The activation system

Busy times, busy times. The new system is live. Pretty obvious I guess if you've downloaded anything from the 1.35 release onward.

I must admit; I didn't expect as much "resistance" to the new system as I've had. That's not to say hundreds of people have emailed me negative things - but certainly a handful have. On the other hand; I've had nearly an equal number of people say it's cool.

I didn't intend to: But I think this might have turned into a bit of a rant. Of course; I don't intend to offend anyone - but if you'd like to get a small glimpse into my last four days read on. If you don't care about the "why" of activation etc then just skip this post entirely.

The Defense: If you're wondering "why? why?" - there are very good reasons:

* Support - If I can cut down on the number of emails relating to "I can't type my code in" then I can work on more products, or fix issues, or do other things. Those registration issues were only going to get worse as the sales increased. This is the primary reason for activation. I'm not jumping on a bandwagon of trying to be mean to users or anything like that. Seriously - the whole point is that it's supposed to be easier for you to activate. If just have to use one piece of information (i.e: the same username and password as you did when you purchased) then there's less chance of something going wrong. More chance that it'll "just work" and you'll be using the software as you want to.

* Profit - Simply put - the business can make more money if it goes through paypal. And that in the end benefits the customer because shinywhitebox will still be around. I suppose some people might see this as a greedy-money-grabbing-not-caring-about-the-customer exercise. I'm not going to get into arguments about it though. The business reasons are above - I can't force you to have my opinion.

* The next product - In reality Kagi can be a bit of a handful to setup. I'm not slagging them here OK? I've dealt with them a reasonable amount and they have excellent support. But their website and product interface leaves lots to be desired. I'd rather not have to go through that for the next product. Creating this framework will mean that the next product (in the wings) can be bought to market earlier than it would have been otherwise.

Teething - It's fair to say there were some teething issues. When it was first released; it locked the activation to a single machine. Thus it appeared that something the user had (the ability to install one license on any number of machines) was being removed. So we went for a balance. Let you activate a personal license 5 times so that you don't keep on having to deactivate/activate on other machines if you want to use it. We figure that's being quite generous.

The Machine Serial Number - This caused a bit of (and probably still does) a stir. Some people are unhappy that this is used in the activation process. As I mentioned on the website - we have to use something in order to identify the machine (and a number of other well known authors also use it - you just might not realize it, is all). That's all it's for. Identifying that yes, this machine has been activated. If we use some other piece of information then it can change more easily (at which time your activation becomes invalid). All I can say (and again, if you choose not to believe this there is little I can do) is that were not doing anything other than what I've described here with that number. No one else can see it. No one else can access it. It's used for activation only.

I'll stop there before I really start ranting! No, overall it's been a success. I don't believe that most people who find something works actually email the author to let them know. It's a human thing right? We just expect it. So given that there have been just a handful of negative emails, I'd say activation was a good release (if unexpected by most people).