Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!bellcore!rutgers!uwvax!vanvleck!uwmcsd1!ig!agate!ucbvax!GE-CRD.ARPA!EVERHART%ARISIA.DECnet From: EVERHART%ARISIA.DECnet@GE-CRD.ARPA Newsgroups: comp.os.vms Subject: Software protection Message-ID: <8807121058.AA21097@ucbvax.Berkeley.EDU> Date: 11 Jul 88 16:30:00 GMT Sender: daemon@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU Organization: The Internet Lines: 23 Re use of LMF for non-DEC vendors: Remember please that DEC's reason to go to LMF is mainly that they want to speed up delivery problems by sending pretty much EVERY one of their products to everyone (via cdrom), and allowing sales to be just a piece of paper, not having to maintain zillions of interlocking kits. A non-DEC vendor does NOT have this excuse. I find copy protection to be sufficiently offensive on our VAX that I will strenuously object to ANY attempt to use such. Nobody can guarantee he'll be in business in a year, really, and I can't guarantee my CPU ID or any other number about my processor will remain unchanged over years. Attempts to tie software use to being able to call a vendor are VERY risky for purchasers for this reason alone. They can also cost sales. Example of the latter: a CASE vendor lost a bunch of sales at one of our divisions because they insisted on using the Ethernet address of the vaxstations to copy protect. Problem was a number of the vaxstations had only the serial cards, no Ethernet. Company wouldn't change the product, so were disqualified. They deserved it. I believe boycotting copy-protected software to be the appropriate and correct general response, for all our protection. Glenn Everhart Everhart%Arisia.decnet@ge-crd.arpa