HELP needed: Tricks for licensing Python software

[Tom Plunket]

sismex01 wrote:

> In no incarnation does copy protection gain my favor.
> I use legal agreements, service contracts, maintenance
> contracts, on-site training, etc... as a way to keep tabs
> on my deployed stuff.

That's all well and good when your product requires training to
use, but when one develops games that are intended to be fully
understood within 2 minutes of installing, and if this is
something you want to be your livelihood, you've got to do
something.  The market may be casual gamers, but you've got to
prevent them from casually copying the game to their friends and
loved ones.

Witness the number of high-quality open-source games.  We that
make these games do it for the love of doing it, but that love
necessarily extends into charging for our work so that we don't
have to have a "day job" to support ourselves.

I too think that copy protection is a massive pain in the ass.
However, there's got to be some way to get people to pay some
nominal fee for your software, and if that software doesn't
require manuals, training, or involved installation, what do you
have left?

Games are an interesting point here, too, because like AOL, the
software isn't the product, it's just the enabler of content
delivery.  You can give the software away, but charge for the
game content.  The problem with single player games then becomes
one of, "how do you assure yourself that only people who have
paid for the content can access it?"

-tom!