How do I distribute my software?

What techniques/software can be used to distribute trial software while ensuring robustness?

• For example, the use case is: An independent software provider has to distribute trial version of its software to OEMs, game developers etc. but ensure that OEMs don't ship this software commercially to end-users.?

• Answer:

  Well, in this sort of B2B transaction, do you even have to worry about it? If you provide trial software to a company, and they try to integrate and deliver your trial to customers without a license, they're blatantly violating your copyrights, and you'd have no problem getting an injunction against them shipping for as long as it took to sue them into oblivion. In fact, this is the approach most open source projects have taken, with quite a bit of success (eg. BusyBox).   I don't think you'll need it, but if you actually need a technical measure, the easiest is a timebomb - hard-code your bits to stop working after a certain date (but don't forget to update it periodically :p). If they ship your bits, all their customers get disabled automagically in three months.   If the ecosystem is fairly uniform, you can require that your bits only run on "developer devices" (eg. Xbox devkits, unlocked phones), but we're usually not that lucky.