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Comment by flowerlad | Hacker News Reader

In the 90s I used to make money off shareware, and every time I release a new version hackers would release "cracks" for the license key. Eventually I figured out that these cracks are coming from Russia.

In the next version of my program, I added a check for system language, and if I detect Russian then I bypass the license key checks, and the program is free to use. This stopped hackers from releasing cracks.

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Hah, it reminds me of a shareware program that had two options for registration, one required you to pay some dollars to get a registration code, and the other, labeled as licence for CIS countries (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commonwealth_of_Independent_St...) simply required you to enter the name of the current day of week in Russian cyrillic alphabet.

I believe I saw it in the FAR file manager.

I believe it's not related. When the shareware model was popular, a lot of the programs made by developers from exUSSR republics were either free or sold at the significantly lowered price to native speakers, so such tests were common. (I've seen Russian folk riddles as tests, for example). The developers were doing this because they were keenly aware of the economic situation in their home countries, and because the software would have been pirated anyway. So there was less incentive for russian speakers to crack it as it was free for them. It was a completely different time as well, nobody was thinking about legal action.

> I believe it's not related.

Not related to what? Law enforcement risks are probably not related. Discouraging piracy outside of Russia, more likely related.

Not sure why this is downvoted. An exUSSR license was very common in shareware whose authors were themselves from the region. WinRAR and FAR are examples, but there are certainly more.

Maybe because it claims "they are unrelated" and then spends some time describing the relation? That is, between cracking shareware and its language filter to avoid said cracking.

And I think what the comment meant was: the special license was driven more by consideration of the fellow countryman's economic situation than by appeasement of crackers. In reality it was probably a bit of both.

The earliest I've seen this trick was in Far Manager [1], back when it was a commercial software.

Made by Eugene Roshal, the author of RAR format and WinRar, Far Manager distribution included a text file in Russian that explained how a comrade can do a full unlock in 2 easy steps. Don't know if it helped with sales, but I don't think it actually solved the cracking problem, because Roshal ended up open sourcing it despite of it having a very sizeable following.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_Manager

I used to sell a lot of shareware software, priced around $15. For Russians it was much cheaper: 200 RUR, sent by postal mail transfer to my grandma who still lived in Russia. She got a small stream of income from it (negligible by USA standards), to augment the laughable pension.

That's smart and sweet at the same time.

What an absolutely awesome idea! Sacrificing a (probably negligible from a western perspective) income stream to help your grandmother and help your countrymen simultaneously. Plus, avoids fees from sending money back to your grandmother; and any dollar that middleman remittance companies don't get is a net positive for the world.

This is some two-steps thinking which is not the default mode for most humans AFAIK. The "Russians won't pay for this but that means there won't be a crack for the rest" line of thought seems like an easy insight, but it's not IMO.

Am Russian. This made me smile.

IBExpert (firebird GUI), used to have something like this in cyrilic in Help -> About: "If you can read this, this program is free for use for you. Have a nice day."

It's fair because russians don't have any means to pay in dollars. That's why they crack

That was more or less true in the 90s, at least.

I sell open-source hardware and get plenty of sales to Russia and even occasionally China in USD. I think they appreciate the fact I don't charge stupid shipping fees to people in smaller markets.

Russians pay in Rubles, but banks/payment gateways convert them to your currency, so for you Russians will pay in dollars.

Even more amusing -- if Russian, then use a different license scheme.

They would likely notice once they fire up a disassembler or debugger.

Plus, I don’t think anyone in Russia would pay anyways. So it’s not like making it free would lose sales.

>Plus, I don’t think anyone in Russia would pay anyways.

Not in the 90s, that's for sure.

Steam change this for games market though when they case to russian market with local prices.

I wonder if we will see a surge of eastern EU countries cracking again since the EU is banning local pricing in the region.

I have a similar situation, most of my paying customers live in the united States, a few in Europe, and a rare 1 person outside those areas.

I give away free content, so I don't mind if people use the website, but I have no incentive to create topics specific to (third world) users. They have never paid, and from interactions with them, they can't afford their own lives, let alone buying my products for under $10USD.

> ... from my interactions with them, they can't afford their own lives ...

That's a tad condescending.

Brilliant move. I must admit, I wouldn't have thought of that ... (would be more hellbent on fighting ...).

There's a life lesson in there, I'm sure.

Wow, make them become lazy

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