intra wrote- Anyone doing "licensing" etc. for plugins?
I did bring this up at a conference previously.
I think it would be good for developers who have made plugin's to have a mechanism where we could use AwareIM's mac address validation or some other mechanism to either allow or disallow a particular plugin to work.
Example:
You make a plugin that for a specific installation, AwareIM already makes a unique ID and does a MAC Address check. Being able to access that via a library for a validation would allow third party plugin developers to ensure that their plugins remain at that customer site.
I have thought about this as well and working on a solution for it. What I thought about as an identifier is the BS name and while that isn´t 100% effective as a user might want to "move" the plugin to another BS and if they are "mischievous" (dicks), they could still use the old one on the old BS as it´s no way to "unregister" the old plugin. I am working on an idea about how to solve that but not sure it will work (another option might be a nontransferable license, see below).
Fixed, nontransferable license? It is possible to "hardcode" the bsname into the plugin and only run if the BS is the one hardcoded in the plugin and then it´s fixed and works (but presents a problem if a customer then wants to move that license to another BS, read above). One solution to this is selling fixed/nontransferable licenses i.e you buy a plugin/license for BS and that´s it and you can´t change it. If you need the plugin for another BS, you will have to buy another license. Is this viable, what do you think?
