How to make Licensing mandatory?

vvvv beta question
1

Hi guys, im working with a friend on a possible commercial project using vvvv as main software.
In order to put a price of the final product ( licence + developing ), we are asking the costumer on how many pcs will the software run.
We are offering them a developer price and forcing them to buy the licence before installing the software.

The question is, how we can “control” the code that we made, to be sure that will run only on the desires pcs ?

asumming that the client knows almost anything about vvvv, but knows how to install it, and how to do the same procedure on each cpu
( copy the source patch an run it )

i want to ask if someone remember a node that provides the computer mother brand a serial number, and many other system info parameter that are like unike of each cpu.
Another idea was to make a patch that check for a variable on a .html online that allows the program to run properly

we also want to hide a bug to track on how many pcs this patch was copied, assuming that all the pcs are running internet,
we were able to use http to open a php with some of the system data, ip, ect to a hidden email address

and also, is there any way to implement a geolocalization on this ?

It might sound illegal or silly, but out intention its to make this economy working again. We want to get paid for our programming
and we want to buy as much licences as we can, that’s the right way to do it. It seems that there is an abuse about the clients when they see that there is no limitation on the software.
They point of view is " Why so much!? , a friend told me that is free! " and here in Argentina big jobs payments are less than 1 licence price… at least the clients that i have access to…
this one wants to see the program working before making a decision, and if i send the patch i know that im gone

any suggestion on how to deal with this ?

2

helo ale,

word of advice: don’t work for people who you cannot trust. instead of spending your time on figuring out how you can protect yourself from them, spend that time on finding someone who hires you because he values what you do.

word of business: if you’re planning on distributing multiple copies of a vvvv-patch as a product, OEM-licensing may be an option. please direct such inquiries to groupӘvvvv.org directly and we’ll see what we can do.

3

If you put your product on public sale you can’t trust everyone.

The core of vvvv is not opensource. It’d be nice to have the same choice with my vvvv product.

4

xd_nitro please contact us as well via groupӘvvvv.org for any product-related inquiries.

5

joreg i know ale, he is from Argentina too, and here its hard to trust to anybody, no matter how big the company is.

I was doing all the arrangement to make a software for a company, and when i saw the contract that i need to sign, it was hilarious… basicaly, you cant tell nobody that you worked for that company, or that you worked for the client ( big fish here ), they keep the code, they can do whatever with that code, and you CAN´T use the same code again on any other personal projects, and keeps going… I give up and i didn’t took the job, cause i know they can change the background .jpg and re use the same app for another big fish without giving me a call, and the final price on all this was less than half price of 1 licence… wich in argentinian “pesos” its a lot of money, and other people can do the same on other platforms like processing, or open frameworks or quartz. So I can´t ask more money because the market its saturated with people that works for the price of a package of cigarettes.

joreg is there any plan to make vvvv able to run “closed” apps…
i mean, installing all the dependencies, and running on a standalone .exe ?

I think it would be a good deal to make something like this,
if i have a vvvv licence + additional stand alone export feature( im buying one next month FOR SURE! ),i would be able to compile .exe files to run on my pc and on 1 extra PC, 1 at a time. And you guys make a way to have that .exe file checking a database from vvvv.org or any other place to see if it authorized. And I would be able to “change” the destination PC, lets say i made a installation for 1 month, after that, i leave that pc/code offline, to make that, the pc needs to check the Internet again, and the server disable the code localy… or to have more transparency, make this system able to work online every time… no connection, no server check, no execution possible!, as simple as that!.
and when we have another client, we change from vvvv.org the destination licence to a second pc, to be able to run the code on 1 pc at a time only.

You guys can get paid more “little” fee for every change… or a smaller fee for a “finished” closed program… and we “programers” have a guarantee that this program wont be miss used or reused…
Again, this is a simple idea on my head, but I don’t have many legal knowledge about licences and laws… so this could be a stupid idea… i don’t know, please let me know if im wrong

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the system you ask for is already implemented. but please contact the vvvv group directly for any further details. groupӘvvvv.org

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@vjc4
Contracts are wishlists for companies, what they would really like, ie you take all the risk, take any flack and they get the credit, they are starting points for negotiations not the final word, if you don’t like a clause cross it out and initial it, or at the very least negotiate the contract.
For a recent one, we had to sign an NDA, but we added clauses that mean when it is out of the scope and we have been released (basically an NDA is so you don’t pre-empt their publicity) we can release out documentation, we also informed them that out work includes open source code and any code we write will be made open source, but that we would grant them full licence to use the final application (in the specific project that we worked on, further instances are extra), on receipt of the final payment of course, and signed a contract stating we wont approach their clients directly as a result of this work for a certain length of time, as long as they think they are protected they will often, and it is often in their best interest to let you change things.
Another bargaining point is to say I can do it for x amount, but for that you don’t get the code, if you want that you need to add a 0 to the amount!
Often they don’t actually care, but are looking for protection again, and they go for a cheap price rather than pay the extra, if they don’t you get more money! If your OK with walking away from a deal, you have extra bargaining power, as you can state what it is that is the deal breaker and the ball is in their court then ;)

@Tonfilm, maybe you should let licence holders in on that…?

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@vjc2 catweasel made some very good points.

plans we have quite a few… vvvv keynote « NODE13 Forum for Digital Arts 11–17 Feb 2013

@cat
what tonfilm referred to is not published (yet) for reasons… but we’re as always open for specific requests via the mentioned mail-address.

9

uiuiui, that is very interesting news! …can’t wait till keynote.

one note on licensing:
i recently discovered, that the term “free version only for noncommercial use” is hardcoded in the splash-image. that can be an embarrassing situation, if a client who paid for a license discovers that.
perhaps, this term can change if a valid license file is found i a given folder? …might even increase license counts

10

hmm this topic suddenly got teasing and mysterious… :D
btw that message disappear if you delete splash.bmp from the lib folder

11

and anyone can replace that message with his own splash.bmp

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This reminds me of that splash contest you launched back in the days. Let’s make one during Node!

13

And perhaps someone will demonstrate how to use git, perhaps in the hackspace

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@sunep offtopic, but there will be some gitting in the working with the vvvv sdk workshop