7 ms·

I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, c

I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. Since we sold (and still sell) perpetual licenses, it becomes a problem when a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available. Not all users want to upgrade. Also, you may hate cloud licensing, but it is precisely cloud licensing that makes subscriptions possible and, therefore, recurring revenue—which, from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade. Also, despite investing a lot of effort into programming the dongle, we can still usually find cracked versions floating online, even on legitimate platforms like Shopee or Lazada. You might think cracking dongles is fun and copy protection is evil, but without protection, our livelihood is affected. It’s not as if we have the legal resources to pursue pirates. [0]: https://mes100.com https://mes100.com

huflungdung 9mo ago
[dead]
SecretDreams 9mo ago
> which, from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade This take is diametrically opposite to what end users need. In a world where "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user, buying a one off license for a software seems much more sane then SaaS. SaaS is like a plague for end users. I don't condone piracy, but I also don't condone SaaS.
- nsoonhui 9mo ago
  In a perfect world, I would have agreed with you, even if it's diametrically opposite to my interest as a software developer cum business owner. But in an imperfect world whereby our dependencies ( software components that we use) and platforms that we need to build/rely on ( like Civil 3D) do charge us on annual basis, and that some of users expect perpetual bug fixes from us, with or without a support contract of sorts, SaaS seems to only way to go for our sustainability.
  - SecretDreams 9mo ago
    There's gotta be better middle ground. Release something polished and only fix major bugs/vulnerabilities for free (because that's a liability). Minor bugs are accepted for a one off cost (I'm still using Microsoft 2016, e.g.). We've all got to push back against these bloated saas models that don't bring tangible benefits to end users and serve only to pad company valuations. Make new versions of your software with features meaningful enough to encourage people to upgrade and outline support periods for existing software sales after they buy a one-time license. There's gotta be a better way. For everyone (except big tech CEOs).
    - j16sdiz 9mo ago
      > Release something polished.. That's why software keep adding bloat fancy buttons and change color scheme every few years. This is anti-productive.
  - lazide 9mo ago
    Just charge for support, or if that is too harsh. If that is too harsh, charge for upgrades (but give point/minor bug fixes for the version they have for free). No support contract? Pound sand.
    - bruce511 9mo ago
      This sounds good, but in the real world it leads to massively upset customers. The problem exists from both sides of the coin. Firstly the bulk of customers don't purchase a support contract. So there is very little income to pay staff. So the "support" department has very few people. They're also not very good because low wages means staff turnover. Then Betty phones with a problem. Significant time is spent explaining to Betty that we can't help her because she (or more accurately her company) doesn't have a contract. She's fighting back because an annual contract seems a lot for this piddly question. Plus to procure the contract will take days (or weeks or months) on her side. And it's not I any budget, making things harder. Betty is very unhappy. The junior tech doesn't want to be an arsehole and it's a trivial question, and is stuck in the middle. We switched to a SaaS model in 2011. Users fell over themselves thanking us. They don't have to justify it to procurement. The amount can be budgeted for. No sudden upgrade or support fees. Users get support when they need it. The support department is funded and pays well, resulting in low staff turnover, and consequently better service. Plus, new sales can stop tomorrow and service continues. Funding for support remains even if sales saturate the market. Consumers may dislike SaaS, but for business, it absolutely matches their model, provides predictability, and allows for great service, which results in happy Users.
- charcircuit 9mo ago
  If a user gets ongoing value from software it makes sense for them to be willing to pay ongoing for that value. What users need is that the value they get from a product is more than the money they are trading for it. A one off license would be the result of a race to the bottom due to competition.
  - SecretDreams 9mo ago
    If I get ongoing value from my fully paid off car, should I keep paying the OEM? How about my house or my bike or my shoes? My toilet (huge ROI on this one)? My fridge?? Why do we feel that software gets to impose this ridiculous SaaS model? The only real answer is "because they can", not because it's helping anyone. Reality is that many modern software developments have plenty in common with designing a toilet. You spend time identifying the problem statement, how you can differentiate yourself, prototype it, work out the bugs, ship the final product, and let sales teams move the product. The difference is the toilet can't be turned into a SaaS (yet) and, if it ever could, that would break functionality because you're supposed to poop in it, not have it poop on you.
    - ryandrake 9mo ago
      Seriously, I have a house full of appliances, tools, clothing, and so on, that I get "ongoing value" from and whose manufacturers don't have the gall to try to charge me monthly for. Totally unacceptable business model.
      - lazide 9mo ago
        As long as no one expects updates and ongoing support beyond some pre-agreed time. The issue is a mismatch of incentives - customers wanting things for free - even if they aren’t actually customers. Vs businesses need/want for ongoing revenue (ideally for free too!). Both sides are never going to be perfectly happy, but there are reasonable compromises. There are also extractive abusive psychos, of course.
        9mo ago
- xp84 9mo ago
  > "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user That's okay, but in say, 2 years when Mac OS 28 completely bricks the app, the developer will not be there to give you an updated one (even if you're willing to pay), since most of the addressible market already bought the app in 2025, and after 2 years with almost no revenue, the developer stopped working on it, deleted the repo and moved onto another project. The developer can't even rely on a future OS update "encouraging" people to buy "App (N+1)" since it might be "ain't broke" for 1 year, or for 5. The point of a subscription is not to rip you off, it's to acknowledge a few realities: 1. For reasons beyond developers' control, platform vendors do not provide a "permanent" platform, but a shifting one without any long-term guarantees. You can put a 100-year certificate into your app, but the OS vendor might decide that only certs with expiration less than 45 days are okay and your app no longer works unless you're around to (A) keep abreast of the platform's rules and changes, and (B) ship an update. 2. Many software offerings need to provide a server-side component, which is never a one-time cost. 3. Relying on upgrade purchases to sustain a product gives developers perverse incentives to shove a ton of new features just to be able to pitch "Upgrade to Appitron 2!" with a ton of bullet points, whereas subscription pricing incentivizes them simply to keep users loving the app forever, including adopting new technologies but also just improving the core experience. Due to 1 and 2, it makes sense to let users who stop using the program after a short time pay very little, and to let users who rely on the continued operation of the program, pay a little bit each year, instead of paying $500 once and using it for a few years, and maybe upgrading for $250.
- alkonaut 9mo ago
  > I don't condone piracy, but I also don't condone SaaS. What's wrong with SaaS? If we didn't sell our desktop software to ~1000 companies as a SaaS then few would afford it. We could sell one-off/perpetual licenses for maybe $1M but only our biggest customers would manage that expense, while smaller competitors would not. And if that means we sold only 300 licenses, then the price would be even higher because the number of licenses sold would be even smaller. The SaaS is basically what the customers ask for. They can cancel and switch to competing software when they want to. In fact, customers who use the software rarely feel the SaaS yearly cost is too high so ask for even more SaaS-y functionality such as paying by minute of use or per specific action like "run simulation", instead of having a yearly subscription. Because they might just use it a few days per year so they feel that (say) $10/yr is too much.
dataflow 9mo ago
> from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade. Why should users upgrade or keep paying you when they already bought what they need and don't need anything else?
- nsoonhui 9mo ago
  Because 1. Physical dongle tends to break, and when it does, they expect us to give them replacing parts 2. They do expect bug fixes-- especially calculation bug fixes-- as the bugs are discovered. It's hard to leave their production critical apps broken like that once you know that the bugs can cause monetary or even life loss.
  - Dylan16807 9mo ago
    Wanting to say in business makes sense, bug fixes make sense. But the actual dongle... look, something like that should have a 30+ year warranty. There should be a plan for how to replace it a couple times before making the initial sale.
    - bigbuppo 9mo ago
      They actually have this solved with iLok... You can move the license to new dongles at will. And they have a relatively inexpensive annual service where they'll issue you temporary licenses for what was on the ilok while you ship it back the defective dongle to them. Mostly used for DAW software and plugins, but apparently a few other things have used it for licensing.
  - haspok 9mo ago
    > They do expect bug fixes-- especially calculation bug fixes-- as the bugs are discovered. Maybe I'm the weird one to expect reasonably bug-free software, and if a bug is found, an eventual bugfix "for free"? ESPECIALLY if they cause monetary or life loss! A bug means the developer did not do their job. Let's not pretend this is OK.
throw101010 9mo ago
> Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. In my experience this continues to this day due to people who require drawing on air-gapped computers, because the drawings/simulations they work on are highly sensitive (nuclear, military, and other sensitive infrastructure). But I'm sure there are also old-fashioned people who like the portability/sovereignty of not having to rely on a third-party license server as you suggest.
- izacus 9mo ago
  What's old fashioned about not having your business ability dependant on the vendors crappy cloud license check?
- wildzzz 9mo ago
  Hardware dongles are incredibly rare now. Even on airgapped machines, you'll see a local Flex license server running. This is especially true when you have a small network of multiple machines that may require the use of a network license. Dongles are just too delicate, they get lost or break. Or you end up with overzealous security software that decides to block anything that isn't a mouse or keyboard. There are plenty of modern day solutions for a transferable license.
  - jweather 9mo ago
    In my small corner of technology (AV) I regularly use three products with physical USB license keys: Crestron VC-4, Scala Digital Signage, and Dataton Watchout. Two of them have a "virtual license key" option that costs extra, intended for use with a VM. I wish they were more rare...
  - bobmcnamara 9mo ago
    I once had a goon glue the mouse and keyboard ports and fill the unused USBs with glue.
jbm 9mo ago
My dad used to use this kind of dongle for a civil engineering program called 'Cosmos'. Just wild to see it, it was so annoying to because sometimes it would simply not be detected on our 80386.
b1temy 9mo ago
> You might think cracking dongles is fun and copy protection is evil, but without protection, our livelihood is affected. I understand you might feel this way, but it seems to me customers are mostly business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.). In fact, having no copy protection would probably have saved you the problem you mentioned where a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available; this is one of the talking points that anti-drm/copy protection people advocate for, software lost to time and unable to be archived when the entities who made such protections go out of business or no longer want to support older software. > even on legitimate platforms like Shopee or Lazada. On a slight tangent, but I personally don't find either platform legitimate (Better than say, wish[.]com or temu, but not as "legitimate" as other platforms, though I can't think of a single fully legitimate e-commerce platform). Shopee collects a ton of tracking information (Just turn on your adblocked, or inspect your network calls. It's even more than Amazon!), is full of intrusive ads, sketchy deals, and scammers. You yourself said you can easily find cracked versions of the dongle there, which doesn't speak well for the platform. And Lazada is owned by Alibaba Group, which speaks for itself. I'm not sure why consumers in South East Asian regions aren't more outspoken about this, since they seem to be the some of the more popular e-commerce platforms there.
- samplatt 9mo ago
  >business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.) This is a nice idea but the reality is that there's MANY corporate customers who are happy to get away with casual piracy. Sometimes it's a holdover from when the company was small enough that every business expense is realistically coming out of their own pocket, sometimes they're trying to obfuscate how much their department actually costs to the company at large. You think individual consumers lie to themselves to justify software piracy? Corporate self-deception is a WHOLE new kettle of fish.
  - 9mo ago
truekonrads 9mo ago
The problem seems the sales model rather than the dongle: 1) a hardware and software solution implies that hardware will stop working at some point. Customers should understand it 2) you could sell them a new dongle every time support contract ends which is what I’ve experienced with Xways as an example. Even if you’re air gapped once a year usage data upload and new dongle seems fine. 3) why should users receive free upgrades and bug fixes? No software is bug free. Finally there are several brand protection shops that fight fakes and work well with Shopee, Lazada, Facebook etc. It’s not five dollars but they will take these down effectively
- lazide 9mo ago
  The model you are referring to works fine when the industry is expanding and/or legal entities turn over eventually. Which is not uncommon. It’s also one that is typically pretty good for customers that like to do an investment and then continue to reap benefits from it. The capitalization model. The ‘lease’ model (SaaS) is good for customers with highly variable licensing/software needs or that expect extremely high turnover, and prefer to see these costs as, essentially ‘cost of production’. The cash flow model. It does require a lot of trust, however, that when the lease comes up for renewal the fees won’t be usurious. Neither is necessarily wrong. A whole lot of folks are starting to realize the downsides of expenses coming out of cashflow though! And losing a lot of trust.
nopakos 9mo ago
Hey, fellow civil-engineering-software designer here! [https://www.anadelta.com/en/anadelta-tessera/ https://www.anadelta.com/en/anadelta-tessera/] Same story, same problems with dongles, perpetual & subscription licenses.
hulitu 9mo ago
> Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. Sometimes, there are network interuptions. Then it is the right time to work because youtube isn't available.
Nextgrid 9mo ago
With the low cost & power of modern microcontrollers, instead of having the dongle act purely for licensing purposes you could offload some of your "secret sauce" to it (I assume your software does a lot of calculations with some hardcoded, industry-specific constants). This makes it somewhat crack-proof because cracking it would involve replicating your secret sauce - at which point they may as well just make and sell their own software instead of distributing cracks.
analog31 9mo ago
I use one engineering app that has a "soft" license. It has a lot of failure modes, all of which are essentially administrative not technological. A fair number of departments have to work together: IT, purchasing, and accounts payable (in case the company is on credit hold for non-payment of a previous license renewal) across multiple corporate divisions. It can eat up a few days of my life, and sometimes I lose access to the software for a few days. The IT department restructures the license server or it goes down. The vendor changes their license technology every few years. If you have a physical dongle, the vendor will beg you to send it in and receive a soft license. The few remaining users with dongles refuse. The hardware is more reliable.
- wildzzz 9mo ago
  We use Flex license server for so many pieces of software. It works well as long as everything is up and running. Several years ago, we merged with another company and slowly began to consolidate IT infrastructure. The license server was moved many times without giving proper notification to users until it eventually settled at the main DC we use. Then came the issue of renewing the license. Previously, license renewal was managed at the department level which means the users only need to go to their boss if there's an issue and only had to send one email to our local IT to apply a new license. Funding for licenses came out of a special budget so department heads didn't have to beg. Very simple and it worked fine for years. Now, everything is centralized which sounds great except that the people that manage the license server are so far removed from where we are that it can take months for a license renewal. You're not talking to people you have an email address for, you're submitting tickets to our central system where they forward it onto the license group somewhere. It used to be incredibly painful but has gotten better now that the license group is more aware of the entire division of employees that now require their services too.

huflungdung 9mo ago

[dead]

SecretDreams 9mo ago

> which, from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade This take is diametrically opposite to what end users need. In a world where "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user, buying a one off license for a software seems much more sane then SaaS. SaaS is like a plague for end users. I don't condone piracy, but I also don't condone SaaS.

nsoonhui 9mo ago
In a perfect world, I would have agreed with you, even if it's diametrically opposite to my interest as a software developer cum business owner. But in an imperfect world whereby our dependencies ( software components that we use) and platforms that we need to build/rely on ( like Civil 3D) do charge us on annual basis, and that some of users expect perpetual bug fixes from us, with or without a support contract of sorts, SaaS seems to only way to go for our sustainability.
- SecretDreams 9mo ago
  There's gotta be better middle ground. Release something polished and only fix major bugs/vulnerabilities for free (because that's a liability). Minor bugs are accepted for a one off cost (I'm still using Microsoft 2016, e.g.). We've all got to push back against these bloated saas models that don't bring tangible benefits to end users and serve only to pad company valuations. Make new versions of your software with features meaningful enough to encourage people to upgrade and outline support periods for existing software sales after they buy a one-time license. There's gotta be a better way. For everyone (except big tech CEOs).
  - j16sdiz 9mo ago
    > Release something polished.. That's why software keep adding bloat fancy buttons and change color scheme every few years. This is anti-productive.
- lazide 9mo ago
  Just charge for support, or if that is too harsh. If that is too harsh, charge for upgrades (but give point/minor bug fixes for the version they have for free). No support contract? Pound sand.
  - bruce511 9mo ago
    This sounds good, but in the real world it leads to massively upset customers. The problem exists from both sides of the coin. Firstly the bulk of customers don't purchase a support contract. So there is very little income to pay staff. So the "support" department has very few people. They're also not very good because low wages means staff turnover. Then Betty phones with a problem. Significant time is spent explaining to Betty that we can't help her because she (or more accurately her company) doesn't have a contract. She's fighting back because an annual contract seems a lot for this piddly question. Plus to procure the contract will take days (or weeks or months) on her side. And it's not I any budget, making things harder. Betty is very unhappy. The junior tech doesn't want to be an arsehole and it's a trivial question, and is stuck in the middle. We switched to a SaaS model in 2011. Users fell over themselves thanking us. They don't have to justify it to procurement. The amount can be budgeted for. No sudden upgrade or support fees. Users get support when they need it. The support department is funded and pays well, resulting in low staff turnover, and consequently better service. Plus, new sales can stop tomorrow and service continues. Funding for support remains even if sales saturate the market. Consumers may dislike SaaS, but for business, it absolutely matches their model, provides predictability, and allows for great service, which results in happy Users.
charcircuit 9mo ago
If a user gets ongoing value from software it makes sense for them to be willing to pay ongoing for that value. What users need is that the value they get from a product is more than the money they are trading for it. A one off license would be the result of a race to the bottom due to competition.
- SecretDreams 9mo ago
  If I get ongoing value from my fully paid off car, should I keep paying the OEM? How about my house or my bike or my shoes? My toilet (huge ROI on this one)? My fridge?? Why do we feel that software gets to impose this ridiculous SaaS model? The only real answer is "because they can", not because it's helping anyone. Reality is that many modern software developments have plenty in common with designing a toilet. You spend time identifying the problem statement, how you can differentiate yourself, prototype it, work out the bugs, ship the final product, and let sales teams move the product. The difference is the toilet can't be turned into a SaaS (yet) and, if it ever could, that would break functionality because you're supposed to poop in it, not have it poop on you.
  - ryandrake 9mo ago
    Seriously, I have a house full of appliances, tools, clothing, and so on, that I get "ongoing value" from and whose manufacturers don't have the gall to try to charge me monthly for. Totally unacceptable business model.
    - lazide 9mo ago
      As long as no one expects updates and ongoing support beyond some pre-agreed time. The issue is a mismatch of incentives - customers wanting things for free - even if they aren’t actually customers. Vs businesses need/want for ongoing revenue (ideally for free too!). Both sides are never going to be perfectly happy, but there are reasonable compromises. There are also extractive abusive psychos, of course.
      - 9mo ago
xp84 9mo ago
> "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user That's okay, but in say, 2 years when Mac OS 28 completely bricks the app, the developer will not be there to give you an updated one (even if you're willing to pay), since most of the addressible market already bought the app in 2025, and after 2 years with almost no revenue, the developer stopped working on it, deleted the repo and moved onto another project. The developer can't even rely on a future OS update "encouraging" people to buy "App (N+1)" since it might be "ain't broke" for 1 year, or for 5. The point of a subscription is not to rip you off, it's to acknowledge a few realities: 1. For reasons beyond developers' control, platform vendors do not provide a "permanent" platform, but a shifting one without any long-term guarantees. You can put a 100-year certificate into your app, but the OS vendor might decide that only certs with expiration less than 45 days are okay and your app no longer works unless you're around to (A) keep abreast of the platform's rules and changes, and (B) ship an update. 2. Many software offerings need to provide a server-side component, which is never a one-time cost. 3. Relying on upgrade purchases to sustain a product gives developers perverse incentives to shove a ton of new features just to be able to pitch "Upgrade to Appitron 2!" with a ton of bullet points, whereas subscription pricing incentivizes them simply to keep users loving the app forever, including adopting new technologies but also just improving the core experience. Due to 1 and 2, it makes sense to let users who stop using the program after a short time pay very little, and to let users who rely on the continued operation of the program, pay a little bit each year, instead of paying $500 once and using it for a few years, and maybe upgrading for $250.
alkonaut 9mo ago
> I don't condone piracy, but I also don't condone SaaS. What's wrong with SaaS? If we didn't sell our desktop software to ~1000 companies as a SaaS then few would afford it. We could sell one-off/perpetual licenses for maybe $1M but only our biggest customers would manage that expense, while smaller competitors would not. And if that means we sold only 300 licenses, then the price would be even higher because the number of licenses sold would be even smaller. The SaaS is basically what the customers ask for. They can cancel and switch to competing software when they want to. In fact, customers who use the software rarely feel the SaaS yearly cost is too high so ask for even more SaaS-y functionality such as paying by minute of use or per specific action like "run simulation", instead of having a yearly subscription. Because they might just use it a few days per year so they feel that (say) $10/yr is too much.

dataflow 9mo ago

> from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade. Why should users upgrade or keep paying you when they already bought what they need and don't need anything else?

nsoonhui 9mo ago
Because 1. Physical dongle tends to break, and when it does, they expect us to give them replacing parts 2. They do expect bug fixes-- especially calculation bug fixes-- as the bugs are discovered. It's hard to leave their production critical apps broken like that once you know that the bugs can cause monetary or even life loss.
- Dylan16807 9mo ago
  Wanting to say in business makes sense, bug fixes make sense. But the actual dongle... look, something like that should have a 30+ year warranty. There should be a plan for how to replace it a couple times before making the initial sale.
  - bigbuppo 9mo ago
    They actually have this solved with iLok... You can move the license to new dongles at will. And they have a relatively inexpensive annual service where they'll issue you temporary licenses for what was on the ilok while you ship it back the defective dongle to them. Mostly used for DAW software and plugins, but apparently a few other things have used it for licensing.
- haspok 9mo ago
  > They do expect bug fixes-- especially calculation bug fixes-- as the bugs are discovered. Maybe I'm the weird one to expect reasonably bug-free software, and if a bug is found, an eventual bugfix "for free"? ESPECIALLY if they cause monetary or life loss! A bug means the developer did not do their job. Let's not pretend this is OK.

throw101010 9mo ago

> Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand. In my experience this continues to this day due to people who require drawing on air-gapped computers, because the drawings/simulations they work on are highly sensitive (nuclear, military, and other sensitive infrastructure). But I'm sure there are also old-fashioned people who like the portability/sovereignty of not having to rely on a third-party license server as you suggest.

izacus 9mo ago
What's old fashioned about not having your business ability dependant on the vendors crappy cloud license check?
wildzzz 9mo ago
Hardware dongles are incredibly rare now. Even on airgapped machines, you'll see a local Flex license server running. This is especially true when you have a small network of multiple machines that may require the use of a network license. Dongles are just too delicate, they get lost or break. Or you end up with overzealous security software that decides to block anything that isn't a mouse or keyboard. There are plenty of modern day solutions for a transferable license.
- jweather 9mo ago
  In my small corner of technology (AV) I regularly use three products with physical USB license keys: Crestron VC-4, Scala Digital Signage, and Dataton Watchout. Two of them have a "virtual license key" option that costs extra, intended for use with a VM. I wish they were more rare...
- bobmcnamara 9mo ago
  I once had a goon glue the mouse and keyboard ports and fill the unused USBs with glue.

jbm 9mo ago

My dad used to use this kind of dongle for a civil engineering program called 'Cosmos'. Just wild to see it, it was so annoying to because sometimes it would simply not be detected on our 80386.

b1temy 9mo ago

> You might think cracking dongles is fun and copy protection is evil, but without protection, our livelihood is affected. I understand you might feel this way, but it seems to me customers are mostly business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.). In fact, having no copy protection would probably have saved you the problem you mentioned where a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available; this is one of the talking points that anti-drm/copy protection people advocate for, software lost to time and unable to be archived when the entities who made such protections go out of business or no longer want to support older software. > even on legitimate platforms like Shopee or Lazada. On a slight tangent, but I personally don't find either platform legitimate (Better than say, wish[.]com or temu, but not as "legitimate" as other platforms, though I can't think of a single fully legitimate e-commerce platform). Shopee collects a ton of tracking information (Just turn on your adblocked, or inspect your network calls. It's even more than Amazon!), is full of intrusive ads, sketchy deals, and scammers. You yourself said you can easily find cracked versions of the dongle there, which doesn't speak well for the platform. And Lazada is owned by Alibaba Group, which speaks for itself. I'm not sure why consumers in South East Asian regions aren't more outspoken about this, since they seem to be the some of the more popular e-commerce platforms there.

samplatt 9mo ago
>business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.) This is a nice idea but the reality is that there's MANY corporate customers who are happy to get away with casual piracy. Sometimes it's a holdover from when the company was small enough that every business expense is realistically coming out of their own pocket, sometimes they're trying to obfuscate how much their department actually costs to the company at large. You think individual consumers lie to themselves to justify software piracy? Corporate self-deception is a WHOLE new kettle of fish.
- 9mo ago

truekonrads 9mo ago

The problem seems the sales model rather than the dongle: 1) a hardware and software solution implies that hardware will stop working at some point. Customers should understand it 2) you could sell them a new dongle every time support contract ends which is what I’ve experienced with Xways as an example. Even if you’re air gapped once a year usage data upload and new dongle seems fine. 3) why should users receive free upgrades and bug fixes? No software is bug free. Finally there are several brand protection shops that fight fakes and work well with Shopee, Lazada, Facebook etc. It’s not five dollars but they will take these down effectively

lazide 9mo ago
The model you are referring to works fine when the industry is expanding and/or legal entities turn over eventually. Which is not uncommon. It’s also one that is typically pretty good for customers that like to do an investment and then continue to reap benefits from it. The capitalization model. The ‘lease’ model (SaaS) is good for customers with highly variable licensing/software needs or that expect extremely high turnover, and prefer to see these costs as, essentially ‘cost of production’. The cash flow model. It does require a lot of trust, however, that when the lease comes up for renewal the fees won’t be usurious. Neither is necessarily wrong. A whole lot of folks are starting to realize the downsides of expenses coming out of cashflow though! And losing a lot of trust.

nopakos 9mo ago

Hey, fellow civil-engineering-software designer here! [https://www.anadelta.com/en/anadelta-tessera/ https://www.anadelta.com/en/anadelta-tessera/] Same story, same problems with dongles, perpetual & subscription licenses.

hulitu 9mo ago

> Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. Sometimes, there are network interuptions. Then it is the right time to work because youtube isn't available.

Nextgrid 9mo ago

With the low cost & power of modern microcontrollers, instead of having the dongle act purely for licensing purposes you could offload some of your "secret sauce" to it (I assume your software does a lot of calculations with some hardcoded, industry-specific constants). This makes it somewhat crack-proof because cracking it would involve replicating your secret sauce - at which point they may as well just make and sell their own software instead of distributing cracks.

analog31 9mo ago

I use one engineering app that has a "soft" license. It has a lot of failure modes, all of which are essentially administrative not technological. A fair number of departments have to work together: IT, purchasing, and accounts payable (in case the company is on credit hold for non-payment of a previous license renewal) across multiple corporate divisions. It can eat up a few days of my life, and sometimes I lose access to the software for a few days. The IT department restructures the license server or it goes down. The vendor changes their license technology every few years. If you have a physical dongle, the vendor will beg you to send it in and receive a soft license. The few remaining users with dongles refuse. The hardware is more reliable.

wildzzz 9mo ago
We use Flex license server for so many pieces of software. It works well as long as everything is up and running. Several years ago, we merged with another company and slowly began to consolidate IT infrastructure. The license server was moved many times without giving proper notification to users until it eventually settled at the main DC we use. Then came the issue of renewing the license. Previously, license renewal was managed at the department level which means the users only need to go to their boss if there's an issue and only had to send one email to our local IT to apply a new license. Funding for licenses came out of a special budget so department heads didn't have to beg. Very simple and it worked fine for years. Now, everything is centralized which sounds great except that the people that manage the license server are so far removed from where we are that it can take months for a license renewal. You're not talking to people you have an email address for, you're submitting tickets to our central system where they forward it onto the license group somewhere. It used to be incredibly painful but has gotten better now that the license group is more aware of the entire division of employees that now require their services too.