

Ask HN: Should I enforce software licensing, and if so, how? - chrisdew

I am creating a commercial, installable software product, which I intend to launch next month.<p>I intend to license it at around $50/server.  Most use cases need the software on multiple servers.  Is there any way to encourage/enforce that customers who install 20 copies to pay for 20 copies instead of just one?<p>Is there a way of doing this <i>without</i> annoying the honest majority (minority?) of customers.<p>(I'm intending to build the customer's email address into the binary and help screen, to dissuade copying.)<p>What is current best practice re: licensing and enforcement?
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droz
Have your application periodically register with a registration service and
monitor for excessive use. If you detect something, call up the customer and
ask what's going on and present your data. Tell them they are not licensed to
run unlimited number of instances and they need to pay up. If they don't, have
a built-in shutdown command that you can issue to the software instances that
are unlicensed.

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chrisdew
Do you think "phoning-home" would be considered bad behaviour?

Are there other applications which already do this?

