so im sitting here, wondering if the act of cracking software leaves a uncracked copy or not.
(i find the not to be highly likely)

that is, could a hacker buy software legally for a comlink, crack it and still have the uncracked software sitting on said comlink, happily patching away?

then at some later time the hacker could re-crack said software for a new, up to date cracked copy?

Only if you can duplicate the uncracked software.

its really true then, backups are a non-concept in SR

I believe that the act of cracking them is what makes one able to copy them. If you need a reinstall, you can call the helpdesk, Mr. Law-Abiding-Customer.

Also, if I'm remembering correctly from my software piracy days (when I was a minor and long since any statute of limitations, if you're getting any ideas), we were working on the original diskette, since the copying came after the cracking.

It is entirely possible someone managed to make the copy BEFORE cracking it. Not sure how to translate that into SR fairly though.

except that in SR, cracking it is what makes it possible to copy the program in the first place.

It's really much easier to think of Cracking copies as software accounts. You are then cracking accounts and faking the third party authentication process.

I have 6 copies of the latest MMORPG on my various computers at home. I have two accounts. All the copes get patched regularly. I can start running all 6 copies, but I can only use two at any one time because I only have two login accounts.

Get away from the thinking the binaries are all you need to run software.

Actually, you really only need the binaries to run the software.

What you are talking about is a subscription service... which is another cattle of fish entirely.

Which is how the vast majority of the software I currently buy, use and write works today.

A standalone binary rapidly becomes out of date without some means of keeping current.

that would be the registration option. something the cracking process strips out...

Not quite - more like the Horizon option of knowsofts.

Hardly. Most software doesn't get the content it works with based on a subscription service.

As long as the interfaces don't change, there isn't any need to stay current for the software to work.

I'm amused you know what software I use, and how it works. And I apparently don't.

What you should be amused about is the fact that if you carefully examine what software you actually use, you'll find that the applications with a subscription model for content are, in fact, the vast minority, compared to what software they run on.

The question isn't "is that what the majority are now" but "Is that what the majority WILL be in 2070?"
I find it a plausible option.

Actually, in this specific case, it was the former, not the latter.

Generally speaking, it is not the way SR chose, as by RAW, self-written software or FOSS degrades just as fast.

Coming back to the original question, per Unwired p. 108, nothing keeps you from actually copying the program before it is installed... though it's useless as well until registered.

I know, man, I was just trying to pull it back on topic.

So this begs the question:

Do you need more than one copy of the same program (such as firewall)? Which could be on everything from your commlink to house cleaning drone.

If you cracked it, no. Otherwise, yes.

BTW - personally, I'm leaning towards the 'cracking a program generates a freely usable copy, leaving the original intact'. Otherwise, you don't need Databombs and Encryption anymore to secure your paydata from hackers - just slap Copy Protection on it and nobody will ever be able to touch it, since it requires hours to remove.

It is a non-issue, too, as nothing prevents a hacker to simply use Spoof to make his program look copy-protected and registered, then simply get the patch.

I get my entire set of OS in various flavors via subscription. I get my "productivity" software via subscription. I get the games I play as a subscription.

There is a small set of software I don't pay for a subscription, but I still subscribe for updates.

I don't build my machines from anything other then my subscription software to begin with. And the rare case where I add something that isn't from my subscription usually involves some form of subscription, paid or otherwise.

Keep telling me I don't know what software I run.

BTW, I declare the subscription costs on my taxes, so if I'm lying to you about this, I'm also lying to the taxman.

If you honestly believe that you need to pay a monthly/yearly fee to keep the binaries of your OS simply running, I will - but it obviously won't do anything.

OK, so anyone here actually installed a copy of Windows, ever?

Copying windows is easy. You stick the CD in a drive. You copy it. Done.
The problem is that when you install windows it immediately calls up the Microsoft server, with the full specifications of your system, to confirm that a copy with that same serial number isn't running on another system.
So yes, backing up software and copying it are two completely different things. I could take my Windows CD and go install it on 20 different PCs, but none of those copies of Windows would activate, and all of them would stop working after 30 days.

So the idea that copy protection stops you from running multiple copies of the same program, but doesn't stop you having those multiple copies, is perfectly reasonable. Where it falls down is this idea that Registration and Copy Protection are different things. Unfortunately, given that cracking software has some nasty game balance implications, I'm not really what other solution best fits. It's my feeling that these balance issues mostly arise from the fact that hacking is so heavily dependent on software, instead of being a Stat + Skill roll. You could even remove the idea of software having a rating altogether, putting the focus much more heavily on the skills and abilities of the hacker. To attempt an action they simply need to have the program; rating is irrelevant. A hacker with the skills to crack softs and the like makes a saving on their setup costs, which probably doesn't even match the points they spent on having the Software skill in the first place.
Oh, and it makes Technomancers a bit less fucked, too. 1BP per Complex Form? Much more reasonable.

Not quite.

Activation of Windows after installation ties the software to a specific hardware and those ties become integral part of the software - which in turn doesn't prevent it from being copied, but from working on other hardware. Of course the company won't allow you to activate multiple times without paying multiple times.

So far, that's pretty much what SR did.

Just, there is an additional Copy Protection that actually prevents the software from being copied by RAW.

The core thing to pay attention to is that the sales model for Software presented in RAW makes no damn sense. None at all.

Microsoft has product churn, where a "new" product comes out every year or two and people "upgrade" to keep up with the times. In 2070 software companies are apparently far more philantropic than even that, letting you keep software up to date forever and apparently drag their budget out of thin air to cover it. This makes no sense whatsoever. Microsoft even tried to persuade noncommercial users to switch to a lease model that promised them more profits. Microsoft was meant to be killed off by the badass corps that inhabit 2070 before they were even minnows.

Corps claw a profit from the public wherever they can. They'd keep product churn, switch to a pay-for-patch model or lease you software. SR4 does not represent any of these commercial models when it provides rules for legally purchased software. It's insane.

could be its nickle and dimed under the lifestyle of the user, after the initial purcase...

cracked software do not, so each purcase is a up front one...

From an abstract perspective there's no damn difference between paying for patches and leasing your software except what happens when you refuse to pay. If you can nickle'n'dime your software lease, or the saving for the product churn "upgrade", then you can nickle'n'dime your patch costs. Patch costs are canonically 10%, meaning that they're only slightly more expensive than saving for an entirely new program for the next year (~8%). How can a 2% difference be the basis for rejecting nickle'n'diming one cost and accepting another?

Or, if you claim that 10% is the difference between the patching costs and the nickle'n'dimed budgeting/lease costs, how do you explain the patches for a Rating 1 Exploit program costing more than the program cost in the first place?


Also, how does a Squatter nickle'n'dime the costs on Rating 4 combat programs whose combined patching cost is higher than their lifestyle cost?

Actually, you pay the missing rating when patching - just the fact that it is 'pirated' reduces it to the 'usual' 10%

I don't need to subscribe to keep my software running. That's quite true.

But it's not like the world never changes and something new comes along that improves things. It's SOTA baby! Can't be SOTA with the same old wares.

How old is your software that you are using right now? Really? I'll lay odds you've installed something with a newer version within the past 3 months.

For a completly different rationale, though:

In SR4 terms, it would be like: Each month the character neglects to keep his software patched against exploits, the threshold of hacking the node is reduced by one.

Given you can;
Make as many copies as you want.
Do need to subscribe to keep software SOTA.
May or may not need accounts, spoofed, hacked, whatever, to run the software.

How likely is it that the initial version of software always requires an account to go check for updates before actually running? Whether or not you actually upgrade is optional?

You still end up with a situation that no matter how many copies you have, the cracked accounts is what limits the number of copies you can run.

See the limits on Agents spoofed ids for an example of this.

Just in SR4 you crack once and run as many as your hardware allows you to.

The 'integral, unspoofable access id' of agents is just an artifical game restriction trying to prevent Agent Smith.

or at least give it some kind of framework to exist within, rather then being a naysayer "proof of brokenness"...

Ok, now i'm confused

Say we had a Exploit 5 program, but it has degraded to Exploit 4 now.

The difference between Exploit 5 ($5000) and Exploit 4 ($4000) is $1000. %10 of this is $100.


Or does it work that, a Pirated Exploit 5 costs $500, a pirated Exploit 4 costs $400, the difference between these two pirated programs is $100, so %10 of $100 is $10 ?

Which way does it go?

Max,
Dunedin, NZ

first one...

Questions like the OP's come up all the time in my group, and As a friend of mine and my GM both pointed out all to directly, Shadowrun's tech side was writen by game writers not tech's

hehe, But then we also have rules that says if your droped on a desert island and have skill wires your survivle active soft will be usless with in a few weeks

Thus:

The cost of the patch is 10% of the difference in street cost between the deraded rating and the original rating. The cost of a pirated program is 10% of the street cost of a program of that rating. The key phrase here is "street cost". This has only one value and it is the same in both cases. The cost of patching is the same for all programs.

Whether your program is pirated only matters when you buy it. Beyond that it does not matter. In fact, it's actually a pointless, meaningless distinction. I know people like to call their programs something fancy, but the fact is that the word you use to refer to your program doesn't affect its patching cost. It's always the same no matter if it has registration (and thus is "legal"). It doesn't make a damn difference either way.

There's no way of knowing from the look of it whether the program you have in front of you was bought pirated, or whether it was bought legal and cracked. Seriously, the only way you know which is what is because you store a bunch of extra information in your head about your programs, or just add random extra information for your thought experiment. The rules don't keep track of it and neither should you. The rules keep track of what options your program has and that's all they care about.


In short, there's no difference between the cost of patching a "legal" and "pirated" program, the distinction you draw does not exist in the rules. You shouldn't (and don't) use the original purchase price to determine your price cost (otherwise you'd get a patch discount from the market conditions last year, which is retarded), you use the base price listed in the BBB/Arsenal.