Just to elaborate on Peter's post - Mercury does not enforce licensing. The *only* difference between a copy running with a license and one running without a license is the size and contents of the program's status bar.
We went through many, many discussions on licensing, considering and eliminating a wide range of options. In the end, I decided to go with what is basically an Honour System, working on the assumption that the world was divided into those who WOULD purchase a license and those who WOULD NOT: those who would simply needed a gentle push and something they could show to their purchasing department, while those who wouldn't couldn't be made to purchase a license no matter what I do.
I don't like the idea of enforcement in licensing, and wanted to keep the program accessible for the widest possible audience of people who could benefit from it. Fortunately, I don't need much to survive, and am hoping that the 200 or 300 licenses I need to sell each year is an achievable target. I won't rule out the possibility of using more enforcement in future if it turns out that people are not being as "honourable" as I am hoping they will, but for now, I wanted to use the minimum of persuasion.
The delay in getting the online licensing going is largely down to my own personal inexperience with e-Commerce systems. I want the purchase process to be as automated, painless and fast as possible, and it should be possible to achieve that with PayPal, but it requires some learning on my part. Peter is being most helpful, though, and I'm sure that between us we can come up with a workable solution soon.
Cheers!
-- David --
Just to elaborate on Peter's post - Mercury does not enforce licensing. The *only* difference between a copy running with a license and one running without a license is the size and contents of the program's status bar.
We went through many, many discussions on licensing, considering and eliminating a wide range of options. In the end, I decided to go with what is basically an Honour System, working on the assumption that the world was divided into those who WOULD purchase a license and those who WOULD NOT: those who would simply needed a gentle push and something they could show to their purchasing department, while those who wouldn't couldn't be made to purchase a license no matter what I do.
I don't like the idea of enforcement in licensing, and wanted to keep the program accessible for the widest possible audience of people who could benefit from it. Fortunately, I don't need much to survive, and am hoping that the 200 or 300 licenses I need to sell each year is an achievable target. I won't rule out the possibility of using more enforcement in future if it turns out that people are not being as "honourable" as I am hoping they will, but for now, I wanted to use the minimum of persuasion.
The delay in getting the online licensing going is largely down to my own personal inexperience with e-Commerce systems. I want the purchase process to be as automated, painless and fast as possible, and it should be possible to achieve that with PayPal, but it requires some learning on my part. Peter is being most helpful, though, and I'm sure that between us we can come up with a workable solution soon.
Cheers!
-- David --
