Graphical software licenses: a good idea?

Do people *really* print out hard copies of the registration codes?

I just couldn't imagine doing something like that. There are just so many other ways to back up it up. Burn CDs, .mac, ftp server, usb key, and another machine just to name a few.

Plus, we all have a backup strategy to backup all of important data to an external HD, right? If not, you should really start thinking about how you would feel if you lost everything on your Mac tomorrow.

Kusmi: Most piracy/crack/keygen sites handle RAR/ZIP files already. All that is needed is to put the JPEG in an archive and upload it.

http://www.samspublishing.com/library/content.asp?b=Mac_OS_X_Unleashed&seqNum=346&rl=1

Just a suggestion for textual backup... MIME UUencode them and save the encoded version as text. :)

I like the idea, but as you said, they should combine it with the old serial number scheme. Use both I say. Also, it should be possible to just double-click the license file, not having do drag and drop it on the right app.

ive got an idea.
why not make the bar code mean something? in addition to being able to drag the picture onto the app.
so kind of like with Delicious Library, the apps can simply utilise the camera that is built into almost every mac that gets sold these days. In this way, you can print off the license and then just scan it in if you need to...

License keys are always two-fold:
- you want to protect your business from illegal copies
- you DON'T want to annoy your customers

I guess for the first point, graphical software license keys are good, as they are more difficult to maintain for those illegal serial-key sites/apps. Currently all those apps/sites only handle text-keys. With graphical license keys, their hosting requirements skyrocks, as their bandwidth increases as well - not to mention they have to update their apps/sites to also support pictures!

For the second one: I don't see a huge problem for users - I like this mac-way of doing things by inventing new ideas. But I agree, that all those users who currently use serial-key managers to store all of their legal keys could ket into trouble, unless their key-managers also get an update to support image-keys.

I don't see how this would make things much easier for the user compared to just sending the same XML registration data
as a file by mail and enabling the registration by double-clicking. However, it sure does look fancy and from a marketing point of view I can see the benefits.

License "files" have been in the industry for years. They are a perfectly good way to activate a product. As long as the files are unique to the user and have suitable ant-tampering measures they can work well for an app developer. They will be easy to backup and store and there should be no reason to be on-line to license a product.

My only concern is that they should be of a standard format, look and feel as well as the internal layout. Currently I have a dozen licensed apps each with a different licensing model. This method could be the best way to sort out that mess.

Mo, good point, never thought about that. I still don't like the idea of graphical registration though.