I’m looking to restrict simultaneous use of a Xojo app I’m building for a client. I was reading about the dongle class(es) in MBS, but the supplier of the Unikey dongle doesn’t have a working online store on their website (it 404s)
Does anyone have suggestions for alternatives? Has anyone done anything with Yubikey (which the client has experience of already)
Thanks in advance
Steve.
Is using a USB dongle a requirement?
If online activation is a possibility, my DRM can be (and has been) adapted to restrict simultaneous use.
Dongles are just the best and worst solution to this problem. When done correctly, they are essentially unbreakable, and by being so secure, they become supremely annoying to end users. Plus they all seem to require drivers, which are a pain (and don’t always make the transition between operating systems or CPU architectures - ask me how I know…) and require ongoing maintenance by the manufacturer and the software developer.
I think software distributors should really ask themselves, how much is it worth inconveniencing their users to prevent some percentage of piracy? A license code-server activation scheme can probably get them to 99% security. Is that 1% worth the cost and hassle?
and at each OS update your dongle driver may potentially break …
A generated licence key that depends upon something unique to the installed machine will do the job.
That’s basically how Windows serial numbering works .. if a piece of hardware changes enough, the activation becomes invalid.
(That said, I personally don’t have examples of how to do it. I’ve used drive serials in the past, but not always been able to reliably obtain them.)
Used HASP dongles before, but after a flood of company owner shifts, I basically gave up. I just felt like a dead end. Nowadays I use these: https://www.microcosm.co.uk/ Costs less, works fine, and requires no external drivers to be installed. Just insert the dongle for the app in question and you are in.
In MBS Dongle plugin, we have 4 types supported:
Maybe one of them helps. And I could potentially add more.
maybe via central database or online service (your license server).
make the self install impossible like ERP system do .. 
Thanks for the pointer. I’ll give them a try. They have a Xojo/Realbasic example on their website which looks promising.
Steve.
FWIW, we have 6 different machines (mac, Windows, and Linux) in our studio right now that have USB dongles. We also have an application we have to occasionally fire up on Windows NT 4.0, which uses a parallel port dongle. As an end user using expensive high end video software for more than 30 years, I have never encountered an issue where an OS update broke the dongle. I have had to install drivers occasionally, yes. But over the years we’ve had many more apps (now retired) that were migrated to newer computers and never experienced problems.
I’m not saying it couldn’t happen, but I’ve never seen it or heard of this problem from other users so this sounds a little like fear mongering. Maybe it’s an issue with lesser-known dongle makers but certainly hasn’t been with the software we’ve used.
In fact, I have a dongle on my M3 Mac Laptop right now that I originally bought to run the Windows version of the same application in 2017. It has been used on Windows 7, 10, 11, and at least 3-4 MacOS updates on different architectures and has seamlessly moved around from machine to machine for years.
There are plenty of scenarios where a license server isn’t a viable option. We have a bunch of clients who have to have machines that are airgapped for security reasons (and they’re contractually obligated to do so), so a dongle solves the problem there for sure.
archicad (graphisoft) for example is a big editor that is moving away from dongles because of so many problems with system updates for many years…
With HASP, yes for sure. It was a real pain and notoriously unreliable I don’t know if ArchiCAD used them, but their sister company Vectorworks did. No problem whatsoever yet with the microcosm though. Works fine on both Mac and Windows.
Thanks Tim. Were it on internet connected machines that would be an option. But the client has a non-connected network and has mandated dongles.
Steve
Dongles are not any better than a pure software solution. The user can either patch your app to bypass the dongle verification or even found a dongle emulator.
If you need the dongle for the looks, there are options. A standard USB drive, remove the partition or even store the installer in there, read the serial number of the drive to allow the app. Use an online server to add/remove valid serials, etc.
FWIW I use Unikey dongles in a product, and have made purchases as recently as two months ago, you should reach out to Secutech, the online ordering may just be down temporarily.
Thanks Sean. I’ve received an evaluation kit from them (I didn’t realise they were based in Australia) but they haven’t answered my email yet.
S