Licensing/Registration Question

So my current project is a DLL that will basicly be a conduit between 2 different systems.
We have a decent registration process we use for our Custom exe's, but this is the first time we are devolping a DLL and we are lost on how to prevent this DLL from ending up "in the wild".

Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated, let me know if you need any further info.

ZiggaDigga
Monday, October 20, 2003

Without knowing anything about your situation, static linking might be an option.  Often times, folks use a DLL where they could use a library instead.  If your EXEs are always released in a "matched set", static linking isn't a bad way to go.  It'll use extra disk space and a bit of memory when both apps are open at the same time, but this should only be an issue with older machines and/or _extremely_ large apps.

Also avoids DLL hell, exposing function names, registration, etc.

Bill Carlson
Monday, October 20, 2003

I'll second Bill's recommendation. Dependencies are a major pain and complicate distribution and installation. Steer clear unless you're going to be using that library in a large number of programs that will all be running at once.

Clay Dowling
Monday, October 20, 2003

If you have registration code in your exes, I dont see why you couldn't include it in your DLL as well. I mean if your custom exes are the only one using the DLL, they could make a call like InitDLL() which takes a the same registration key as your exes uses.

Unless the DLL have seen a valid key it will not run. So when my friend copies it off of his system and gives it to me I will be unable to use it, unless I provide a valid key.

Am I missing something?

Patrik
Tuesday, October 21, 2003

Bill & Clay: A DLL is the only way to go in this situation unfortunatly...

Patrik: Well, we usually are dealing with a known configuration, we know where are exes are, we know where our database is, so on and so on, so we can drop our registration info in a known spot.

With this new DLL project, we don't know where anything  will be. Also we only want them to have to go through the registration process once per site, not on every single client machine.

Anyways, I think we have a plan at this point, but thanks for the comments folks.

ZiggaDigga
Tuesday, October 21, 2003

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