Best way to time-limit a rails/ruby application

[Warren Seltzer]

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Some "Customers" just don't like to pay their contracting bills. What's the best way for
me to time-limit a ruby/rails application so it stops working if they don't pay their
bills?

Warren


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[Stephen Waits]

Some "Customers" just don't like to pay their contracting bills. What's the best way for
me to time-limit a ruby/rails application so it stops working if they don't pay their
bills?

Don't give them root?

--Steve

 

[Eric Hodel]

Some "Customers" just don't like to pay their contracting bills.
What's the best way for
me to time-limit a ruby/rails application so it stops working if
they don't pay their
bills?

Get better customers.

Write the large pieces of the program in C so they cannot use the
power of Ruby to work around a small bit of C or Ruby that disables
the application.

(ZenObfuscator might help, but it is not released.)

 

[Kirk Haines]

Some "Customers" just don't like to pay their contracting bills. What's
the best way for me to time-limit a ruby/rails application so it stops
working if they don't pay their bills?

If you don't host it, your options are limited. It should be no problem to
put some sort of short-circuit into your code to do anything from displaying
a specific page to simply failing, but anything that you put in can be found,
if you are not in control of the code.


Kirk Haines

 

[James Britt]

Some "Customers" just don't like to pay their contracting bills. What's the best way for
me to time-limit a ruby/rails application so it stops working if they don't pay their
bills?

How do people use the application when they *do* pay their bills? Do
they have to sign in?


James


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[junk5]

Get a lawyer to send a letter giving them a hard deadline for payment,
warning that you will take them to court if payment is not made in full
by that date. Ideally, it would be sensible to have a clause in
whatever contract you signed with the customer stating that they incur
your legal costs if they refuse to pay in a timely manner, but if not
you'll have to swallow this cost yourself. If you don't have any
written contract with your customer, then you may have to put this one
down to experience.

You can waste a lot of time writing code that protects you, but in the
end it will come down to a test in code that essentially reads "if
allowed==true then do_it() else do_not()"; if your customer thinks it's
worth their while, they'll just find and modify this code. The reason
the big boys write this kind of protection is that they have millions
of customers and assume that only a small (and acceptable) number will
modify the code. The big boys can't afford to take every one of their
customers to court (it would be too expensive and they'd lose all their
customers). You only have one customer; if you have a proper contract,
you should easily be able to take them to court. You'll lose their
future custom, but I guess you'd rather them be a drain on your
competitors' resources than your own.

I imagine that a scary letter from a lawyer will encourage them to pay
up and that a trip to court won't be needed.

 

[Victor Reyes]

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Forget the lawyer. Hire a hitman, they might be cheaper!

Get a lawyer to send a letter giving them a hard deadline for payment,
warning that you will take them to court if payment is not made in full
by that date. Ideally, it would be sensible to have a clause in
whatever contract you signed with the customer stating that they incur
your legal costs if they refuse to pay in a timely manner, but if not
you'll have to swallow this cost yourself. If you don't have any
written contract with your customer, then you may have to put this one
down to experience.

You can waste a lot of time writing code that protects you, but in the
end it will come down to a test in code that essentially reads "if
allowed=3D=3Dtrue then do_it() else do_not()"; if your customer thinks it= 's
worth their while, they'll just find and modify this code. The reason
the big boys write this kind of protection is that they have millions
of customers and assume that only a small (and acceptable) number will
modify the code. The big boys can't afford to take every one of their
customers to court (it would be too expensive and they'd lose all their
customers). You only have one customer; if you have a proper contract,
you should easily be able to take them to court. You'll lose their
future custom, but I guess you'd rather them be a drain on your
competitors' resources than your own.

I imagine that a scary letter from a lawyer will encourage them to pay
up and that a trip to court won't be needed.

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[Darshan Patil]

Some "Customers" just don't like to pay their contracting bills. What's the best way for
me to time-limit a ruby/rails application so it stops working if they don't pay their
bills?

Warren

Adding a backdoor to a rails app is trivial