Pirecy control

[Andrea 'Fyre Wyzard' Bocci]

At 14.13 14/04/2002 (GMT +0530), Jaswant wrote:
>Hello everybody.
>
>First of all, sorry it's not related to gcc or gnu at all, but just a 
>general help request to you all.

Well, in a way, it is ...

>Can you people gime some idea about how can i make my s/w 100% piracy free.
>
>cheers,
>Airara.

Yes.
Make it Free Software, with source code downloadable from everyone :-)

P.S.
No "commercial", closed source software is "Piracy Free".
I'm not an expert, but there is no piracy protection system that can stand 
a (very) good cracker's efforts.
If your software is going to be popular, interesting, or just fun (or a 
good challenge) to crack, it will be.

Encrypted code can be decrypted, passwords algorithms reversed engineered 
and turned into key-generators, hardware keys bypassed and rendered useless.
Well, unless a substantial part of yor code is not only "software" (eg., 
some functions are only present in a hardware device attached to the 
computer, like a serial port hardware key or a smart card).
Also, a "service" is very difficult to crack. IE., if you're software NEEDS 
to run connected to a server on the internet, the account could not be 
"created" of nothing. This works quite well for MMORPG, like Ultima Online.

The only simple, "uncopiable" game I've heard of run on an old 5"1/4 disk, 
was specially written off-track, and had a device driver in it that could 
make the drive motor stop on quarter-of-track spaces, thus making it 
possible to read the software itself...

Conclusion.
if you're going to make a VERY GOODand USEFUL piece of software that many 
users will like to have, you have three options:
1.) Be optimistic and trust that intentionally noone will crack it.
2.) Be realistic and take into account that a share of your users will be 
using pirated copies.
3.) Release it as Free Software.