Hello everybody.

As here are a lot of experienced people I have one question for you.
I assume that some one of you is selling your applications which were make 
in File Maker to some customers and my question is how do you protect them 
of unwanted / unauthorized duplication?

We need to deliver a Hardware and Software solution to our first new 
customer and this is something what I need to take care.

I now that one way is Administrator password but this will take effect only 
if the customer need some changes but it will not stop him to install 
exactly new system on a different location.

Only thing what is come on my mind is collecting of a MAC info...

Your Ideas?

With best regards
Tomislav 

In article <jleuht$qke$1@ss408.t-com.hr>, "Zarulja" <tomek.27@hotmail.com>
wrote:
> 
> Hello everybody.
> 
> As here are a lot of experienced people I have one question for you.
> I assume that some one of you is selling your applications which were make 
> in File Maker to some customers and my question is how do you protect them 
> of unwanted / unauthorized duplication?
> 
> We need to deliver a Hardware and Software solution to our first new 
> customer and this is something what I need to take care.
> 
> I now that one way is Administrator password but this will take effect only 
> if the customer need some changes but it will not stop him to install 
> exactly new system on a different location.
> 
> Only thing what is come on my mind is collecting of a MAC info...
> 
> Your Ideas?

There was a discussion about this a while back with a few suggestions of
things like registration code algorithms, but it seems a little pointless
since the person copying it can simply copy the registration code as well.


I'm not sure that FileMaker can access the MAC information, although you
can get the "user name", which may or may not be the same as the
computer's name.

Personally I don't bother protecting my solutions. I do usually put in an
administration / developer password and a user password, but that's only
really to stop people "playing" or destroying the database by accident.

No matter what you do to "protect" your FileMaker solution (or app or
application, etc.), if it's REALLY worth copying, then someone will find a
way to copy it, and if it's not worth copying then you're simply wasting a
lot of time and effort.

Helpful Harry  :o)

I took the route you suggested, collecting MAC info, utilizing 
respective FM functions. With that information, a unique  license key 
is manually generated and provided to the customer.

While this method is not fool proof, it does provide some hurdle to 
simply copy the solution and use it on another hardware configuration.