Re: New method to load user bundles

[Nicolas Roard]

On 2003-06-03 12:25:18 +0000 Markus Hitter <mah@jump-ing.de> wrote:

> Am Dienstag, 03.06.03 um 05:42 Uhr schrieb Nicolas Roard:
>
> > Honnestly, if the software becomes popular, you will see many cracked versions. 
> > Copy-protection is really a waste of time for the company, and an annoying 
> > thing for the legal user.
>
> Three advantages of copy protection:
>
> 1) For the user applying a crack, he undoubtly knows he is doing something 
> illegal.
>
> 2) For the paying user, it supports the feeling the company is doing something 
> against hackers.
>
> 3) If the software becomes indeed popular (and cracked), you already have a lot 
> of paying customers, so your investment is returned.

Yes, that's true.
> This doesn't require some super special mechanism. Implementing a simple 
> protection is a matter of a few minutes. Use it in a lot of locations, so the 
> cracker has a lot of work.

Yes, I agree. But you don't need a really effective protection, you just need
a protection for #1 and #2... And my point was that, the "problem" wasn't
the potential loading of bundle in itself, but the existence of Objective-C's 
categories.

About the protections vs piracy :
It doesn't stop you to add a protection to your software, but with Objective-C,
this protection is weaker (or a bit easier to pull off) than others languages.
Anyway, it's not so important -- it doesn't matters if the protection last 1 day
or 10 day when a cracker wants to do it, in the end the protection will be
removed. So if you just want to responds to #1 and #2, you could do it.

some thoughs :

1) protections are removed by crackers, whatever complexity 2) thus a really 
complex one will NOT stop crackers, but will cost more
   money to the company for a small benefit
3) a "normal" protection is enough -- normal as in "not too costly to the
  company in developer's time"
4) it should be noted that you should avoid annoying protections for the
  user, as it will lead to the paradoxal situation that yours customers will
  have a worse experience with your software than the crackers !
5) Objective-C doesn't stop you to add protections, but they will be perhaps
  cracked easier due to the dynamism of the langage.
In my opinion it doesn't matters so much -- for "normal" users they won't
pass the protection, and for crackers, they will pass anyway. You could also
make things a bit harder if you want, with some C code inside your program,
etc.

--
Nicolas Roard