On Friday 22 April 2005 3:41 am, Laurent Renard wrote:

Hello everybody,

i'm looking for something to protect java applications. Hardware ( usb key ) or software ???

By "protect" do you mean licensing the software. I use Moneydance, which is licensed software, and they use a software license key. It used to be distributed as a .jar file with an embedded md5 key. One rather simple way of doing it is to sell a key value to your customers. The key itself is algorithmically checked, like an account number so that it is difficult to guess. Microsoft used to do this where their product keys. Another possible way is to allow users to use some limited version of the product. When a user pays for it, you send the user a full version and a key to unlock it. That key would only work with the version you give to that customer.

Then there is the hardware based key where the hardware key must be inserted into the computer to enable the product use. There are a number of companies that sell this technology.

Another possibility is the use of license servers, like FLEXlm.

--- Philosophy --- In general, those of us in the OpenSource world tend to prefer models other than the closed type of license, but there are many excellent proprietary products available. Linus Torvalds once said in a talk to my user group that he preferred the OS to be free, but also felt that some applications should be commercial. Over the years, I have found that some of the best software has been OpenSource.