Many ISV start ups looking at software licensing and copy protection issues are tempted by wrapper solutions.  There are 3 main reasons for this:

• Wrappers are cheap
• Wrappers are easy to deploy
• You don’t need access to the source code

Let’s look at ease of deployment first.

Evolved from loader based mechanisms wrappers are designed to integrate easily into any software product – promising minimum hassle for the developer.

But not surprisingly, a copy protection system which is so easy to deploy is also easy to undermine.  Once “cracked” a wrapper can be countered with an “un-wrapper” which is also very easy to distribute and deploy.

Now turning to the cost issue.  Because wrappers are cheap, they don’t tend to be “feature rich” and though you, the developer may be prepared to cope with a certain amount of hassle and “work-arounds” in order to save money, your customer may not feel the same.

The first issue to consider is that wrappers don’t generally come with any mechanisms for tracking who has what license codes.  Issuing of codes needs to be manually tracked, and this can lead to human error.  One developer tells us:

“We are losing track of who has what codes and have to keep issuing codes before finding one that works”.

License codes can also be lost or disabled when a machine is reformatted, when the clock stops or when hardware changes are made.

Not only will these issues be costly and time consuming for you, but more importantly they can have a major negative impact on your customers experience of your software.

Wrappers then, may offer a suitable copy protection solutions for the hobbyist developer, but for the ISV with ambitions for long term business growth they are likely to represent a false economy: flimsy copy protection, high support costs and poor customer experience may quickly out-weigh any initial savings in time and money.

The ISV with long term plans needs to take the long view when selecting a copy protection solution.

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