Asp.net solution Licensing

Question

Im developing an asp.net mvc 2 project and I would like to implement the following licensing scheme:

Customers can buy the solution compiled or with the source code (the second option it will be more expensive). So if they buy the source code they can customize it as they need. But I would like them to pay for each copy of my software that they are running... for example if they install my solution in 2 servers they should pay 2 licenses.

The thing is, how can I achieve this if I give the source code? Some part should be compiled to make the license verification... What options do you recommend?

Investigating how different solutions implement this I found aspnetdotstorefront (http://www.aspdotnetstorefront.com). This company has the same business model, they sell you the code but also sell licenses... so you can buy 5 licenses with the source code.

Does anyone know how they achieve this? In some way they are checking the licenses and they dont allow you to bypass that check, because if not everyone would buy 1 license and the source code, and then install in on all the servers they want.

Thanks in advance, Juan

Answer 1

You can't programatically enforce a license scheme that includes the source code that can be compiled into a working product. In such situations you have to rely on legal enforcement of such license agreements. You'll find however that since your source version is considerably more expensive that it will be purchased by larger companies that have license enforcement rules in place.

But the bottom line is, if you give your source away, you also give away control. Now that's not always a bad thing. Remember that your license is a tool to increase profits - nothing more. How would adding a license restriction to your source increase your profits? If the answer is "it can't" then don't worry about it.

For the binary protection check out DeployLX. It supports all the other runtime features that you desire.

Answer 2

The real question is is your software good enough to make major companies license it? When you also sell source code you are basically trusting companies to follow your licensing agreement. This works fine for major companies, but not if your not marketing to major players. Example: A college is not going to likely break federal copy write laws by using unlicensed versions of your software, but the other 98% of companies out there, especially smaller ones, would have no problem doing so.

Case in point: Microsoft sells Visual Studio 2010 for about 800 for professional. You can also get a academic license 100% free by joining web https://www.dreamspark.com/default.aspx. Now if you were to use the academic program to create commercial ASP.net software as a small company, it is EXTREMELY unlikely you will ever be caught. Microsoft however trusts that as a company, you will license the full product as you are legally obligated to do so. They also know that even a huge portion of the people using their software, use it illegally, there are so many commercial companies that will pay for it that it is worth the cost / benefit.

Chances are, you do not fall in that category of having so many companies who will pay for it, when the source could be found on any torrent site, so my personal suggestion is just sell licensed copies of the compiled coding, with an option to make custom builds for people.

Answer 3

The other answers seem to support this concept as well. Just look at the telerik licensing, there is no "security" if you pay for a license. It's more on the "honor code" idea. Then again, they are dealing with developers, so locking other developers out of your software can prove to be quite difficult... I think that's why they choose to "trust" their users.

You're not going to be able to show a user your source code, and still programmatically enforce licensing. Trust your users to do the right thing... you might have to account for "some" loss.

I realize this isn't an "answer" to your question, just an alternative.