Due to the recent incompatibilities between Vista and the crappy 3rd party licensing tool I use for FlowBreeze, I have been re-examining how I look at anti-piracy protection. I’ve decided it all boils down to a simple formula:

PL = F(SLS + SE + LS - DT)

Where, PL = Piracy Loss (i.e. the revenues lost due to software piracy) is a function of:

SLS = Support Labor Savings
The support time savings by NOT having to deal with crappy 3rd party licensing tool problems.

SE = Software Expenses
The money saved by not buying the forced upgrade to the just-as-crappy new version of the crappy 3rd party licensing tool that still fails on Vista.

LS = Lost Sales
The lost sales caused by installation and runtime problems which are due to the crappy 3rd party licensing software.

DT = Development Time
The labor to develop my own licensing tool and delivery mechanism to replace the crappy 3rd party licensing software.

The question is, should the formula be…
(a) PL < F(x) or
(b) PL = F(x) or
(c) PL > F(x)?

Obviously I wrote this piece because I think the answer is (a).

In the past few months, there’s been an spike in user-reported problems. First, there’s Vista. Putting a crappy 3rd party licensing wrapper around a DLL justing isn’t working on Vista. In fact, FlowBreeze won’t even install on Vista 64. Unfortunately, there have been a number of reported problems on XP as well. I haven’t been able to pinpoint the cause of the problems, other than sending users an unprotected version of the software resolves everything.

Did I just say that I was sending out unprotected versions of FlowBreeze? Yes, I did. In fact, I’m candid when people ask about it.

It’s a trust based system, and conversions for those who request a copy are much higher then the standard conversion rate. I think that there are two reasons for this. (1) The people who take the time to inquire are more interested than the casual downloader. (2) Most people are pretty honest.

Granted, the release of FlowBreeze 2.0 is just around the corner, so the risk of sending out unprotected copies is low. But it’s still nice to know that most of the people I deal with are willing to pay for something they value. Not only does that re-affirm my belief that (a) is the correct formula, but also that nascent microISV’s are better off implementing their own simple licensing system than relying on 3rd party tools with potential side effects.