Periodik Labs

Rule number one for software developers creating anti-piracy schemes for their products: in your zeal to keep your product off the warez sites, don't piss off your paying customers.

Software products that require online activation should give users a grace period in case they don't have internet connectivity or face some other kind of problem with activation. This is the model Microsoft follows with Windows XP: after installation, you have 30 days before the product stops functioning.

We aren't using any kind of activation scheme because we, as software consumers, don't like having it foisted upon us. Speaking for myself, there are two things I don't like about activating software online: I don't know what information the software is sending back to the vendor, and if the vendor goes out of business and I need to re-install the software, I'm out of luck.

We've been lucky and have not had a significant problem with our own software being pirated. If we do ever have a widespread problem with piracy, my tune on software activation may change. Knock on wood, that day will never come.