How to protect Mac OS X software from cracking?

Question

We're releasing a Mac version of our Windows application. Under Windows, there are several tools for executable protection, for example Armadillo, ExeCryptor, AsProtect etc, however, none of these has a Mac version. So, my question is:

Are there any executable protection / encryption tools for Mac OS X?

Answer 1

Speaking frankly (re: niko, really) it seems silly to worry too much about copy protection for the mac platform. There's a mindset involved and mac users are generally speaking less likely to attempt to download/torrent illegally than PC users. While encryption and keygens are usually considered far enough to go, you could in an extreme situation, look at PACE's iLOK/interLok copy protection w/ usb key. I think that's a stupidly extreme solution though, and tends to frustrate adopters (see Amarra for details).

the balance between user experience and developer protection is unfortunately not a great one, on mac or pc.

Answer 2

This might be useful: Using OpenSSL for license keys

Answer 3

AquaticPrime is an open source licensing framework that's based on asymmetric key encryption and is decently hard to crack.

Answer 4

I'm a maker of PELock software copy protection for Windows and I must say in my entire life I have received like 2 requests for making a copy protection for MacOS... Once I was looking for some encryption tools for MacOS executables and didn't find anything (except huge licensing solutions that doesn't protect the executables), maybe it's a great market niche for the new products, but from my perspective it's... well not worth the effort (I'm a jerk, I know :D), but maybe since x86 is now default platform, people who coded software protection will take a shot (Rafael [themida], Pavol [svkp], Alexey [asprotect] do you read this? ;)) :)

Answer 5

It is my personal view and most other OS X developer's view that you should make it reasonably hard to steal your software but there is a point that it's simply not worth the effort. The fact is that there are very few things that can be done to fully protect a piece of software. And the more you do to try and protect that software the harder you make it for a real user to use your software. Real users then hate to use your software because they lost 5 days of productivity since their dongle broke. And less people buy it because the other real users have spread the word how the heavy handed protection scheme isn't worth it.

Will Shipley, a prominent Mac OS X developer has written one of his infamous opinion pieces here: http://wilshipley.com/blog/2005/06/piracy.html.

Answer 6

UPX can encrypt/compress Mac OSX executable.