In an ideal world there is a person responsible for every step in software development, from coding, UI design, distribution, documentation, marketing and support. All of this can seem really overwhelming for independent developers and small businesses. But if you break it down and take it one piece at a time, it’s manageable by even the smallest team of one. Right now, let’s look at software distribution.
For software, distribution usually means generating and validating unique serial numbers for each of your products and users. Serial numbers (or license keys) help you manage your users, unlock a free trial or demo version for full use and, of course, minimize illegal use of your apps.
Let’s admit it, there is no silver bullet. Even the greatest companies (you know who you are) throw lots of money at implementing and improving serious protection schemes that are often quickly bypassed. It comes down to: How much time, money and resources are you willing to spend implementing a protection or licensing scheme?
The bad guys will always find a way to break your software protection if they are interested in doing that. Does that mean giving up on protecting your software? Not at all! When I was faced with the problem myself, in order to protect my own products, I went to the drawing board to build a way to generate unique serial numbers —or licensing information— for all the Xojo supported platforms.
The result of this process was the GuancheMOS plug-in. GuancheMOS is a fully multiplatform plug-in for desktop, web and console apps (not for iOS due to the fact that iOS only can link against static libraries), on 32-bit and 64-bit architectures.
The simplicity of GuancheMOS means that you can use it as is, or as the starting point to build your own private and unique serial number automations. Integrate it as part of the purchase process in your website, wrap it as the core piece of other unique information collection. It’s already used by dozens of developers around the world in ways I hadn’t ever thought of while designing it! The best part, is that implementing GuancheMOS in your product takes about 5 minutes.
You can download and try GuancheMOS for free today.
Javier Rodriguez has been the Xojo Spanish Evangelist since 2008, he’s also a Developer, Consultant and Trainer who has be using Xojo since 1998. He manages AprendeXojo.com and is the developer behind the GuancheMOS plug-in for Xojo Developers, Markdown Parser for Xojo, HTMLColorizer for Xojo and the Snippery app, among others