🚀 go-pugleaf

I agree that Mathematica's protection is ridiculous.  It's a lot of  
hassle just to run Mma once, very distrustful of the user and  
ultimately a big problem when you change hardware to like hardware  
(something that most people would not consider affecting their  
purchased software at all).  However, I don't think that any approach  
is successful in tying a single user to a copy of a program.

Louis A. Mamakos writes
> The approach that I like is to give the user some piece of
> information that needs to be supplied to enable the application.  

But what if one user gives a copy of that information to another user  
and that other user changes their hardware to make the key work (for  
example, what people do when using the already publicized small program  
to change their ROM-encoded serial number to make someone else's Mma  
work)?  Or if the information is an answer to a question, what if  
someone gives those answers to someone else who gets a copy of the  
software?  Or what if someone sells their computer and copy of your  
program to someone else but doesn't tell you about the sale (perhaps  
they forgot, perhaps the warranty expired and they figured it wasn't  
worth the trouble to call you)?  In these cases, do you (the software  
developer) really have a clear idea who is pirating your software?   
When do you really know who is pirating software you wrote?
-- 
-- Jeff (jeffo@uiuc.edu)
-- NeXTmail welcome