I'm renting an application I wrote and need to password protect it so that after one year it stops working. After one year the customer must call me for a new password to allow them to access it. Any suggestions on how to accomplish this.

[ April 18, 2002, 07:22 AM: Message edited by: gary2942 ]

It seems to me I've heard there might be legal considerations in "time-bombing" a database, but I don't have a reference. Anyway, the basic technique is to have a date field, then a startup script that checks the time elapsed, and to check a password, you need to set up Groups, then use Status(CurrentGroups).

So long as the customer know he will have a one-year license, you shouldn't have a problem. If the data he will be storing is time-sensitive, i.e. it contains date fields, it would seem unlikely that he'd set his calendar back. When the software is first installed, save the install date in a global field if he can't get to change it. He he can, I'd put a file on his disk with an encrypted date. You can get a free plugin that'll do the encryption from www.protolight.com. If he erases the file, your software won't run. If it doesn't decrypt, it doesn't run.