Quick Posted March 31, 2008 Share Posted March 31, 2008 In my opinion IPB should encode some of the source code to reduce piracy. You can never eliminate piracy, but you can certainly minimize it to a point where the company isn't loosing a major amount of money. A few suggestions: [*]Installer and SQL encoding - Require domain from IPS which license is intended to be installed on upon installation, easiser so IPS doesn't have to contact the majority of hosts to get the site shut down [*]Secondary Check - Embedded inside IPB that checks if the domain name is the same as the one on the IPS database every few days and will then report it to IPS. If installer is breached then the secondary installer will stop the board from running Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindsey_ Posted March 31, 2008 Share Posted March 31, 2008 Have a look at this thread :)http://forums.invisionpower.com/index.php?...=269355&hl= Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat Barrie Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 I'm sure you're well aware that should IPS actually implement your ideas, considerable numbers of potential buyers would be promptly turned off the software, and the privacy issues (and wasted bandwidth) inherent in any "phone home" idea certainly wont inspire confidence. So long as there are other viable competitors which do not utilise draconian anti-piracy measures, implementing draconian anti-piracy measures is commercial suicide. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quick Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 It would only be a megabyte a month, barely anything to send data to the IPS servers. It's not like the entire script is being encoded, just the license check and I doubt anyone would want to legitimately modify the license checker for a modification. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
kirov Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 lets say the IPS servers crash, or there is a big problem with the servers, this means that all the boars won't work, and many customers will be furios with this. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stoo2000 Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 Kirovul, that would not happen the license checking should be coded as to delay a check if the server can not be contact, and still leave the board functioning until a check can be carried out. Kyanmar, So Microsoft are still comitting suicide then ? they happen to have this feature but you dont see everyone jumping ship to OSX, Linux etc do you ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
UBERHOST.NET Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 Kyanmar, So Microsoft are still comitting suicide then ? they happen to have this feature but you dont see [i]everyone[/i] jumping ship to OSX, Linux etc do you ? Microsoft isn't in second place, they started off on top so they have the privilege of pissing off users without losing them. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cybertimber2009 Posted April 1, 2008 Share Posted April 1, 2008 Kirovul, that would not happen the license checking should be coded as to delay a check if the server can not be contact, and still leave the board functioning until a check can be carried out. Kyanmar, So Microsoft are still comitting suicide then ? they happen to have this feature but you dont see [i]everyone[/i] jumping ship to OSX, Linux etc do you ? Well, you see Microsoft's validation servers went offline for 6 hours and caused upwards of 20k computers using Vista and XP to show as unlicenced until it was repaired. And I'd think if anyone has built safties and delays into programs, it'd be Microsoft. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat Barrie Posted April 2, 2008 Share Posted April 2, 2008 It would only be a megabyte a month, barely anything to send data to the IPS servers. How do you know? And ultimately, it's still my bandwidth, and my software shouldn't be wasting it contacting vendors.It's not like the entire script is being encoded, just the license check and I doubt anyone would want to legitimately modify the license checker for a modification. Ingenious! Encode only a single, easily modified around license enforcement which we can just swap out a dummy file or two! If IPS doesn't feel they can trust us, why would we trust them? The current system is quite sufficient thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quick Posted April 2, 2008 Share Posted April 2, 2008 How do you know? And ultimately, it's still [i]my[/i] bandwidth, and my software shouldn't be wasting it contacting vendors. I'm sure most people will be able to spare a megabyte a month, probably less.Ingenious! Encode only a single, easily modified around license enforcement which we can just swap out a dummy file or two! Obviously it would have to be integrated and the entire forum wouldn't be able to be displayed without it.If IPS doesn't feel they can trust us, why would we trust them? The current system is quite sufficient thanks. They don't trust the group of people who steal hundreds of thousands of dollars per year from IPS in revenue by illegally using pirated software. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henke37 Posted April 2, 2008 Share Posted April 2, 2008 Partly encoding stuff is not enough, people will just either use an old version or write an alternative implementation. Completely encoding is not compatible with modding, yes hooks are great, but they can't do everything. Even with proper precompiling encoding, people can just read the bytecode and possibly modify that, or just reimplement it in php. Not to forget the idea of this home calling. Hello forged http transfers and firewalls. You might respond by talk about public key signatures in things like SSL, but guess what? That only works if you want an authentic reply. If I control the code that is executed, I can lie all I want to the checking routine. Or just hardcode the checking routine itself to return forged replys. In the end, unless you let Invision host it for you, they can do squat. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat Barrie Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 I'm sure most people will be able to spare a megabyte a month, probably less. Except that it's my bandwidth, and my software vendors shouldn't be using it to prop up their paranoia. Don't ever answer a response with exactly what you said in the first place.Obviously it would have to be integrated and the entire forum wouldn't be able to be displayed without it. Right, so therefore they'd have to encode the entire thing. And that would suck, because then it becomes an inferior product to others that we can modify to our needs.They don't trust the group of people who steal hundreds of thousands of dollars per year from IPS in revenue by illegally using pirated software. So as a result they should screw us, who give them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (assumption, just as much as your number. You don't know how much they lose to piracy, and I don't know how much they make). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Quick Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Except that it's my bandwidth, and my software vendors shouldn't be using it to prop up their paranoia. Don't ever answer a response with exactly what you said in the first place. Right, so therefore they'd have to encode the entire thing. And that would suck, because then it becomes an inferior product to others that we can modify to our needs. So as a result they should screw us, who give them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (assumption, just as much as your number. You don't know how much they lose to piracy, and I don't know how much they make). Why don't you want this? I mean it's only ONE file which nobody needs to legitimately see or modify. Its not like the whole thing would be encoded, everyone would leave for vBulletin then. :lol: There are plenty of ways to integrate one Zend encoded file into a PHP script. Many scripts already do this to combat piracy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mat Barrie Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Why don't you want this? I mean it's only ONE file which nobody needs to legitimately see or modify. Its not like the whole thing would be encoded, everyone would leave for vBulletin then. :lol: There are plenty of ways to integrate one Zend encoded file into a PHP script. Many scripts already do this to combat piracy. You can't combat piracy by encoding one file. Anyone can just go along and reimplement that one file, and BANG! Your script is source readable and easily pirated again. The real question is not "why don't I want this" but rather, wh exactly do YOU want a product which is unnecessarily limited? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrostedPopTart Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Except that it's my bandwidth, and my software vendors shouldn't be using it to prop up their paranoia. Don't ever answer a response with exactly what you said in the first place. Right, so therefore they'd have to encode the entire thing. And that would suck, because then it becomes an inferior product to others that we can modify to our needs. So as a result they should screw us, who give them hundreds of thousands of dollars per year (assumption, just as much as your number. You don't know how much they lose to piracy, and I don't know how much they make). It can be semi-safely assumed that IPS makes at least $1 million a year. After looking at bfarber's Myspace page, I see that he makes between $45k to $60k a year. Then you have Lindy, Matt, Charles, Debbie, and Nakisha; who all most likely make at least that much (if not more). Tack on the paychecks for Keith Kacin, Josh Harris, Josh Williams, Matt Morris, Blake C (still don't know his full last name), Ryan Strauss, Alex Duggan, Remco Wilting, Phil Mossop, and anyone else who I might have forgotten. Let's not forget their building rent, 20+ servers, building expenses (lights, water, phone, internet, etc.); costs of maintaining servers and office PC's; any company-issued materials (cell phones, pagers, etc.); the costs of actually ADVERTISING (god forbid their business magically appears out of nowhere); so on and so forth. Let's take a quick look at the (ASSUMED) IPS income. For someone like me, with the old yearly licenses, we now pay $50 a year for support. OK not bad right? Multiply that by about, oh; say 2500 customers and you get $125,000. OMG 1/8th of the way there with just OUTDATED licenses!!!111oneoneone Then we count NEW licenses $the $149 and $299 ones). Not sure how popular they are so let's say 1,000 a year for each. 1,000 * 149 = $149,000 and 1,000 * 299 = $249,000, respectively. And let's not forget the renewals for perpetual licenses. $50 * 2500 (approx.) = $125,000. Add that all up and you get $648,000!!! Oh my heavens! MAN THAT'S A POOP LOAD OF MONEY!!! That just paid like 10 people's salaries, I hope you realize that. OK let's move on. Remember though that that was JUST IPB, NOT anything else. Now for other products. First is blog. $50 * let's say 5,000 Blog licenses (again approximate). That comes out to $250,000. Then add on another $100,000 for renewals and we arrive at $998,000. Oh so close to a million bucks, I just know that IP.Downloads will make us go over!!!111oneoneone And it does. $50 * 1000 licenses (approx.) = $50,000. Not too good, but IP.Downloads doesn't seem too heavily used. Oh well. Tack on another $50,000 for renewals and we get $100,000 total for IP.Downloads. Grand total so far is $1,098,000. We have passed the magical $1 million mark!!! Next up is IP.Gallery. That costs a bit more at $65. We can see by browsing the forums that Gallery is popular so we'll say that it has 5,000 active licenses for it. $65 * 5,000 = $325,000. Renewals for Gallery are also a bit more costly, at $30. 5000 * 30 = $150,000. Add that up and you get $475,000. So how much do we have so far?!?!?!? you ask. Grand total so far is $1,423,000. Not bad for IPS! :) BUT WAIT!!! IPS HOSTING!!! As I haven't used IPS Hosting in ages (and the support forums for IPS Hosting are now gone) I can only guess as to how popular IPS Hosting is, so forgive me. We can see that IPS Hosting has 5 plans for shared hosting, and again for forum hosting. We will average the numbers to make things easier for the sake of these calculations. For SHARED HOSTING, we will say that the average between all plans is $30.99 (*** ACTUAL NUMBER!!! ***). We will venture to say that IPS puts 150 of the "average" account on a server (RAID10 setup, fault-tolerant, assuming 17GB disks each). 15 servers * 150 plans on a server * average cost of $30. That comes out to $69,727.50. Now, for FORUM HOSTING, the average between all 5 plans is $36 (*** ACTUAL NUMBER!!! ***) We will venture to say that, since the disk space limit on these plans is smaller than website hosting; IPS puts DOUBLE the amount of accounts on a server. So: 300 * 36 * 15 servers = $162,000. What are we at now??? A nice number if I do say so myself. The grand total so far (not counting dedicated servers) is $1,654,727.50!!! My point in spending a half hour calculating all of that? Losing one customer (or even a few dozen) to vBulletin / phpBB / MyBB / SMF / phorum / etc. won't hurt IPS. They make more than enough money as it is. Why do you think they are doing so well right now, hiring so many skilled staff and having such great products? Although I personally hope that IPB / IP Gallery / IP Downloads / IP Blog never go encoded (as those are the main products that I use); I hope that this novel length post showed you that IPS losing some customers to other BBS softwares won't bother them at all. It, in fact; should only strive to make them better. :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith J. Kacin Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 After looking at bfarber's Myspace page, I see that he makes between $45k to $60k a year. He doesn't have his income listed on his page. BTW, kinda creepy. :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wickedfpoop Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 He doesn't have his income listed on his page. BTW, kinda creepy. :P LOL. Glad I deleted mine. *runs to check his Facebook* Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Snookputt Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Some calculation there Buddy, based on fact or are you just bored and needed to kill some time? :lol: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrostedPopTart Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 After looking at bfarber's Myspace page many months ago, I see that he makes between $45k to $60k a year. Fixed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
elj Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 ... You have too much time on your hands. :D Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith J. Kacin Posted April 3, 2008 Share Posted April 3, 2008 Fixed. Maybe he got a pay cut! :lol: I'll stop. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bfarber Posted April 7, 2008 Share Posted April 7, 2008 What are you talking about Joshua? I'm paid in coffee and cigarettes :unsure: Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lindsey_ Posted April 7, 2008 Share Posted April 7, 2008 What are you talking about Joshua? I'm paid in coffee and cigarettes :unsure: :lol: They must feed you lots! :P Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jaggi Posted April 7, 2008 Share Posted April 7, 2008 What are you talking about Joshua? I'm paid in coffee and cigarettes :unsure: coffee and cigs are way too expensive, they should be paying you in air and dirt. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
henke37 Posted April 7, 2008 Share Posted April 7, 2008 You guys are missing the important part, they get benefits. They probably have direct access to a very wide connection out on the net. Not to mention all the pizza and other food they might get for free. Oh, yeah, I bet that they got lifetime licenses for all the software too. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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