Is there necessity in protection of Linux software?
 

Greetings to all Visitors!

Linux is great platform for server software but many people use it also on their desktops. And it is quite normal situation when Linux OS itself together with its applications are distributed absolutely free of charge, but some publishers use traditional sales model.

Our company develops software protection solutions against analyzing, cracking and illegal usage but only for Win 32/64 applications. Taking into account what Linux continues the expansion we are thinking over software protection for this platform too.
I'm here because we need opinions of publishers and developers Linux software most of all.

We will be very appreciating for your answer/opinion about necessity protection for Linux applications right here in this topic.
Or you can to influence on history of software protection development via the questionnaire on our site http://www.star-force.com/opros/

Dear moderator,
Do you mind making the link to the survey here? In case if I have missed something in forum rules do not hesitate to delete the thread.

Thank you
Yours truly,
Dmitry Patskov

If this is true, well, it sure is a coincidence. Starforce copy protection for games is one of the reasons I left Windows (so thanks for that actually). Installing drivers without asking the user is just a no no.

The approach of one of your moderators suggestion to download Galactic Civilizations 2 because it did not use any copy protection was at very best unprofessional. If the moderator was/is also a developer remains to be answered from your "company".

Thanks also for this amazing "copy protection" of yours, no games released using those drivers work on Wine (and gave me a headache in Vista as well). See, software that I actually bought: Rush for Berlin, Spellforce 2 and a few others.

I am glad some publishers (such as the clueless Ubisoft) already removed it all together from current games.

Again, I'd love to never, ever see anything from Starforce to even come close to Linux. If it ever does, I'll make sure everybody is well informed of your products and my experiences with your protection method.

And just to answer your question:

"Is there necessity in protection of Linux software?"

There isn't. Our strongest protection is to keep things open so we see what is going on. Not close and encrypt them.

I am awaiting for your e-mail treating legal actions on me for expressing my opinion, just as you did with http://www.boingboing.net/ and http://www.cnet.com/.

Regards!