[AccessD] Hacking MDE (was Creating a demo Access app?)

All,

I've had a little trouble following all of Shamil's links and logic but it 
seems to boil down to a company (or multiple companies under the 
same -hidden - ownership) is in the process of reverse engineering other 
people's work.

If I understand it correctly, it's nothing new and not unique to computer 
programs.  IMHO, everything released into the public domain will, sooner or 
later, be copied or even reverse engineered by somebody if it's good enough.

I beleive that the only way to combat this is to continue to improve the 
program and market effectively and continually.  If the reverse 
engineers/copycats were so smart, they'd be producing their own work instead 
of copying everybody elses.

This may not be the case in instances like China stealing our proprietary 
missle development technology which saves them years of work and gives them 
access to things they don't have the resources yet to develop themselves. 
But an Access or SQL Server database app like I develop is really pretty 
simple to copy.

What I have going for me is an established customer base and a head start on 
the competition.  I've got over a year of development time in an app I am 
currently marketing and it's far from finished the way I'd like it to be. 
Sure, somebody can copy it and maybe even improve on it while they're at it 
but it will take them awhile and all that while, I'm selling more copies, 
doing more development and fine tuning, and establishing a loyal group of 
customers who trust me and know I'm responsive to their needs.  They could 
switch to somebody else, but why would they bother?  A new customer could 
buy a cheap knock-off of my program but ultimately, you get what you pay for 
and I'm still convinced I'll do a better job than some sorry hacker.

My 2 cents.

Penn


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Shamil Salakhetdinov" <shamil at users.mns.ru>
To: "Access Developers discussion and problem solving" 
<accessd at databaseadvisors.com>
Sent: Friday, February 24, 2006 6:51 PM
Subject: Re: [AccessD] Hacking MDE (was Creating a demo Access app?)
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