Delphi OCD License system
Why is Delphi often installed on VMs?
Delphi Licensing Background
In 1998, a certain company touted legal enforcement - started to add extra information - like usage and called back home from time to time.
Port Authority of (Country) Board (PACB) Incident
In the PACB incident, the Port (you can imagine a very huge place with cranes, shipping containers, lots of trucks coming to transport goods) used a certain software which was used with cracks to circumvent copy-protection.
What was done?
The app called-back from time to time, exposing the computer name, hard-disk and certain identifying information.
PACB was sent notices to get legal, and license the app. They were ignored.
PACB was subsequently sued and settled out of court. From that day onwards, this method of recording and logging license and usage data to central servers would be used by many companies.
Delphi License Spyware
The licensing parts of Delphi are considered as spyware by the amount of activity data it sends to Embarcadero. It sends your serial at every opportunity - when you start Delphi, when you use GetIt, when you install Delphi.
Look at the below document -
Every Installation of Delphi is logged and every instance of Delphi running is logged.
OCD License Checker - Daily Checks
Delphi, along with other apps, such as Whole Tomato, Ultra Edit, C++ Builder, checks endlessly to Embarcadero’s license server.
If you think about obsessive compulsive behavior. Look at the logs in sanct.log. This file is in your C:\Users\{Name}\sanct.log
It keeps polling for a license, on a daily basis, then polls again every 3 or 4 days.
What's sent?
What’s being sent to Embarcadero?
Your Serial Number, your internal serial number.
List of BPLs or components
Test Case: One popular activity is copying Delphi Architect BPLs to Delphi Community, and loading the BPLs.
Later versions of Delphi disabled this ability to load Architect BPLs to Community edition. Several infringers claimed innocence due to inability to uninstall.1
Computer Name, Workgroup Name, Your Mac Address
Delphi License System monitors name change
Test Case: Rename your computer name. Start Delphi.
Delphi License system monitors Windows machine-name change, workstation-group name-change.
If you do the above, you will trigger a copy-protection update popup, asking you to re-enter your credentials again.
Why so? These are telltale signs you are connected to a corporate VPN, and if you are using Delphi Architect unlicensed, there is a fair chance your employer will get a nasty letter from Embarcadero.
Photocredit: Embarcadero Technologies, Inc. vs NCR Corporation (S.D. Tex, 2020) Other networked computer names
Delphi also sends a list of nearby computer-names discovered in Windows networking, to try to get more information on infringing computers.
Wifi name, router names
Delphi sends wifi names, router names to Embarcadero. Why? There’s a google map of Wifi names. Once your wifi name is discovered, they can approximate your location.
Interesting Questions
Since Embarcadero has a list of BPLs loaded for each developer, why can't Embarcadero fix IDE crashing, IDE freezing bugs?
They know market share - % sales vs % pirated sales of each library.
Embarcadero could setup a component store on GetIT, instead of some useless AppWave.
Grapevine rumors are this naughty-information is isolated and none of Embarcadero developers get to see it.
With this knowledge of copy-protection systems, would you want to use Delphi, Frola, Whole Tomato?
What changed:
typos corrected
further redaction due to fear of detection.