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The issue is about good practice with database, form fields, and coding in general.
We run a content providing platform, much like Buzzfeed and Wired. I am currently implementing the OpenGraph meta tags for each posts, so that the post links are nicely presented in external websites such as Facebook.
A co-worker from the marketing team insisted that we should put something else other than title in the 'title' field for marketing reasons.
I argued that the Open Graph meta tags should truthfully represent the content of the link, to conserve consistency and convention - that the meta tags should not be considered 'one-off's.
However I couldn't further explain as to why I should! I'm not really good with words myself.
Most of the quarrels involve other workers wanting to 'hack' with perfectly fine APIs or implementations and I have to convince them why it is important to at least stay in the safe zone while possible.
I know convention and consistency is one of the most important practice with technology but I think I just got used to the fact and forgot my university lectures on why it is so.
Could I get some thoughts on this issue?
A co-worker from the marketing team insisted that we should put something else other than title in the 'title' field for marketing reasons.
That's a valid decision. Your job is to help save costs or make money for the business. It is not your job to maintain the Facebook ecosystem as a whole. That's not what you are payed to do.
If you don't have any business reason why this should not be done you have no case. Such a reason could be that Facebook would penalize this or that this creates some development cost or risk.
If this is not a technical decision at all, and I see no reason it would be in the question, it's his decision anyway. In that case you need to inform him of the concerns that you see and let him decide.
You clearly try to work in a mindset that lets self-discipline prevail over short-term gains and quick-and-dirty hacks. Managing to do that is always beneficial in the long run, but convincing managers and/or sales people to let go of the short-term gain is never easy (on the contrary, most of the time it is simply impossible).
Just want to let you know that there are many, many IT folks who "feel your pain". Don't give up your laudable mindset too easily.
Convention in naming makes for source code that is more readily understandable by others who follow the same conventions. That in turn makes for less costlier maintenance. Consistency in choosing "appropriate" names for things has similar benefits. Saying on the tin what's inside (and not something completely different or something way too vague and ambiguous) is the best possible practice in computing, but it is the worst possible one in marketing.
I'm part of a software development company where we do custom developed applications for our clients.
Our software uses MS SQL Server and we have encountered some customers which do not have a DBA on staff to manage the databases or if they do, they lack the necessary knowledge to perform their job adequately.
We are in the process of drafting a contract with one of those customers to provide development services for new functionality on our software during the next year, where they have an amount of hours available for customization of our software.
Now they want us to include also a quote for database administration services and the problem is that they are including a clause that says that those services will be provided only when they request it.
My first reaction is that db administration is an ongoing process and not something that they can call us once a month to come for a day or two. I'm talking about a central 1TB+ MSSql Cluster and 100 branch offices with MSSql Workgroup edition.
My question is for any suggestions on how I could argue that there must be a fixed amount of hours every month for dba work and not only when their management thinks they need it (which I’m guessing would only be when they have a problem).
PS: Maybe this will be closed as not programming related. But I'm a programmer and I have this problem. My work is software development but i don't want to lose this client and the only solution I can think of is to find a way for the client to understand the scope so we can hire a qualified DBA to provide them with the service they require.
Edit: We are in a Latin American country with clients in the Spanish speaking region. My guess is that in more developed countries there is a culture that knows how delicate the situation is.
This is definitely one of those 'you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink' situations.
My recommendation here would be to quote the DBA services as hourly, and make the rate high enough that you can outsource the work if you decide you want to. When (not if) the SQL servers start to have problems, the firm is on the hook.
I would also recommend that you include in your quote a non-optional 2 hour database technology review once per year. This is your opportunity to say 'You spent XXX on database maintenance this year, most of which was spent fighting fires that could have been easily avoided if you had just spent XXXX/4 and hired a DBA. We care about you as a customer, and we want you to save money, so we really recommend that you commit to using a DBA to perform periodic preventative maintenance'.
I would also recommend that you categorize any support requests as having root cause b/c of database maintenance vs other causes. This will let you put a nice pie chart in front of the customer during their annual review (which they are going to pay you to perform). It is critical to manage the perception so they don't think your code is causing the problems. You might even go so far as to share these metrics (db related issue vs non-db related issue) with them on a quarterly basis.
Sometimes people need to experience pain before they change. The key is to not be in between the hammer and their thumb as they learn the lesson, and hourly quoted work is one way of doing this.
As a side note, this sort of question is of great interest to a large number of developers. I'd say that this sort of thing could impact a programmer's quality of life more than any algorithm or library question ever could. Thanks for asking it!
No DBA on a system that size is a disaster waiting to happen. If they don't understand that, they are not qualified to run a database that size. I'd recommend that they talk to other companies with similar sized databases and have them ask them about their DBAs and what they do for them, and if they think they could survive without them.
Perhaps the link below from MS SQL Tips could give you some good talking points. But people who aren't technical wont respond to a technical explanation of the necessity of good DBA you are likley going to have to work toward proving the cost of bad DBA. Work out the worst case scenarios and see how they feel about them. If you can make it seem like a good financial move (and I think we all know it is) it will be an easy sell.
http://www.mssqltips.com/tip.asp?tip=1278
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I'm several layers/levels above the people involved in the project I'm about to describe.
The general requirement is for a web based issue management system. The system is a small part of a much larger project.
The lead pm has a tech pm who is supposed to handle this portion of the project. The lead pm asked me if it's normal for the help information to not be in the context of where the help was requested. The lead pm was providing feedback about the site and wanted modal dialogs and such for error messages and wanted me to take a look. I'm looking at the system and I'm thinking...
a new app was developed in cold fusion!?!?
the app has extremely poor data validation
the app data validation page navigates away from the data entry form
the app help page navigates away from the form
the db schema was not discussed between the developer and the pm
the db schema was not discussed because it does not exist
there is a menu page - i.e. once you go to a page, you have to go back to main menu and then go to the next page you want
the lead pm does not know what the dbms is...
there is a tech pm and she does not know what a dbms is...
the lead pm has wanted to fire the tech pm for a long time, but the tech pm is protected...
the lead pm suggested that the exact functionality desired exists in several proprietary projects (several of which are open source - bugtracker, bugzilla, etc.), but the tech pm and dev wouldn't listen.
I have two questions?
Do I
fire the dev?
fire the tech pm and the person protecting her?
fire the lead pm?
download and configure bugtracker/bugzilla for them and then fire all of them?
download and configure bugtracker/bugzilla for them and then go have a beer to forget my sorrows?
and isn't it SOP for the db schema to be discussed and rigorously thought through very early in the project?
EDIT:
I used to work with a wide variety of clients with disparate levels of technical knowledge (and intelligence). I always discussed the db schema with the stakeholder. If they didn't know what a schema was, I would teach them. If they didn't have the background to understand, I would still discuss the schema with them - even if they didn't realize we were talking about the schema. In most of the projects I've been directly involved in, the data is the most important part of the system. Thoroughly hashing out the schema/domain model has been critical in getting to a good understanding of the system and what things can be done and reported on. I have high regard for the opinions of the posters on SO. It's interesting to note that my approach is not the usual course.
BTW - the sad thing is that the project uses tax payer funds and the IT portion is a collaboration with a prestigious university... the dev and tech pm are long time employees - they are not inexperienced. I find it especially sad when I know intelligent and hard-working people who are jobless and people like these are employed.
When I was younger, I would report this type of ineptitude up the chain and expect appropriate action. Now that I'm up the chain, I find myself not wanting to micro-manage other people's responsibilities.
My resolution was to have two beers and get back to my responsibilities...
Okay, the first thing, to answer your question: No NO, a thousand times NO! The users are not people you should be discussing db schemata with; in general, you'd as well discuss calculus with a cow. Even if they have the technical background, what about the next time the requirements change; should they be involved in the schema update?
More generally, this sounds like a case where the technical leads let the problem get out of touch with the "customers" or stakeholders. If you're being asked to actually fix the problem, I'd suggest you need to build a GUI prototype of some sort, maybe even just a storyboard, and walk through that. then you'll have an idea where things stand.
Extended: yes, it WOULD be normal to discuss the DB schema within the project. I'd say you do need to think seriously about some, um, major counseling with the leads.
Extended more: I understand your point, but the thing is that the database schema is an implementation detail. We're so used to databases we let ourselves lose track of that, and end up with applications that, well, look like databases. But the database isn't what delivers customer value; it's whether the customer can do the things they want. If you tie the ways the customer sees the application to the DB schemata, then you tie them to one implementation; a change, such as denormalizing a table in order to make a more efficient system, becomes something you have to show the customer. Better to show them the observables, and keep these details to ourselves.
But I suspect we're having a terminology clash, too. I would have agreed with you on "domain model." If, by db schema, you mean only those tables and relations visible in the user's view of the system, the "use cases" if you will, then we'd be agreeing.
The DATA should be discussed with the stakeholders, absolutely yes. The DB SCHEMA should NOT be discussed with the stakeholders except under special circumstances, where the stakeholders are all "database savvy".
So how can you discuss the DATA without discussing the DB Schema? This is the primary use that I've found for Entity-Relationship (ER) diagrams, and the ER model in general. A lot of database designers tend to treat ER as a watered down version of relational data modeling (RDM). In my experience, it can be used much more profitably if you don't think of it as watered down RDM.
What is one difference between ER and RDM? In RDM, a many to many relationship requires a junction box in the middle. This junction box holds foreign keys that link the junction box to the participants in the many to many relationship.
In ER, when applied strictly, junction boxes are unnecessary in many to many relationships. You just indicate the relationship as a line, and indicate the possibility of "many" at both ends of the line. In fact, ER diagrams don't need foreign keys at all. The concept of linkage by means of foreign keys can be left out of the discussion with most users.
Data normalization is utterly irrelevant to ER diagramming. A well built ER diagram will have very little harmful redundancy in it, but that's largely serendipity and not the result of careful planning.
The "entities" and "relationships" in a stakeholder oriented ER diagram should only include entities that are understood by the subject matter experts, and not include entities or relationships that are added in the course of logical database design.
Values to be held in a database and served up on demand can be connected to attributes, and attributes can in turn be connected to either entities or relationships among entities. In addition, attributes can be tied to domains, the set of possible values that each attribute can take on. Some values stored in databases, like foreign keys, should be left out of discussions with most stakeholders.
Stakeholders who understand the data generally have an intuitive grasp of these concepts, although the terms "entity", "relationship", "attribute", and "domain", may be unfamiliar to them. Stakeholders who do not understand the subject matter data require special treatment.
The beauty of ER models and diagrams is that they can be used to talk about data not only in databases, but also as the data appears in forms that users can see. If you have any stakeholders that don't understand forms and form fill out, my suggestion is that you try to keep them away from computers, if that's still possible.
It's possible to turn a well built ER diagram into a moderately well built relational schema by a fairly mechanical process. A more creative design process might result in a "better" schema that's logically equivalent. A few technical stakeholders need to understand the relational schema and not merely the ER diagram. Don't show the relational schema to people who don't need to know it.
Well, first you probably should review very carefully the relationship between the tech pm and her sponsor. I'm surprised you say the tech pm is protected when you later imply you can fire the protector. Either she is, or she is not protected. If you can fire the protector, then she is NOT protected.
So it sounds like no-one is protected, and worse - NO-ONE is communicating. I'd recommend the following: call a meeting with the lead pm, the tech pm and the dev. Once together, ask each in turn: "without referencing anything except YOUR work (i.e. you can't blame anyone else for the duration of this exercise), tell me in 5 minutes or less why I should NOT fire you today".
I realize this is extreme advice, but you have described a HORRIBLE solution to a classic problem. Every aspect of this project and the resulting "code" sounds like a disaster. You probably should have had a greater hand in the oversight of this mess, but you didn't (for whatever reason). I realize that you should expect hired professionals at the PM level to do better than this.
Hence my recommendation for a SEVERE shake-up of the team. Once you put the fear of unemployment one the table (and I'd tell them that you are writing up the failure to communicate for each one), then REQUIRE them to post plans for immediate communication improvement PLUS detailed timelines for fixing the mess by the end of the week.
Then get off your own bum because you're now the LEAD-lead PM on this project.
If they shape up and pull off a comeback on this disaster, then slowly start increasing their responsibilities again. If not... there's always a door.
Cheers,
-R
the lead pm suggested that the exact
functionality desired exists in
several proprietary projects (several
of which are open source - bugtracker,
bugzilla, etc.), but the tech pm and
dev wouldn't listen.
If this is true, tell the lead pm to be more assertive; then tell him/her to install bugzilla and be done with it. If the tech pm and dev weren't listening because of stubbornness, they need a little chat...
Either way, I'd say you have a problem with your organization... How many thousands of dollars were lost because of a case "not developed here"? However, given that it reached the point of implementation, there are problems further upstream than the development level...
As far as discussing the db schema with everybody, I'd say no. Everyone who can positively contribute should be involved after the application requirements have been gathered.
Wow, sounds like a disaster. Let me address your points in rough order:
First, people develop in languages they find comfortable. If someone is still comfortable in an older environment when much better alternatives exist, it is a sure sign that they have little appetite for skill acquisition.
Data validation prevents people from going too far down a path only to find it is a blind alley. Lack of validation means the developer isn't thinking about the user. Also, it is not something tacked on at the end...it simply doesn't work that way.
Web "dialogs" cannot be "modal" in the sense you are thinking. However, it is easy enough to pop up an additional window. Help on a page should almost always use a pop up window of this sort.
Data validation should NEVER navigate away from the page where data is entered - this is horrible UI design.
The DB schema is kind of the least of your problems. If the developer is responsible for delivering functionality and is clearly competent in data schema design, I wouldn't think it critical to discuss the nuances of the schema with the lead PM. It should be discussed among various code-level stakeholders and it must be capable of handling the requirements of the work. However, the important thing from the PM's perspective isn't the schema so much as the operational aspects. Of course, if you have no faith in the developer's ability to construct a good db schema, all bets are off.
If you seriously don't know what the dbms is, you may have a serious problem. Do you have a standard? If everyone else in the extended project is using MS SQL Server and this guy chose Oracle, how do you transfer expertise and staff into or out of this project? This is a sign of an organization out of control.
There are two reasons for ignoring alternative proprietary products. First, they may not truly meet your needs. Second, the tech PM and developer may simply be featherbedding or engaging in some nasty 'not invented here' justification for wasting your resources. The problem is that you aren't likely to have enough insight, at your level, to know the difference between the two.
With respect to firing the Dev...is it possible to help him by sponsoring some additional training? If this person is otherwise a good employee and knows your business well, I'd be very hesitant to fire them when all that is needed is a push in the right direction.
The tech PM sounds like she really isn't doing her job. She is the logical person to point out the flaws I am writing about and pushing for improvement. The real question, vis a vis her position, is whether she can learn to be a better advocate for your organizational interests.
The lead PM sounds too passive as well. Comments made above regarding the tech PM apply here as well.
If bugtracker, etc. really work then it would make sense to go that route. However, you might want to be a bit more circumspect about firing people.
First off, I agree with Charlie Martin about the db schema.
Second,
It sounds like the developer on the project is very green - is this his/her first programming job? If so, I would only fire the dev if their resume says something else.
I don't know how involved the lead/tech pms are expected to be in a project, but it sounds like the responsibility is dev > tech pm > lead pm. If that is the case, then the tech pm completely dropped the ball. You may want to find out why the ball was dropped and fire/keep her based on that, but a botched job like that is reprimand time where I work.
Finally, imho, the "protection" stuff is b.s. - you need to reward and reprimand people based on their quality and value, not who their aunt is.
Good luck! Cheers!
Wow. I feel your pain.
Looks to me as if the first source of your problem is the techPM who is "protected". Why is she protected and by whom? I once was on a project where the ceo's secretary became first the business analyst and then (after he quit) the project manager because they were having an affair. She didn't know what language we programmed in and thought requirements were a waste of time. Since she was protected by someone as high as possible in the organization, the only real solution was to look elsewhere for employment.
You seem to think you can fire her and her protector so it may be someone lower than you but above the lead PM so he couldn't do anything about it but you can? Yes, you should fire the two of them.
The lead PM may or may not be salvageable depending on who the protector was. He could have been between a rock and a hard place where he knew what to do but due to the nature of the relationship between the tech pm and her protector was unable to exert any influence over her and the people who reported to her. I was in that position once where two of my bosses were having an affair with one of my subordinates and it creates all kinds of organizational havoc (which is why the protector must be fired as well as the tech PM). Give him the benefit of the doubt and discuss with him how he would would handle things differently if the tech pm and her protector were out of the way. If you like what you hear, you can keep him but organizationally you will need to step in and make sure that is it clear this person is in charge and no one will be allowed to ignore him. Once a lead has lost authority, he can only get it back with the strong backing from management.
I would also sit down with the lead and the developer and explain exactly what is unacceptable in the project as it currently stands. If the developer feels unable to take direction from the lead (assuming you decide to keep him) or is unable to adjust to a new way of doing business or cannot understand why the code as it stands is unacceptable, cut your losses and get rid of him as well. A new person is likely to work better for the lead if he is salvageable anyway because he won't have a history of ignoring him.
I wouldn't necessarily think that the db schema should always be shared with stakeholders. Most people wouldn't know what to do with that sort of information. If you're trying to make sure that the product fits the requirements, the requirements should be clearly laid out up front and verified throughout the development of the project.
If you're having problems with the dev, that's just par for the course. Someone more trust-worthy should have been found. If you hired a poor coder, that was your mistake.
There are a few possible solutions:
Get a better coder. He'll hate working through all the bad code but hopefully he'll slug through it till it's done. Hopefully you're willing to pay him good money.
Keep the coder and make him fix it all. Hire a new PM that can manage him better. That coder knows his code best and it might take less time for him to just improve it. In the long run, you're better off not keeping a bad coder on payroll so lose him when you're done.
Suck it up, buy a beer for everyone involved and start over with opensource. You'll probably still need a tech PM to manage the software. You'll also have to forget about doing anything custom at that point. Perhaps a contractor could manage this.
Either way, you're gonna lose some money. Should probably keep a closer eye on things next time.
I tend to think of it this way. The database schema is there to support the application's data storage requirements. What data the application needs to store will be determined by the end user's requirements. If you're not consulting your end user as to their requirements for the application you're obviously headed for trouble, but provided you have a good handle on their requirements (and likely future requirements) then database schema is a technical decision which can be made by the project team without direct input from the end user/client.
An end user is unlikely to understand the intricacies of tables, fields, normalization, etc, but they'll understand "the system needs to do xyz". Talk to the end users in a language they understand, and let your team make the appropriate technical decisions.
My big question is about the relationship between the lead pm and the tech pm's protector: did the lead pm have good reason to fear retaliation from the protector? It's entirely possible that he felt unable to do anything until the situation got bad enough that it was clearly important for people above the protector. In that case, he doesn't deserve any more harsh treatment.
The tech pm is apparently incompetent at her job, and her protector is more interested in favoring her than getting the work done. That suggests to me that they need to be dealt with in some fashion, at minimum with a talk about the importance of getting real work done, at maximum firing both of them.
The dev is likely hunkered down, trying to survive politically, given the climate you've outlined. I can't tell enough about the dev to give any advice.
Therefore, if your description and my amazing psychic powers have given me a clear and accurate picture:
Shield the lead pm from retaliation, and tell him to ditch all the crud and implement an off-the-shelf solution. (If he can't select one himself reliably, he shouldn't be lead pm.)
Discipline the tech pm and her protector. You really don't want to have people wrecking enterprise productivity that way.
The dev is the lead pm's responsibility. Leave it at that. Don't micromanage more than you have to. Have a couple of beers. Get back to your usual work.
This is a problem we all have to consider at some point.
After many years and many approaches I tend to agree in general with the staterment:
"For any protected software used by more than a few hundred people, you can find a cracked version. So far, every protection scheme can be tampered with."
Does your employer enforce the use of anti-piracy software?
Further, every time I post about this subject, some one will remind me;
"First of all, no matter what kind of protection you'll employ,a truly dedicated cracker will, eventually, get through all of the protective barriers."
What's the best value for money c# code protection for a single developer
So not withstanding these two broadly true disclaimers, lets talk about "protection"!
I still feel that for smaller apps that are unlikely to warrent the time and attention of a skilled cracker, protection IS a worthwhile exercise.
It seems obvious that no matter what you do, if the cracker can switch the outcome of an IF statement (jmp) by patching the application, then all the passwords and dongles in the world anre not going to help.
So My approach has been to obfuscate the code with virtualization using products like:
http://www.oreans.com/codevirtualizer.php
I have been very happy with this product. To my knowledge it has neve been defeated.
I can even compress the executable with PEcompact
Does anyone else have experience with it?
Had nothing but problems with EXEcryptor
http://www.strongbit.com/news.asp
Even the site is a headache to use.
The compiled apps would crash when doing any WMI calls.
This approach allows you to surround smaller sections of code with the obfuscation and thus protect the security checking etc.
I Use the online authorization approach, as the application needs data from the server regularly so it makes no sense for the user to use it off line for extended periods. By definition, the app is worthless at that point, even if it is cracked.
So a simple encrypted handshake is plenty good. I just check it occasionally within the obfuscation protection. If the user installs the app on a different machine, a New ID is uploaded upon launch and the server disables the old ID and returns a new authorization.
I also use a hash of the compiled app and check it at launch to see if a single bit has changed, then open the app as a file (with a read LOCK) from within the app to prevent anyone changing it once launched.
Since all static strings are clearly visible in the .exe file, I try to be generic with error messages and so forth. You will not find the string "Authorization failed" anywhere.
To protect against memory dumps, I use a simple text obfuscation technique (like XOR every character) This makes plain text data in memory harder to distinguish from variables and so forth.
Then of course there is AES for any data that is really sensitive. I like counter mode for text as this results in no repeating sequences revealing underlying data like a sequence of white spaces.
But with all these techniques, if the Key or Initialization vector can be dumped from memory, or the IF statement bypassed, everything is wasted.
I tend to use a switch statement rather than a conditional statement. Then I create a second function that is basically a dead end instead of the function that actually performs the desired task.
Another idea is to code pointers with a variable added. The variable is the result of the authorization (usually zero). This will inevitable lead to a GPF at some point.
I only use this as a last resort after a few lower level authorizations have failed otherwise real users may encounter it. Then the reputation of your software is lowered.
What techniques do you use?
(this is NOT a thread debating the merits of implementing something. It is designed for those that have decided to do SOMETHING)
I disagree xsl.
We protect our code, not because we want to protect our revenue - we accept that those who would use if without a license probably would never pay for it anyway.
Instead, we do it to protect the investment our customers have made in our software. We believe that the use of our software makes them more competative in their market place and that if other companies have access to it without paying they have an unfair advantage - ie, they become as competative without having the overhead of the licensing cost.
We are very careful to ensure that the protection - which is home grown - is as unobtrusive as possible to the valid users, and to this end we would never consider 'buying in' an off the shelf solution that may impact this.
You don't need a few hundred users to get your software cracked. I got annoyed at having my shareware cracked so many times, so as an experiment I created a program called Magic Textbox (which was just a form with a textbox on it) and released it to shareware sites (it had its own PAD file and everything). A day later a cracked version of Magic Textbox was available.
This experience made me pretty much give up trying to protect my software with anything more than rudimentary copy protection.
I personally use the code techniques discussed here. These tricks have the benefit of inconveniencing pirates without making life more difficult for your legitimate end-users
But the more interesting question isn't "what", but "why". Before a software vendor embarks on this type of exercise, it's really important to build a threat model. For example, the threats for a low-priced B2C game are entirely different to those for a high-value B2B app.
Patrick Mackenzie has a good essay where he discusses some of the threats, including an analysis of 4 types of potential customer. I recommend doing this threat analysis for your own app before making choices about protecting your business model.
I've implemented hardware keying (dongles) before myself, so I'm not totally unfamiliar with the issues. In fact, I've given it a great deal of thought. I don't agree with anyone violating copyright law, as your crackers are doing. Anyone who doesn't want to legally aquire a copy of your software should do without. I don't ever violate software copyright myself. That being said...
I really, really dislike the word "protect" used here. The only thing you are trying to protect is your control. You are not protecting the software. The software is just fine either way, as are your users.
The reason that keeping people from copying and sharing your software is such an unholy PITA is that preventing such activites is unnatural. The whole concept of a computer revolves around copying data, and it is simple human nature to want to share useful things. You can fight these facts if you really insist, but it will be a lifelong fight. God isn't making humans any differently, and I'm not buying a computer that can't copy things. Perhaps it would be better to find some way to work with computers and people, rather than fighting against them all the time?
I, along with the majority of professional software developers, am employed full time by a company that needs software developed so that it can do its business, not so it can have a "software product" with artificial scarcity to "sell" to users. If I write something generally useful (that isn't considered a "competive advantage" here), we can release it as Free Software. No "protection" is needed.
From some of the links:
The concept I tried to explain is what I call the “crack spread”. It doesn’t matter that a crack (or keygen, or pirated serial, or whatever) exists for your application. What matters is how many people have access to the crack.
Where/when to check the serial number: I check once on startup. A lot of people say “Check in all sorts of places”, to make it harder for someone to crack by stripping out the check. If you want to be particularly nasty to the cracker, check in all sorts of places using inlined code (i.e. DON’T externalize it all into SerialNumberVerifier.class) and if at all possible make it multi-threaded and hard to recognize when it fails, too. But this just makes it harder to make the crack, not impossible, and remember your goal is generally not to defeat the cracker. Defeating the cracker does not make you an appreciable amount of money. You just need to defeat the casual user in most instances, and the casual user does not have access to a debugger nor know how to use one.
If you’re going to phone home, you should be phoning home with their user information and accepting the serial number as the output of your server’s script, not phoning home with the serial number and accepting a boolean, etc, as the output. i.e. you should be doing key injection, not key verification. Key verification has to ultimately happen within the application, which is why public key crypto is the best way to do it. The reason is that the Internet connection is also in the hands of the adversary :) You’re a hosts file change away from a break-once, break-everywhere exploit if your software is just expecting to read a boolean off the Internet.
Do not make an “interesting” or “challenging” protection. Many crackers crack for the intellectual challenge alone. Make your protection hard to crack but as boring as possible.
There are some cracks which search for byte patterns in search for the place to patch. They usually aren’t defeated by a recompile, but if your .EXE is packed (by ASProtect, Armadillo, etc) these kind of cracks must first unpack the .EXE.. and if you use a good packer such as ASProtect, the cracker will be able to unpack the EXE manually using an assembly level debugger such as SoftICE, but won’t be able to create a tool which unpacks the .EXE automatically (to apply the byte patches afterwards).
I have used .NET Reactor in the past with good results - http://www.eziriz.com/
What I liked about this product is that it did not require you to obfuscate the code in order to have pretty good protection.
xsl, that is a very narrow point of view with MANY built in assumtions.
It seems obvious to me that any app that relies on delivering something from a server under your control should be able to do a fairly good job of figuring our who has a valid account!
I am also of the belief that regular updates (meaning a newly compiled app with code in different locations) will make cracked vesrions obsolete quickly. If your app communicates with a server, launching a secondary process to replace the main executable every week is a piece of cake.
So yes, nothing is uncrackable, but with some clever intrinsic design, it becomes a moot point. The only factor that is significant is how much time are the crackers willing to spend on it, and how much effort are your potential customers willing to exert in trying to find the product of their efforts on a weekly or even daily basis!
I suspect that if your app provides a usefull valuable function then they will be willing to pay a fair price for it. If not, Competitive products will enter the market and your problme just solved itself.
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I wrote a utility for photographers that I plan to sell online pretty cheap ($10). I'd like to allow the user to try the software out for a week or so before asking for a license. Since this is a personal project and the software is not very expensive, I don't think that purchasing the services of professional licensing providers would be worth it and I'm rolling my own.
Currently, the application checks for a registry key that contains an encrypted string that either specifies when the trial expires or that they have a valid license. If the key is not present, a trial period key is created.
So all you would need to do to get another week for free is delete the registry key. I don't think many users would do that, especially when the app is only $10, but I'm curious if there's a better way to do this that is not onerous to the legitimate user. I write web apps normally and haven't dealt with this stuff before.
The app is in .NET 2.0, if that matters.
EDIT: You can make your current licensing scheme considerable more difficult to crack by storing the registry information in the Local Security Authority (LSA). Most users will not be able to remove your key information from there. A search for LSA on MSDN should give you the information you need.
Opinions on licensing schemes vary with each individual, more among developers than specific user groups (such as photographers). You should take a deep breath and try to see what your target user would accept, given the business need your application will solve.
This is my personal opinion on the subject. There will be vocal individuals that disagree.
The answer to this depends greatly on how you expect your application to be used. If you expect the application to be used several times every day, you will benefit the most from a very long trial period (several month), to create a lock-in situation. For this to work you will have to have a grace period where the software alerts the user that payment will be needed soon. Before the grace period you will have greater success if the software is silent about the trial period.
Wether or not you choose to believe in this quite bold statement is of course entirely up to you. But if you do, you should realize that the less often your application will be used, the shorter the trial period should be. It is also very important that payment is very quick and easy for the user (as little data entry and as few clicks as possible).
If you are very uncertain about the usage of the application, you should choose a very short trial period. You will, in my experience, achieve better results if the application is silent about the fact that it is in trial period in this case.
Though effective for licensing purposes, "Call home" features is regarded as a privacy threat by many people. Personally I disagree with the notion that this is any way bad for a customer that is willing to pay for the software he/she is using. Therefore I suggest implementing a licensing scheme where the application checks the license status (trial, paid) on a regular basis, and helps the user pay for the software when it's time. This might be overkill for a small utility application, though.
For very small, or even simple, utility applications, I argue that upfront payment without trial period is the most effective.
Regarding the security of the solution, you have to make it proportional to the development effort. In my line of work, security is very critical because there are partners and dealers involved, and because the investment made in development is very high. For a small utility application, it makes more sense to price it right and rely on the honest users that will pay for the software that address their business needs.
There's not much point to doing complicated protection schemes. Basically one of two things will happen:
Your app is not popular enough, and nobody cracks it.
Your app becomes popular, someone cracks it and releases it, then anybody with zero knowledge can simply download that crack if they want to cheat you.
In the case of #1, it's not worth putting a lot of effort into the scheme, because you might make one or two extra people buy your app. In the case of #2, it's not worth putting a lot of effort because someone will crack it anyway, and the effort will be wasted.
Basically my suggestion is just do something simple, like you already are, and that's just as effective. People who don't want to cheat / steal from you will pay up, people who want to cheat you will do it regardless.
If you are hosting your homepage on a server that you control, you could have the downloadable trial-version of your software automatically compile to a new binary every night. This compile will replace a hardcoded datetime-value in your program for when the software expires. That way the only way to "cheat" is to change the date on your computer, and most people wont do that because of the problems that will create.
Try the Shareware Starter Kit. It was developed my Microsoft and may have some other features you want.
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/vs2005/aa718342.aspx
If you are planning to continue developing your software, you might consider the ransom model:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Street_Performer_Protocol
Essentially, you develop improvements to the software, and then ask for a certain amount of donations before you release them (without any DRM).
One way to do it that's easy for the user but not for you is to hard-code the expiry date and make new versions of the installer every now and then... :)
If I were you though, I wouldn't make it any more advanced than what you're already doing. Like you say it's only $10, and if someone really wants to crack your system they will do it no matter how complicated you make it.
You could do a slightly more advanced version of your scheme by requiring a net connection and letting a server generate the trial key. If you do something along the lines of sign(hash(unique_computer_id+when_to_expire)) and let the app check with a public key that your server has signed the expiry date it should require a "real" hack to bypass.
This way you can store the unique id's serverside and refuse to generate a expiry date more than once or twice. Not sure what to use as the unique id, but there should be some way to get something useful from Windows.
I am facing the very same problem with an application I'm selling for a very low price as well.
Besides obfuscating the app, I came up with a system that uses two keys in the registry, one of which is used to determine that time of installation, the other one the actual license key. The keys are named obscurely and a missing key indicates tampering with the installation.
Of course deleting both keys and reinstalling the application will start the evaluation time again.
I figured it doesn't matter anyway, as someone who wants to crack the app will succeed in doing so, or find a crack by someone who succeeded in doing so.
So in the end I'm only achieving the goal of making it not TOO easy to crack the application, and this is what, I guess, will stop 80-90% of the customers from doing so. And afterall: as the application is sold for a very low price, there's no justification for me to invest any more time into this issue than I already have.
just be cool about the license. explain up front that this is your passion and a child of your labor. give people a chance to do the right thing. if someone wants to pirate it, it will happen eventually. i still remember my despair seeing my books on bittorrent, but its something you have to just deal with. Don't cave to casual piracy (what you're doing now sounds great) but don't cripple the thing beyond that.
I still believe that there are enough honest people out there to make a for-profit coding endeavor worth while.
Don't have the evaluation based on "days since install", instead do number of days used, or number of times run or something similar. People tend to download shareware, run it once or twice, and then forget it for a few weeks until they need it again. By then, the trial may have expired and so they've only had a few tries to get hooked on using your app, even though they've had it installed for a while. Number of activation/days instead lets them get into a habit of using your app for a task, and also makes a stronger sell (i.e. you've used this app 30 times...).
Even better, limiting the features works better than timing out. For example, perhaps your photography app could limit the user to 1 megapixel images, but let them use it for as long as they want.
Also, consider pricing your app at $20 (or $19.95). Unless there's already a micropayment setup in place (like iPhone store or XBoxLive or something) people tend to have an aversion to buying things online below a certain price point (which is around $20 depending on the type of app), and people assume subconciously if something is inexpensive, it must not be very good. You can actually raise your conversion rate with a higher price (up to a point of course).
In these sort of circumstances, I don't really think it matters what you do. If you have some kind of protection it will stop 90% of your users. The other 10% - if they don't want to pay for your software they'll pretty much find a way around protection no matter what you do.
If you want something a little less obvious you can put a file in System32 that sounds like a system file that the application checks the existence of on launch. That can be a little harder to track down.