When it comes to copy protection, software marketing companies are following the Grand Old Duke of York in droves, and Realia (UK) Ltd, London-based subsidiary of Chicago Cobol supplier Realia Inc, is dropping copy protection for its software products from this month. The move coincides with shipment of Realia Cobol Version 3.00, a compiler that enables users to develop, compile and test mainframe applications on IBM Personals, and of RealCICS 1.20, a CICS emulator that supports CICS development work under PC-DOS; the resulting applications can then be run either on a mainframe or on the Personal. The products operate with old and new IBM Personals. The company says that the traditional protection methods might interfere too much with our customers’ ability to operate in the multi-tasking environment of OS/2. Removing copy protection increases the compilation speed with Realia Cobol and solves the compatiblity problems with all models of IBM Personals, PS/2s and compatibles. Realia also claims that it will improve the installation and operation of the product, for example, making it easier to deal with system failures. In the past, a user who had a disk crash had to use a floppy version of the product until a replacement could be obtained from Realia and installed on the hard disk. Users can now make as many back-ups as they want and install the software on hard disk themselves. It won’t be a copying free for all, however, Realia executive vice president and co-founder Marc Sokol sternly points out that there is a feature to prevent casual copying. The installation program asks the user for the company name, which the program then embeds in the software. Each time the software is used, the program will print on the screen that the software is licensed to that particular company.
