I perceive a huge security and privacy hole in the licensing system used by Moneyscripts. Call me paranoid if you like, but I have worked extensively in the corporate sector and have worked on and designed many systems which had to comply with company security and data-protection guidelines. Suffice it is to say that paranoia is the default position they all take, and there is no such thing as trust.

Moneyscripts modules have a "call home" "feature", which allegedly checks for license compliance and updates, but, and it is a huge "but", it uses some encrypted code - so we have no way of knowing what it is doing. Personally I am confident it is all benign, but confidence doesn't cut the mustard in the hard-nosed real business world of corporate security and data-protection.

Leighton, you say you are using the same technique used by the Drupal updates system, however, there is a world of difference between 1) our trust in the Drupal community and Moneyscripts (no disrespect intended); 2) anyone with enough knowledge can see what is happening under the bonnet with Drupal because the code is open source and unencrypted; and 3), unlike Moneyscripts, it is possible to switch off the Drupal update system (there are possibly other ways to do this, but one way I know of is the http://drupal.org/project/update_notifications_disable module).

It is one thing to try to protect your investment in code, but it is quite another to have what is in effect an encrypted daemon sitting on customer's servers which can invisibly do anything Moneyscripts chooses to do, and at any time... By all means check for license and updates, but give us the option to switch it off and, most importantly of all DON'T ENCRYPT IT - i.e. don't expose all our systems to this security vulnerability. For all anyone knows, Moneyscripts could be harvesting any information it likes - it potentially has access to any database and the filing system, it could plant viruses, anything...

Paradoxically, Moneyscripts could well be losing out on balance by using this security-exposed licensing approach. You could be losing more revenue by untold numbers of customers who would like to use the Moneyscripts modules but are put off by the security loophole, than the few, if any, license fees you could lose by a few people bothering to take the time to use your software without paying for it...

The best businesses succeed by providing great products (which you do), excellent customer service (which you do), and by not giving their customers any good reasons not to buy from them...