Author: Roger D Davis
Date: 14:18:35 09/26/05
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On September 26, 2005 at 16:33:53, Joachim Rang wrote: >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 I did considerable research on copy protection, and the Armadillo software system was the best going. It integrates with a number of software vendors to automatically generate hardware based keys, too, with very flexible rules about how much the system hardware can change before the Armadillo rejects the key. I think it the key can even be generated based on the serial number of the CPU. Shouldn't slow down the engine, and it's beyond the abilities of most crackers. Roger
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