the strongest engine we expected some piracy-attraction. With an engine being only a few hundred KBs we feared that a distribution by simply emailing the engine with a valid serial is very easy and might hurt sales. This imagination together with the sale expectation of well-informed sources led to this (perhaps desperate) attempt to prevent pirating Fruit and to increase the sales of Fruit. Whether this is a wise decision or not I don't know. As someone wrote below you are probably going to loose customers in both cases. I don't like activation either and can understand that people will abstain from buying Fruit because of this. I just can explain that it is not an attempt to make maximum profit and get rich quickly but an attempt to increase the chances that Fabien can hope in future to live on developing Fruit. Perhaps there are some illusions about the profitability of selling a chess engine today. In the 90ies a new title could sell very well but today it isn't enough to make your living out of that. There are some serious drawbacks of hardware activation but ideally you will install it on your computer and don't be bothered anymore. Only if you buy another computer you need to contact us. I know that there is uncertainty for the user especially since we are not a well-established company but a business which can disappear any time. I can only promise you that in case we dicontinue distribution of Fruit there will be a free update with a non-hardware-based lifetime key. I promise also that we will handle key requests generous without a n arbitrary hardlimit and only reject if we have substantiated believe of key trading. In the end it is your decision of trust in us which should determine your decision. I hope you understand. kind regards Joachim
This page took 0.02 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.