On Thu, May 3, 2012 at 1:28 PM, Streets Of Boston <[email protected]> wrote: > Every app can be cracked and pirated. It doesn't matter how much layers of > protection you add to your app; your app can always be cracked. If someone > is willing to spend time to reverse engineer your app and has enough > determination, they will succeed.
More importantly, every app on every OS can be cracked. Pirate BBSes date at least back to the late 1980's. > If i may be so bold to say, the only apps that can't be cracked are the apps > that are not published. I'd phrase it more as "the risk of cracking is proportional to the means of distribution". So, distributing via the Google Play Store means it is likely to be cracked, particularly if an automated tool can do so. On the far other end of the spectrum, Web apps, because they are not distributed, are highly unlikely to be "cracked" in any traditional sense (though sharing of logins and such may have similar effects). There are other distribution means with intermediate risk of cracking (e.g., apps distributed internally within an enterprise). > You could look into some legal action against apkcracks.net, though. > However, i'm doubtful it would have much effect (apkcracks is not the only > one out there). More importantly, the OP chose a business model (retail sales) that has had "piracy" for thousands of years. Whether you are selling apps, apples, axes, animals, Ajax-brand laundry detergent, or azaleas, there will be losses due to shoplifting, employee theft, real honest-to-goodness parrot-wielding pirates, etc. Apps being cracked is merely the manifestation of this in shrinkwrap software. And, even in software, this has been going on for decades. This is not to say that it is right, and that's one of the reasons why I get bent out of shape when developers ON THIS VERY GROUP advocate pirating things like the Google Play client. However, it is largely a fact of life. You either: - Don't worry about it, any more than shopkeepers refuse to sell goods for fear those goods might get stolen, or - You tweak the model to help mitigate losses (e.g., frequent updates, such that the pirated copies are always out of date and therefore missing capabilities), or - You choose a different business model, one that may have other problems (e.g., consulting clients who fail to pay their invoices) -- Mark Murphy (a Commons Guy) http://commonsware.com | http://github.com/commonsguy http://commonsware.com/blog | http://twitter.com/commonsguy Android Training...At Your Office: http://commonsware.com/training -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Android Developers" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/android-developers?hl=en
