GuancheMOS: eating my own food

GuancheMOS is the plug-in already used by dozens of Xojo users all around the World for generating and validating serial numbers (AKA licences) in their commercial and shareware applications and solutions… including myself! In fact, the seed of GuancheMOS project started when I had to search a solution to deploy my commercial apps to customers with this kind of system embebed on them.

For this, GuancheMOS offers four different types of algorithms that the registered GuancheMOS developers can use during the serial number generation. Besides of the selected algorithm, the uniqueness of the serial number generated is determined by the two variable seed data also elegible by us as developers. This way it’s extremely fast and easy to generate unique serial numbers for each one of our applications and even each application version.

As Xojo developers we have a two part process when using GuancheMOS. At first, we need to develop an management app that assume the function to generate the serial numbers for each one of our apps and users; and due GuancheMOS is compatible with Xojo’s apps developed as Console, Desktop and Web, this is very flexible to do and even to integrate in automated processes.

The second part of the process is the validation of the serial number entered by the user of our applications. This is an easy one, where we as developers only need to make a call to a GuancheMOS method and it returns a boolean to us telling if it’s is a valid serial number (returned value: true) or not (returned value: false).

As you can see, the needed time of development for integrate GuancheMOS in your projects is practically zero! Just make sure you scramble enough your seed strings in your source code (maybe defined as constants), so it can’t easily be seen as clear text with an hex editor… and you’re ready to go!

On the other hand, GuancheMOS is compatible with OS X, Windows and Linux, and this mean that you can opt for generate serial numbers that correctly validate in your multiplatform apps for all your supported operating systems, or you can decide to generate different serial numbers for each of the supported operating system.

As far as I know, the easiness and flexibility of the process has taken to some developers to use GuancheMOS in their own software activation solutions. It’s ok, because the GuancheMOS licence doesn’t restrict the plug-in uses and don’t asks for royalties or hides any other additional cost. Once you buy a GuancheMOS licence you can use the plug-in in all your products. As clear and transparent as that.

What’s the next step in GuancheMOS evolution? Well, I would like to bring GuancheMOS functionality to the last platform supported by Xojo. That is: Rapberry Pi. I think that many developers can enjoy the fast, easy and unique generation/validation system provided by the plug-in in their deployed solutions based on the Pi and other one-board computers currently also compatibles with Xojo.

On the drawing board I also have other options to expand GuancheMOS functionality, so… stay tuned!