I'd say that if you buy the software, you own it and can do whatever you like with it. This is why if I buy software that has install limits, after I use up those limits I will pirate the software without the slightest remorse. Install limiting is not software ownership, it's renting, and there's no way I'm paying that much for a rental.

This doesn't solve your problem but it might be a good work around until the company that makes that decides to stop treating their customers like criminals.

Set up a virtual machine and install the software on that. Most modern VM software allows you to link directly to an application in the virtual so you could set up a shortcut for the less tech savvy people in the house to use that launches the VM and opens the application. Its a pain, and I'm not entirely sure how to get the VM to suspend when you close the quilting app but you could in theory back up that VM and never use another activation again.

I have an excellent text drafting application (for long writing projects) for my Mac. I tell people it's awesome. They ask if they can get a copy from me. I tell them to go buy it themselves, because it's only $20. I don't really get why software companies keep jacking the price up (I'm looking at you, Adobe) "because of pirating" when they could cut the price to 1/4 and probably sell 4x as many copies.

It's really sad that people with this software feel like they have to hoard their installations, and thus don't let themselves use the software. It's nice that the company lets them buy additional installations, but they should have unlimited ones. Couldn't they build in something to recognize the computer(s) it's installed on, via IP or something, and allow unlimited installations on up to four computers? I don't get why they can't add something like that, if they can add something that recognizes how many times it's activated.

Oh, and I don't think this has anything to do with whether or not the users are tech-savvy -- it's just not software ownership, as the OP points out.

I run Linux on my laptop. I like to play around and tweak things. So I inevitably break them eventually, and more often than I would like to admit, it is unfixable (at least at my level of expertise).

For me, I would want a program like this to go, so laptop it would be. I would have run out of activations a long time ago. Which is why I would never buy a piece of software that does this.

Didn't Spore (or another computer game) have this same deal? You could only activate it a certain amount of times before you had to buy another game?

I think its ridiculous, what if you want to install the software onto 2 computers in your house? Once you pay for it, it should be yours for good.

Quilt Design Software Runs Out Of Thread Too Soon

Perhaps a multithreaded design would solve the issue?

/ducks

Laura, try Revo Uninstall. It does a great job of ferreting out the stuff files try to hide.

@Meggers: Spore had only ONE activation - but at least with that, you could uninstall it from one computer and reinstall it elsewhere. This doesn't even appear to allow you to do that.

When I first saw this, I thought, gee, 4 installs is pretty generous. Then I saw the fine print. For them to not allow a migration is ridiculous. That is - if you put it on one computer, and decide hey, I'd rather have it on this other computer, I'll deactivate that one and activate it here instead - that I'd have less objection to. Not that I'm thrilled about the anti-piracy stuff, but if they're going to do it, make it somewhat user friendly. It has nothing to do with being savvy, really - it has to do with being reasonable.

@subtlefrog:

I agree with you. I thought four sounded fine. What more do you need four for? But I was thinking about it in terms of migration as well.

@AuntieMaim: This is my issue with software companies. I love photoshop, and several other adobe programs. I would love to buy the full suite, and upgrade it every time it comes out, but I simply can't afford $800 for photoshop, $800 for premiere pro, etc. If they were all $150-200 each, I might buy them all then. I understand they have to make back their development and programming costs, but it's not like it's new software. They just make some changes and add some new features every year. It really costs them that much in programming and whatnot every year to tweak it? Some companies make money on sheer volume of sales for a smaller amount of profit per item sold. I wish the software companies would give this a shot, it'd probably work out for them.

Especially Microsoft. Look at how much windows is every time. I think they have sheer volume down easily.

I'm a software developer, and I think these activation policies are outrageous. The vendor needs to get it through their thick heads that if you write commercial software IT WILL BE PIRATED. You can't stop this, and you just have to live with it. Just like with music, a pirated copy of your program does not necessarily equal a lost sale. If $150 is more than a person would ever pay for quilting software, then it doesn't matter whether they pirate it or not; you're still not losing a sale.

That's not to say that we don't have the right to try and keep honest people honest. But developers would be wise to remember that anti-piracy measures are not for the benefit of the user, only for the benefit of the developer. Every step you put between your (potential) customer and your software is an opportunity for that user to decide the functionality your product provides simply isn't worth the hassle and pass.

As a consumer of software, overly complicated activation schemes also make me feel like I'm being put in an adversarial relationship with the vendor. "Just try and use our software. I triple-dog dare you, you crook."

One approach I really like comes from Panic, which makes the excellent Coda web development tool for the Mac. I have not seen this myself, but apparently, when you enter your product key, it sends a copy to Panic's servers, which track how many times that key has been used. If it's above a certain threshold over a certain period of time, it presents a message telling you that this key has been used a lot, and that if you didn't pay for the key, you really ought to buy your own copy. You'd be surprised how effective that is.

Software activation is bullshit. What's going to happen in 10 years when electricquilt.com redirects to a porn site?

@aduzik: I use Transmit and that actually got me to purchase a copy.

It's more effective than you'd think, although I don't think it'd be too effective for big evil company (think Adobe).

Believe it or not, these type of craft programs are heavily pirated by those same non-tech-savvy people. The software tends to get passed around in quilting bees and such. This is one of those rare situations where a niche software provider has to have a restrictive installation policy just to stay in business. I would think that a nice call to their support would solve the problem, though.

Yep, this is why honest people will resort to a crack or a pirated version, because a company is trying to get their fingers into your computer and tell you that they want more money from you to do something that should be perfectly within your rights to do with something you purchased.

And once honest people who feel they're being screwed find a crack or a pirated version, it just proliferates itself to people who didn't buy the software in the first place, resulting in far more lost revenue than whatever revenue is generated by gouging their honest customers for $35 if they have to reformat a hard drive past their fourth activation.

Ridiculous. It's amazing to stand back and watch as all these different companies load a shotgun, point it carefully at their foot, and then pull the trigger repeatedly.

Call their support dept every time you need your activation "fixed". Eventually the true costs of their copy protection will catch up with them.

But also remember no one is entitled to software. If this is the only software dev in he game of quilting software, tough.

I've wanted this software for years but the whole activation scheme has put me off. Stupid since they have people paying 150 for it. And i would have too, if the 150 would guarantee my ownership of the program i am buying.

I had a Monopoly game that did this. First, it was an electric download so I had no install media. Second, I had 4 activations. Infrogames (or Infogrames; can't remember which name they use) wouldn't do the last activation I had since it had been activated too many times. The reason? 2 new PCs, a move from single to RAID, and a reformat/repartition of the RAID configuration.

So I went out to the torrent buffets and found a cracked version of their latest release. They want to charge me $30 for 4 installs, I'll never buy any software from them again.

Windows also has the most annoying "guilty until proven innocent" licensing scheme out there. That's why I'm glad I work in academia - I've privvy to the educational releases that are cheaper and can get work to license it for me sometimes.

One last annoying software title is Mackichan's Scientific Notebook, an obscure, poorly-written application that has you do the following steps to license it:

1) Install it
2) Register it using only your campus email. Others won't work.
3) License is sent to Mackichan who passes it on to our licensing server when they get a moment.
4) Our licensing server runs a script every hour that processes valid licenses and sends it back to the student.
5) The student then copies the license text out of an email
6) Without pasting it (yes, the damned software actually *reads* the clipboard every time it is used unlicensed) the software gets the key, validates it against the computer, and licenses it.

We have a long web page dedicated solely to the installation of this damned program. Thankfully we're getting rid of it soon.

@subtlefrog: Actually, no. Spore was originally limited to 3 activations. You had to activate it every time you reinstalled, which is one of the reasons I refused to buy it. A huge outcry got EA to change some things, but I don't know how much, exactly.

@rpm773:

LOL

@ArcanaJ: EA came out with a deactivation tool ( [activate.ea.com] ) that allows you to get back activations by deactivating current ones before you uninstall. I'm not sure if they include this information in their newer games or not though. Ideally, it should be integrated as part of the uninstall process at least.

Not that I agree with heavy-handed approaches to limiting piracy like this, but that said...

Software is not sold. It is licensed. You are paying for a license to use the software. The license could say "You must stand on your head in the corner for ten minutes each time the software loads," and by purchasing it and using it, you are agreeing to that license term. This is why there's such a big deal about "clickwrap" licenses, where the license is only viewable once the package is opened (and therefore no longer returnable). At the very least this developer is up-front about the activation scheme and the reasons for it.

And @ cmdrsass, I would 100% believe it. Bottom line is, the companies know (or should know) this is not going to prevent those who really want the software from getting it. DRM/activation schemes are intended to prevent the sort of "casual piracy" that cmdrsass suggests. It puts just enough hurdles in place for the "non techy" user that they either purchase the software or go without.

@Divals:

You don't "buy the software". You purchase a license to use the software under the terms of the owner.

Just review the terms before you purchase the license and not buy if you don't like them.

If you can't review pre-purchase, once you have purchased the license, review them and get a refund if you can't abide by the terms.

Agreeing to them (but buying and/or not disputing over time) and then later on not likeing them is the users fault. A company is entitled to protect themselves. If one finds the level of protection distasteful, vote with your wallet.

@subtlefrog:

The problem is with Windows, if you use it heavily, install and uninstall a lot of software and such, it is generally a good idea to reinstall once a year or so.

You buy something and then you can only use it for 4 years?

And what if you're the sort of person who buys a new computer entirely too often?

If in the process of acquiring this software the words "buy" or "purchase" are used anywhere, it's a lie. This is rental.

If they want to have some bullshit online DRM crap, they should be checking to make sure that a particular serial/license number is being used in only one place simultaneously. (This poses a problem in that this is not a piece of software which would need to be online all the time in order to work properly...so it would screw over users who, say, use it on a notebook someplace with no net connection)

Basically, DRM is the best excuse for piracy.

@cmdrsass: It doesn't even matter if they have a "restrictive installation policy". That doesn't even make a dent in how fast something is going to have a pirated version.

Ever hear of Spore? Spore has an activation policy VERY SIMILAR to this one, and it was available pirated on the exact same day it came out in stores....

All these "restrictive installation policies" do is piss off the REGULAR customers who actually want to buy the product. It may even piss them off enough that they pirate it instead, just to get around these restrictive installation policies".

Just my 2 cents.

@aduzik:

Except with DRM, especially aggressive DRM like this, even people who wouldn't pirate it otherwise won't feel bad about pirating it.

@GitEmSteveDave_IsTheStig: while i agree that Revo is a great piece of software, i fail to see its usefulness in this situation

@robdew2:

People are entitled to the software that they pay for.

@aduzik: i think a slightly altered version of that scheme would be more effective... give a user 3 activations to be used in the first month, 3 "anytime" activations, plus another 2 activations per 6 months (enough so that they can do an initial install on all of their computers, plus the flexibility to do reinstalls as needed, without giving the end-user access to too many licenses all at once, plus a handful of anytime licenses for "just in case")

@citking:

At least it doesn't limit the number of times you can do that.

@eddieck: i assume the new owners will give previous users a free 3-day membership

This is one reason I use virtualization for Windows. One software package for one virtualization image, and it minimizes the activations required. When moving to new computers, upgrading hard drives, etc., I just copy the virtualization image from a backup (after deciding which of a few backups to use).

One problem is Microsoft doesn't like this because it means I only buy their applications once and re-use them for years. So their new licensing prohibits running new stuff under virtual machines. I haven't tried to see if the activation actually detects virtualization or not. If it does, then I'm sure there will be a tit-for-tat race to make virtual machine software look more like real machines.

Fortunately most of my computer use involves BSD and Linux which doesn't have any of this nonsense. OTOH, I haven't seen a quilting application for BSD/Linux, either.

@Meggers:

If a company buys a copy of Windows should they be allowed to install it on all of their computers without paying for another license?

There's a difference between reinstalling the software on the same computer after each upgrade of Windows, or a hardware upgrade, and installing it on multiple computers to avoid having to buy another copy.

@cmdrsass: but if they dropped the price to $30-40, wouldn't more of the quilting circle people buy the software?

@tubedogg: Then if it is licensing and not ownership, the law will need to treat is as such.

@aduzik: "If $150 is more than a person would ever pay for quilting software, then it doesn't matter whether they pirate it or not; you're still not losing a sale."
If the price is preventing a sale, pirated use can influence the user to purchase a copy later on if they really like the software.

I'm still annoyed that several years ago I actually paid $100 for Adobe Photoshop Elements, and the same software came with a scanner I bought later that year for $80.

I have several different sewing/embroidery/quilting programs on my PC (including Electric Quilt) and I don't understand why EQ doesn't use a dongle (a port protection device) to prevent pirating of their software. Most of my other embroidery programs require this.

For anyone who doesn't know what a dongle is, it looks like a little thumb drive that you plug into one of you USB ports. If you don't have the dongle plugged into your computer, you can't use that specific program.

You can pirate the software, but you can't pirate a dongle. So I could conceivably install my software on more than one of my computers, but I can't run the software unless the dongle is plugged in to the computer I'm using.

EQ should look into dongles.

@TechnoDestructo: Unfortunately it's only the license they're entitled to, and the terms that come with it - which in this case are the limited activations.

@wrjohnston19283: Selling licenses by computer has never made sense in any situation. Per-person licensing makes more sense and lets you use the software without hurting the company you're buying from's sales. The reason it makes sense for a company to buy multiple licenses for a program isn't because they have a lot of computers, it's because they have a lot of people using those computers. It's not like one person can use multiple computers at once anyway, the reason for multiple installs per person is for convenience.

See, the problem here is the company's "solution" to piracy. By making their licensing more restrictive they've simply forced those who would pirate to use other means - be it nocd/activation cracks (not sure if you need the cd to use this software) and borrowing a friend's copy (which I assume this was intended to prevent) or going to other means of obtaining the software itself (torrenting of course - if this was the source of pirating I don't know what the company is thinking). It's a head scratching policy for me - does the company not understand how this all works?

@AuntieMaim: I have a copy of Adobe CS3 Design Suite, and due to a defective hard drive and later a pair of RAM that went bad I was forced to re-install my computer quite a few times. Anyway, I hit the limit on my "installs" per Adobe, and tried to call them up. I was overseas in Kyrgyzstan at the time, mind you, so this was not easiest thing to do.

I stood on hold for upwards of half an hour before being connected to an Indian call center technician who informed me that I could not get "more activations" and that I'd have to re-buy my $1,800 software package. Called back, waited again, same response from the Indian call center rep.

Since then I've been using a crack I found on Pirate Bay to install my legally purchased software. And I never installed it on anything but the same exact computer.

@eddieck: You'ld have some very interesting quilts at the next flea market, that's for sure.

@seth_lerman: I agree that not buying is the best option, but unfair terms of use are still unfair. If all you are doing is renting software, the law should require that the lease have a time-period, during which you can return the software for the unused rent paid. And "software" shouldn't be for sale, but rather pre-paid subscriptions.

@gStein:

and had reformatted my XP hard drive once just to remove a few drivers and applications which I could not figure out how to uninstall completely.

I attributed this to Laura by accident.

@tubedogg: Your ridiculous and unenforceable headstand example shows exactly how binding licenses are--not at all.

Completely insane restrictions:
If you format and reinstall windows, it uses a license, but if you install a new hard drive in your computer, reinstall windows using the same product key and reinstall the program on the new hard drive it does not use a license.

I hate copy protection because it generally causes more problems than it fixes, but even Adobe's restrictive copy protection scheme is a very reasonable policy. You can install the software on any 2 machines (laptop and a desktop), and use one copy or both copies simultaneously. If you need to reinstall windows, you can de-activate the installation before reformat and then reinstall without having to contact Adobe. If your hard drive crashes, you need to call Adobe to reactivate.

@pwillow1: My wife has a dongle for her embroidery software, and it tends to cause more problems than it is worth, crashes all the time, and does not like it if it has been installed in a different USB port. As aggrevating as it would be, I would rather have to install the CD into the drive to demonstrate that I own the software.

@morlo: You aren't leasing the software you moron. You are being allowed to use it for a fee. Four installations is plenty, and if you have it on one computer, you still have it's use. At a certain point, like anything else it will become antiquated. It does not mean you get a free one. A great example would be a TV. If you bought an 8 track in the 70's, and they no longer make 8 tracks why should the person who licensed the use of the 8 track to you be required to do anything for you