Most secure way to license software [closed]

Answer 1

Since I am not sure whether or not I could host a registration database of any sort, is there any way to keep liscensing self-contained securely?

No, there is no way to do it securely. Even if you do have a registration database, it is crackable.

Remove full version code from the demo. If you have a small amount of buyers, this lessens your chance of leakage greatly.

If you want to make copy protection, you should start reading up on it. Since you are asking about this, I can tell that it will take you a very long time to make decent copy-protection. It's best to just hire someone else to do it for you.

A .net obfuscator is probably the easiest and most effective solution for you.

Answer 2

If your software is desired enough and done well people will pay for it. You are always going to have a % that never will. Rather than wasting time trying to stop them, focus on improving the product.

99.9% of companies don't want to steal something and rather not change your software for there needs. They rather buy something out of the box that will work.

Keep in mind Fog Bugz from Fog Creek ships with its complete source code, and they have no problems selling there software because it is a quality product.

Quality is important, focus on that not security.

Answer 3

Don't bother. If a user is determined enough to resell your script, there is absolutely nothing you can do to stop them. By doing so, you limit users who may want to tweak your script for non malicious reasons.

Answer 4

with .net? Its very difficult to protect it.

Best bet is only do a trivial system and rely on peoples honesty. Make it easy and simple for those who actually buy your software.

Demo? omit code from the download.

basically, don't be too paranoid...

Answer 5

Generally there is no way to protect .NET software from craking it. It is too easy (especially using Reflector). So you need to perform some steps to be able to protect to some degree:

1. Obfuscate the code (often very non-trivial task as you cannot obfuscate public interfaces exposed to reference them).
2. If the software is a development component it can be protected using built-in .NET Licensing (by using .licx files in Visual Studio). One company the helps with this: http://www.infralution.com/
3. User registration server (this won't protect from cracking, but will protect from "non-licensed" usage).

In any case Obfuscation is the main step as it is the only one thing that puts .NET assemblies closer to native binaries.

Answer 6

It's not so much an answer to the question of licensing, but if you're concerned about your potential customers decompiling your assemblies then you should look into Obfuscation.

Obfuscation is performed on your release builds and it heavily modifies the naming of classes, methods, and fields within your application. If a user tries to regenerate the source code using a tool such as Reflector they will be met with a high level of difficulty in trying to make the code compile or function.

Update: To answer Cyclone's comment: Dotfuscator is probably the best known since it's been shipping with Visual Studio since 2003 (I think; not sure if it's limited to specific VS editions). Some quick Google searches turned up a tutorial on using it in Visual Studio 2008, and also some alternative options.