Hi everyone,
My employer is getting nervous about how easily the maxscript that I am developing for him could be lifted off the computers. I have encrypted all the important stuff, but he wants extra measures, since it the encrypted versions can still be lifted off the drives very easily.
He was wondering (and so was I) whether it is possible for maxscript to check something on the internet, such as a text file on an ftp site, or even the clock/date on the computer. Or even the liscence number for the particular Max license that is installed on that machine.
Generally, although I love the idea of open souce code to be shared, my employer is perhaps less willing to share code that “accidently” falls into competitors hands.
Simply, I was wondering how people went about protecting their scripts? Any suggestions and examples of code would be really appreciated!
Thanks to everyone as always
Take care,
EverZen
Guys,
Missed the post about the hardware lock! Thanks to reform for starting that! I guess that that means that since it can only be used on that version of max then it is pretty unmovable!
Do people put an additional timer on the licenses that causes the script top deactivate after a certain period? Or Maybe referencing a file on the internet, that could simply be deleted if license fees were not paid on time?
Thanks again everyone
EverZen
I did this once for a client and it was all a pain and not worth it I think. There are hundreds of scripts out there and I can’t see your script costing your company money if it got out what ever it is. But hey, not your call I’m guessing.
I keyed the encrypted scripts to the hardware lock with a math function around it so they would install the script send me the hardware lock number which I would use in a key generator that I would then send back to them so they could run the tool.
I didn’t trust this company to pay me either since they were making crazy requests that just kept getting worse and I have had troubles with clients like that before. So I set up my own time out on it. There used to be a bit of an issues with doing this and you needed Larry’s AVG extensions to correct it. When you retreive the time and date of the computer it would return a string, problem is the string was formated in the order the end user set up windows to show it is so that was no way to know that you were getting the numbers you expected. AVG extension corrected this and it might now be built into Max but I’m not sure. I set it up so that when the script loaded it would check the counter code that was entered and then check to see if the date limit had been reached. Once they had paid I told them there was a problem with the plugin and they needed to upgrade to the new version, the new version didn’t do the check for the date. They did pay but they were very close to hitting the time limit which was set around two months past the due date.
Wow, that was cutting it pretty close to the line, but I completely understand your reasoning behind it. Nicely pulled off!
The reason that my employer is getting concerned is that many of my scripts are now thousands of lines long, and fulfil very complex but specific tasks. He is well aware that there are a handful of other compnanies that he competes with that are doing these tasks by hand. The scripts are enabling him to undercut these competitors without cutting into his profits.
Generally I completely agree that it is not an issue that needs to be taken to this level, but as the scripts slowly grow and grow, I think he is getting fewer and fewer hours sleep!
Thanks for the tips Pen, I will look into how that holds up with the latest max versions.
Take care,
EverZen