Application licensing technology overview
We just announced the introduction of a license server for the Android Market app store. This innovation is our response to one of the complaints that we constantly hear from the Android developer community.
The intentions and consequences, as follows from the announcement, are quite transparent. If you want to use the license server in your application, it is best to start by reading the official documentation: Licensing Your Applications . Here I would like to highlight some technical details:
- This feature is built into the Android Market application client starting from version 1.5, therefore, do not worry about the latest version of Android
- It is safe, based on the technology of the public / private key pair. Your request to the server is signed by the public key, and the response from the server is signed by the private key. For each developer account, there is a single public / private key pair.
- Your application will not directly communicate with the license server, just use IPC (Inter-Process Communication) to contact the Android Market client, who will deal directly with the server.
- There is sufficient tools available that will come with the SDK - LVL (License Verification Library, version checking library). It provides entry points for sending a request to the server and processing the result. In addition, it includes several ready-made modules that you can use to implement various license verification policies.
- The LVL library is delivered in the form of library project sources for Android. Together comes the shell for testing.
- In the development part of the Android Market there is a web-based interface for managing keys, both for testing and for release.
- It is clear that you will not be able to access the server when the device is offline. In such a situation, the choice is yours; One of the possibilities is to cache the status of licenses, and LVL provides an already assembled module for such situations.
- We believe that this is the most significant innovation for copy protection at the moment and we are waiting for a reaction from the developers.
Translation of an article posted by Tim Bray on the Android Developers official blog
The intentions and consequences, as follows from the announcement, are quite transparent. If you want to use the license server in your application, it is best to start by reading the official documentation: Licensing Your Applications . Here I would like to highlight some technical details:
- This feature is built into the Android Market application client starting from version 1.5, therefore, do not worry about the latest version of Android
- It is safe, based on the technology of the public / private key pair. Your request to the server is signed by the public key, and the response from the server is signed by the private key. For each developer account, there is a single public / private key pair.
- Your application will not directly communicate with the license server, just use IPC (Inter-Process Communication) to contact the Android Market client, who will deal directly with the server.
- There is sufficient tools available that will come with the SDK - LVL (License Verification Library, version checking library). It provides entry points for sending a request to the server and processing the result. In addition, it includes several ready-made modules that you can use to implement various license verification policies.
- The LVL library is delivered in the form of library project sources for Android. Together comes the shell for testing.
- In the development part of the Android Market there is a web-based interface for managing keys, both for testing and for release.
- It is clear that you will not be able to access the server when the device is offline. In such a situation, the choice is yours; One of the possibilities is to cache the status of licenses, and LVL provides an already assembled module for such situations.
- We believe that this is the most significant innovation for copy protection at the moment and we are waiting for a reaction from the developers.
Translation of an article posted by Tim Bray on the Android Developers official blog