I write civil engineering software [0] and am familiar with this kind of dongle. Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand.

Since we sold (and still sell) perpetual licenses, it becomes a problem when a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available. Not all users want to upgrade. Also, you may hate cloud licensing, but it is precisely cloud licensing that makes subscriptions possible and, therefore, recurring revenue—which, from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade.

Also, despite investing a lot of effort into programming the dongle, we can still usually find cracked versions floating online, even on legitimate platforms like Shopee or Lazada. You might think cracking dongles is fun and copy protection is evil, but without protection, our livelihood is affected. It’s not as if we have the legal resources to pursue pirates.

[0]: https://mes100.com

> You might think cracking dongles is fun and copy protection is evil, but without protection, our livelihood is affected.

I understand you might feel this way, but it seems to me customers are mostly business clients, who would are more inclined to spare the expense of purchasing said licenses, since they're not personally buying it themselves, and would want to have support and liability (i.e: Someone to hold liable for problems in said software.). In fact, having no copy protection would probably have saved you the problem you mentioned where a dongle breaks and replacement parts are no longer available; this is one of the talking points that anti-drm/copy protection people advocate for, software lost to time and unable to be archived when the entities who made such protections go out of business or no longer want to support older software.

> even on legitimate platforms like Shopee or Lazada.

On a slight tangent, but I personally don't find either platform legitimate (Better than say, wish[.]com or temu, but not as "legitimate" as other platforms, though I can't think of a single fully legitimate e-commerce platform). Shopee collects a ton of tracking information (Just turn on your adblocked, or inspect your network calls. It's even more than Amazon!), is full of intrusive ads, sketchy deals, and scammers. You yourself said you can easily find cracked versions of the dongle there, which doesn't speak well for the platform. And Lazada is owned by Alibaba Group, which speaks for itself. I'm not sure why consumers in South East Asian regions aren't more outspoken about this, since they seem to be the some of the more popular e-commerce platforms there.

> Yes, even today there are users who want this kind of dongle instead of, say, cloud-based validation. They feel secure only if they have something tangible in hand.

In my experience this continues to this day due to people who require drawing on air-gapped computers, because the drawings/simulations they work on are highly sensitive (nuclear, military, and other sensitive infrastructure).

But I'm sure there are also old-fashioned people who like the portability/sovereignty of not having to rely on a third-party license server as you suggest.

The problem seems the sales model rather than the dongle:

1) a hardware and software solution implies that hardware will stop working at some point. Customers should understand it 2) you could sell them a new dongle every time support contract ends which is what I’ve experienced with Xways as an example. Even if you’re air gapped once a year usage data upload and new dongle seems fine. 3) why should users receive free upgrades and bug fixes? No software is bug free.

Finally there are several brand protection shops that fight fakes and work well with Shopee, Lazada, Facebook etc. It’s not five dollars but they will take these down effectively

> from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade.

Why should users upgrade or keep paying you when they already bought what they need and don't need anything else?

My dad used to use this kind of dongle for a civil engineering program called 'Cosmos'. Just wild to see it, it was so annoying to because sometimes it would simply not be detected on our 80386.

> which, from a business point of view, is especially important in a field where regulations do not change very fast, because users have little incentive to upgrade

This take is diametrically opposite to what end users need. In a world where "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" is perfectly fine for the end user, buying a one off license for a software seems much more sane then SaaS. SaaS is like a plague for end users.

I don't condone piracy, but I also don't condone SaaS.

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