I believe that software developers have every right to protect their intellectual property. I have no problem with resonable methods of doing so. When software developers become so paranoid that it affects the use of their software and inhibits your ability to use it, I have a large problem. Wildform has released 2 peices of software for the Mac that has the most absurd, most inconvenient, and most intrusive peotection scheme I have ever seen. Let me tell you all about the extent of their paranoia.
First, there is no demonstration version of their software...you can see something online that is close to what the actual software distribution looks like, but nowhere near close enough to truly evaluate the software. I have a feeling this is simply their way of making sure no one can crack a time-limited or feature-crippled demo.
Next, the purchasing process: You have to pay (at the time I ordered SWfX, they has pop-up advertisements saying $24.99, and they billed me $29.99...very nice) before you can download the software. They tie the serial number to the name on your credit card and you have to enter it on their website in order to get to the download page. THEY TRACK AND LIMIT THE NUMBER OF TIMES YOU CAN DOWNLOAD THE SOFTWARE YOU PAID FOR!!! If you exceed the limit, you have to notify tech support and they will lift the ban.
This is where I have the problem and where they step over the line of reasonable limits. YOU HAVE TO HAVE A LIVE INTERNET CONNECTION TO INSTALL THE SOFTWARE!! The installer connects to a server that verifies your informtion and then lets thew installer proceed. You have to install the software on each partition you'd like to use it on. They also track and limit the number of time you can install the software. They also drop an invisible cookie somewhere on your system that use it to track users. This bit of text appears on their website:
When you buy and install Wildform software, a unique identifier is created and sent back to our website. This unique identifier helps us to authenticate each user's registration and to provide technical support and customer benefits for our registered users. This unique identifier is used for no other purpose.
This is totally unacceptable to me!! They claim that they will not divulge your personal information, but it says nothing about what information they collect. Also, their website claims that they will share your information for demographic with "partners, advertisers, or other 3rd parties". What information are they pulling off of your system??
All this and the software is an enormous peice of crap, the tech support is lousy (they won't answer technical questions directly), and they really are not sensitve to mac users. I uninstalled the software almost immediately after purchasing it, after reading their "legal" information and seeing what a hassle it was to install and use.
Hope this helps even a single person make a purcashinf decision.
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