Shaun Inman discovers the real world: Mint is being pirated
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Tagged with: Let’s have this out in the open: Mint is being pirated. Which puts myself—and all of Mint’s paying customers—in a difficult position.Shaun Inman
This entry on Shaun Inman's website has got to be the most remarkable blog entry I've read in a long, long time. In the rest of the posting Shaun is discussing possible ways to discover who is pirating Mint. I've been gazing at my screen in awe for quite a while after reading the rest of the entry.
Note: Even though the title might suggest so, I don't think Shaun was so naive that he didn't see this coming. I wrote this article because I seriously question the merits of creating protection schemes for software.
First of all: I love Mint. I've purchased version 1.00 on day one and I'm enjoying it every single day. I even contributed some snippets of code to eliminate the need for cURL to be installed. I'm a real stats junkie and Mint manages to satisfy my hunger just brilliantly. Those $30 where damn well spent indeed.
What surprises me here is the fact that Shaun is even bothering with this. My reaction would be something in the line of: "Welcome to the real world, where people pirate software.". Even though I think it's kinda lame to pirate $30 software this stuff just happens. Trying to think of a way to expose the pirates and / or finding out who they are is something I thought only the big software corporations try to do (and fail miserably at it!). To me there's just no point in even making the slightest attempt. No matter what one will try to do to 'secure' commercial software, there's bound to be some kid somewhere who will find a way around it.
Does this whole thing really matter? I wonder. On one hand I can perfectly understand Shaun's anger at these 'freeloaders' but on the other hand I'm quite sure Mint is a big hit as it is right now, regardless of the (probably relatively few) people with pirated copies.
What’s a developer to do? Here’s an idea: a Firefox extension that silently checks for a Mint installation on each site visited and if found, sends a ping to a central server. The server could then validate the domain against a list of licensed domains and flag any offenders.Shaun Inman
I'm sorry but this is where it gets ridiculous. My honest advice to Shaun here would be to focus on improving Mint instead of trying to catch the small percentage of people who are pirating it. Even if you'll catch them, what will you do? Sue them over $30? It just won't help a thing. And even if you'd really want to pursue this idea: I guarantee it will be circumvented within days. If people even manage to crack XBOX consoles one has to be REALLY ambitious in an attempt to outsmart people pirating an open sourced PHP app. Too ambitious, I'm sure.
Mint is one hell of a cool piece of stats software. Why not just keep making it better and better resulting in more and more people wanting to shell out those measly 30 bucks. Heck, here's some free promotion. People: Mint kicks ass! Get your copy now. You won't regret it for a split second. Marco told ya so!
Shaun, wake up and smell the coffee. This is how the world turns. Assholes are born every second. You've got a great product which I'm sure is generating more revenues than you could ever have imagined. Just enjoy it and make it even better than it already is! If you were to release a 2.0 version requiring an upgrade fee I'd pay in a heartbeat and I'm sure the majority of your users would.
At 03 February '06 - 16:01 Elliott Back wrote:
At 03 February '06 - 16:38 Simon wrote:
But I’m pretty sure he won’t succeed with just ‘luck’. The Firefox extension-idea sounds kinda rash and excessive… In fact, it sounds a bit scary. This would be a wrong kind of plug-in, imho. I don’t think you should use plug-ins for purposes like these. It’s just… not right.
But get real… He must have known this would happen sooner or later. It would be really ingenuous to think that every one would pay for it. As with every piece of software, that’s not how it goes nowadays.
At 03 February '06 - 17:09 Shaun Inman wrote:
But just because there’s a precedent for piracy doesn’t mean I have to accept it.
At 03 February '06 - 18:05 Jcl wrote:
This might sound like something simple for a few-customers program, but it’s not when the software is widely spread (read: and you don’t have the resources to spend money on a dedicated “technical support area”).
At 03 February '06 - 23:40 Marco wrote:
No one has to ACCEPT the fact that stuff is being pirated but fighting it is a totally moot point. It’s a battle you’ll never win. Solve this the easy way:
Require the Mint key for any support inquiry including the forums. Give people read access but have them register only when they have a valid key. That will eliminate 99% of the ‘support request’ from people without a legal copy without having to waste all that much energy on this fight no one can win…
At 04 February '06 - 05:52 Bram wrote:
Let’s have a discussion about it, at the least, which is what Shaun is trying to start I guess
Maybe somebody will come up with an excellent idea that way? The ultimate solution to protecting your hardwork? Who knows…
The solution for the pirates asking for support is indeed very simple. If you can check the license when logging in in Mint, you can also check the same license when logging in with the support forum. But I have a gut feeling that Shaun already came up with that idea too
At 04 February '06 - 07:18 Marco wrote:
Can you name me a list of software titles of which people never got around the protection scheme? I doubt it. The problem is: you can code the nicest thing you’ve ever made as a protection scheme but it takes only ONE guy to tear it all down again. One guy will crack it, feel ‘cool’ among his friends and the developer can start all over again. The thing is: These people don’t want to pay for the software. If pirating it wouldn’t be possible because of some brilliant protection scheme (I guess it has to be something invented with the help of alien technology though) they simply wouldn’t use it.
They wouldn’t say: “Oh damn… I can’t pirate it. Now I’ll buy it!”. That’s just not going to happen.
My opinion on this stays the same: every minute spent on creating protection schemes is a wasted one.
p.s.: spamming is something completely different which is why I left that out of my reply. It’s like comparing apples to pears, so to say.
At 04 February '06 - 08:02 Bram wrote:
But anyways, are you trying to say that there is no use in protecting your software cause if it can’t be cracked, it won’t be used (by pirates)? Wouldn’t that mean that the product isn’t that good, that it’s software people apparently can do without?
All in all, I feel like battling the pirates is worth the fight. Not doing anything is just too easy.
At 04 February '06 - 08:03 Bob wrote:
Just because the source is available to you (because it is PHP), does not mean it is open sourced.
Since it comes with a commercial license, and it doesn’t allow you to do anything with the source code, it should actually be qualified as ‘closed source’.
At 04 February '06 - 09:41 Elliott Back wrote:
That depends on whether or not it derives from GPL work or not ;)
At 04 February '06 - 11:23 Marco wrote:
Therefore I think for Shaun it would suffice to make sure non-paying users can’t get support because that IS a waste (of Shaun’s time in this case). Other than that: don’t bother.
At 04 February '06 - 11:27 Marco wrote:
At 04 February '06 - 12:15 Jcl wrote:
At 04 February '06 - 12:18 Marco wrote:
At 05 February '06 - 01:52 Clint wrote:
At 05 February '06 - 04:40 Bram wrote:
Anyways, if the pirates won’t use it when they can’t crack it that either means the product is ‘bad’, or they do it for the fun of cracking. Or am I missing something here?
At 05 February '06 - 10:09 Marco wrote:
At 05 February '06 - 11:15 Seven wrote:
It may be worth the fight from an ethical point of view, but until there is a strong enough consensus between governemnts to fight the distribution of pirated software, it will remain relatively easy for anyone to find practically anything they want on an FTP dump in 3rd world cyberspace.
As Marco mentioned you can at least stop the free handouts, and not waste your time giving support to them. Best place to begin fighting it, is with a black list in my opinion.
At 20 February '06 - 18:43 Patrick Harris wrote:
Perhaps he could also make his site more user friendly (get rid of the “designer” photos of himself, and the ridculously small text).
BTW, I am thinking of buying Mint (although the free slimstat is a strong alternative).
At 22 February '06 - 05:24 Sham Bhangal wrote:
Support everyone, irrespective of where they got their book, associated CDROM or whatever from. I’ve even supported other author’s work on occasion. Being seen to argue with asses tends to paint you as an ass by association, and really only raises your pulse.
The reason to create anything is love of that anything. If you need to get petty by doing things like withholding support or whatever, IMO, you really need to consider your goals and reasons for starting on this in the first place. I know this is sometimes difficult to stomach, but believe me, you’ll sleep better.
A sole creator is not a corporation, so don’t compare yourself with Adobe just yet. I am just a guy doing something I love and getting paid for it as well – bonus. A few free copies dont worry me, and certainly wonts stop me doing what I do. If anything, it makes me smile.
Sham Bhangal.
At 22 June '06 - 02:28 Carsten Cumbrowski wrote:
So far so good. Paying $30 is for somebody who is used to pay a lot more for software that offers much less a no brainer. Just to be save, did I actually downloaded and ran the “The Mint Server Compatibility Suite” and … NO IIS support. MySQL is cool, PHP is Cool, but no Apache.
That is something he should spend his time and energy on. Heck, sell the IIS Version for $50 or even $100 and it would still be a great deal and Webmasters that were “growing up” with Microsoft Server Software will not even blink. Most will probably respond something like this …
“$100 per month… mmmmh.. let me think about it. Oh $100 one-time purchase price? ... Is it per site or CPU? oh.. Site. We have 100 per Server, can we pay a couple grand for an enterprise version that is valid for a whole server? “
Time for somebody to get his priorities straight I guess. :)
So, I came across Mint because of the GEOMint Plug in. Does anybody know about an alternative solution that works with IIS6 (Win2003), PHP5 and MySQL5? Just shoot me an email. You can find it on my website.
Thanks.
Carsten aka Roy/SAC