Any true safe software

If you provide people with the means to run your software on a PC, they will eventually be able to find out how it works, given enough time and patience. If the computer can run the code, so can a human - just much slower. This is as true of native code as it is of managed code; native code can’t be decompiled as well as managed code, but the vast amount of cracked software in the world shows that clearly it can be understood well enough to work round licensing restrictions. It will therefore always be a matter of balance - how many of your potential customers do you think want to rip you off? (If someone isn’t going to buy your software anyway, it doesn’t really matter to you financially whether or not they use it illegally; only potential customers really matter.) If you can trust your customer base, don’t worry about it at all. If you think there may be some bad apples, look at obfuscation and some of the other options - but always weigh up how much it will cost you to implement these solutions against the potential lost revenue.

Related posts:

1. Are you using safe software
2. Software piracy is the unauthorized use or distribution of software
3. Sad but true!
4. licence checking code
5. Software Security Assurance: A Framework for Software Vulnerability Management and Audit
6. Testing software during the development phase

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