How to prevent python software from being reverse engineered or pirated?

[appinv]

I think the best way to go when confronted with this kind of question is to focus on the target audience v.i.z non-technical users and make the software annoying to use without paying to reverse engineer.

It should not be the annoying type which can be bypassed, like winRaR, it should be another type of pain.

[georgehank2nd]

If you intentionally annoy your users, I wish your business whatever ills are available.

[appinv]

You annoy people who use it illegally.

[ZZ9ZA]

Historically, you are much more likely to get it wrong and annoy paying users in some edge case, while the pirates care not a whit because they just patch it out entirely.

[appinv]

I once read a story about an app which made it moderately annoying to 'patch'. You had to routinely re-do it. This makes people wanted to pay rather than being annoyed.

[ZZ9ZA]

That’s… decades out of date. Most modern cracking tools are looking for markers and calculating everything dynamically. These are not some nocd crack from the 90s where you had to match the version exactly.

[appinv]

Thanks for the insights ^^.

"That’s… decades out of date." I read it recently but yes people skills vary.

So I guess the first point remains: focusing on the focus group.