Infralution Support

Sputnik · Joined: 23 Apr 2007 Posts: 80

I've gotten a little further along, and I'm confused again _ -
What's the recommended way - - create a whole lot of keys to begin with, and just randomly issue any one of them to a customer?

Also - Once I give a license key to a customer. What's to keep him from installing it on another computer, (or sharing it with another user) and using the same license key?

3 more questions -
1. how can I automatically fill in the price, when entering a new sale?
2. What's the reference textbox for?
3. Is there a way, to automatically generate an email, when entering the sale, and generating the license key, in order to send a thank you, along with the license key?

(sorry to have so many questions all in one post)

Infralution · Joined: 28 Feb 2005 Posts: 5027

Sputnik · Joined: 23 Apr 2007 Posts: 80

Are there any other credit card processing companies out there that can do the auto generation of licenses (other than IPNNet)?

FOr instance - I use Digibuy for all my processing needs....there are others like that and I'd really rather not go through all the learning it seems like it will take to setup something through IPN Net - plus the added cost.

I need to get my app out the door quickly

Infralution · Joined: 28 Feb 2005 Posts: 5027

Most 3rd party shareware distributors (eg ShareIt, Kagi etc) will provide facilities to allow you to autogenerate license keys. Generally you have to build an application (to their specifications) that they can run on their server to generate the keys given input. Credit card processing companies will generally not provide this facility (they will just process payments).

PayPal payment costs nothing to setup and is considerably cheaper then 3rd party vendors. It does take more work on you behalf to setup - but if you use IPN.NET you would normally recoup the cost within the first month or two given a decent sales volume.
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Infralution Support

Sputnik · Joined: 23 Apr 2007 Posts: 80

in your last message, you said:
"A good compromise can be to lock the license to the computer name. "

do you have any code, that describes how I would go about doing that?

Infralution · Joined: 28 Feb 2005 Posts: 5027

We don't have a sample that does exactly this.

To lock the key to a computer name you must first get the name of the computer to lock the license to from the user (this complicates your distribution process and is probably only suitable if you are anticipating a smaller number of high value customers). You set the computer name (or a checksum of the computername) as the ProductInfo for the license key you issue. Then when you read the license in your application you check that the name of the computer the application is running on matches that in the license key.

You should note that most successful independant software vendors (for exampe Winzip) do not attempt to lock their licenses to PC hardware in anyway. They simply build into their pricing model the fact that some users may use their key to license multiple PCs in breach of the license.
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Infralution Support