Throwing in the Towel!

We never thought we would ever see this in a licensed commercial software product, but here it is…

One of the most depressing and at the same time funny things we have ever seen on the net regarding a failed licensing approach.
This poor developer has simply given up and ‘thrown in the towel’. His long battle with hackers, who have cracked his licensing string (repeatedly), has ultimately worn him down.

Here is the full size image:

This particular tool is a perfect example of what happens when an awesome developer runs fast into the market with a very cool, very valuable, and very useful product that is in high demand without a business plan to protect his revenue stream or market share!

If you read the message in this application carefully, you can almost feel the frustration this guy was experiencing with the various steps had to take, apparently over multiple versions of his software, to try to thwart hackers. In the end, just throwing up his arms and ‘begging’ people to respect his efforts, time and the skills/knowledge required to get a cool product like this into the market.

This specific application was only sold for US $20.00 (roughly). Was it priced under the assumption of a huge market for this? Or was it just not priced relative to the value it brought – could it be, or is it, worth US $100.00, or possibly more? Would a higher price have made it more or less of a target? Would a Software as a Service approach do better in the long run (e.g. updates, maintenance, recurring revenue stream, etc.)? All good questions to think about, regardless of your product and business model.
Either way, we don’t want to see any software developer/company go through this kind of pain.