Licensing State of the Union
Nick Paulson (in a guest post to Mike Rundle’s blog, Flyosity):
Most pirates had no intention of purchasing your application in the first place. Donʼt hurt your real customers. If your application is good enough, people will buy it. The best way to prevent piracy?
Make great apps.
Nick gets it. It’s only natural to want to protect your work, but nothing—not our cars, our homes or our software—is impregnable. Someone who wants it badly enough will find a way. So how much time and effort do we, as developers, spend in an attempt to lock it down? How much should we impact our customers’ user experience in that pursuit? Ever the pragmatist, I’d argue not much to both questions.
Most of the article is centered around a description of the licensing options available and their vulnerabilities. If you don’t care about those, skip to the last paragraph. That’s where it all coalesces into something in which I think we all share an interest.
Nick’s philosophy—one that I share, obviously—is simple, concise and it places the focus squarely on the people who cared enough to become customers. That’s exactly where it should be.
