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> since if I sell my bike I can't make it stop working for the buyer at a later time. But that's the big difference between digital and physical. But that's th
by xg15 3y ago
> since if I sell my bike I can't make it stop working for the buyer at a later time. But that's the big difference between digital and physical.
But that's the entire thing the article is about: That suddenly in the digital space, it seems to be not just normal but expected that vendors maintain control over a product even if it's sold.
> This could be regarded as DRM by some.
Indeed it is, and it shows the problems with that approach: As you say, even with the best of intentions, you can't guarantee that the DRM will only shut out illegitimate users: It might also deactivate legitimately bought apps if the licensing server has an issue or if at some point you don't have the resources to run it any longer. That makes a DRM-enabled digital product strictly worse than an analog one.
And that's if you're one of the good guys and don't get into any third party contract disputes, don't do any shady deals with user data and don't go crazy with subscriptions.
> But I would have never wasted time with this if people would not crack my app in the first place AND demand customer support and flood my dashboard with errors unrelated to the normal functioning of the app.
That sounds a bit like "I wouldn't have to put up this fence if people didn't keep jumping over it". What about permitting free usage but restricting support to paying customers?
- alin23 3y ago> What about permitting free usage but restricting support to paying customers? I already provide a generous free version of my app, I can't see how pirating the Pro features, on which I spend an enormous amount of time, can be justified. Restricting support is what I tried first, but it takes too much time and effort. Email is slow since I'm very often in a different timezone than the buyer. So increasing the back and forth messages for asking for the license, and then me having to go to a non-mobile friendly site to verify that license made the support emails pile up so much that I got burnt out in less than two weeks. Asking for the license also upsets people that are already angry because they think my app bricked their monitor or something along those lines.
- em-bee 3y agodon't use a general email address for support. use an online support tool that can only be accessed by people who have a license. possibly use a tool to verify the license before they can even contact you. everyone else can post issues on github. also, do you track names and email addresses of those who bought a license? then you can match up requests and reduce the amount of license verification that you need to do.