Orinoco Activation Server is a drop-in licensing system for your Delphi application. Stop writing license code. Start shipping.
Orinoco Activation Server lets you sell your Delphi program with confidence. It handles the entire activation flow — from the moment a customer pastes their key into your app, to the moment your code knows whether to unlock the premium features.
A separate, standalone product
Important: The Orinoco Activation Server is an independent Delphi product. It is not the same thing as the Proteus licensing system. The two are sold separately, they do not depend on each other, and they do not work together — each is a complete solution on its own. They were sold together as a bundle in the past, but that is no longer the case. Pick whichever one fits the way you want to license your software.
What it does
- Activation keys. Issue keys like
KV01ABCDxxxxxxx. Each one carries a version number, a product code (4-character SKU), and a unique tail, so you can ship multiple products from a single key generator. - Online verification. Your application asks the server “is this key valid?” over HTTPS and gets back a clear yes-or-no answer in under a second.
- Customer data on tap. The server reply also tells your app the registered name, e-mail, product name, and a hit counter — ready to display in your About box, trial dialog, or activation screen.
- Anti-sharing protection. Each verification records the computer name of the machine using the key. The server keeps the last 30 unique machines, so a key being passed around the internet is immediately visible.
- Offline resilience. The last good response is cached on disk, so customers working on a plane don’t lose access mid-flight.
- Tag your product. Stamp a 4-character SKU into your product — so your software knows which product it is being asked to open.
Who is it for?
Anyone selling a Delphi-based desktop application who wants:
- One-time activation
- Per-customer licensing
- A simple way to deactivate stolen keys
- Visibility into who is actually using each license
It is small enough to drop into a hobby project, and structured enough to power a commercial product.
What you get
- Three Delphi units that plug straight into your existing project — no DLLs, no services, no third-party dependencies beyond the LightSaber framework.
- A working demo program that shows the entire activation flow end-to-end. Compile it, point it at the demo server, and you have a license check working in minutes.
- Four PHP scripts for the server side: a database initializer, a customer add/edit form, a customer list with one-click deactivation, and the verification endpoint your app will call.
- A binary save/load format for the license cache that is forward-compatible — when a future version of Orinoco Activation Server adds a field, your old saved files keep working.
Why Orinoco Activation Server
- Tiny. The whole client side is three units of Delphi.
- Synchronous and predictable. One call. One answer. No callbacks to chase.
- Customer-friendly. Activation takes seconds. Re-installation on a new PC just works.
- You stay in control. The server, the database, and the customer list are all yours. No third-party SaaS, no per-seat licensing fees from us, no analytics calling home.
- Battle-tested. Used in production to license real software to real paying customers.
How it works
The client builds an activation key from a string of the form KV + 2 version digits + 4-character SKU + unique tail, then posts {activation_token, user_id} over HTTPS to the PHP verification endpoint. The PHP server looks up the key in a MySQL users table, appends the computer ID to a per-row history, and returns a JSON response containing success, the license-active flag, the hit counter, e-mail, username, product name, custom tags, and the list of computer IDs that have ever activated that key. The client unpacks that response into a Delphi record and can persist it to disk.
On the server side, you get a small admin web UI: an “add customer” form to register new keys, a “list customers” view to see everyone’s status with a one-click activate/deactivate button per row, and the verification endpoint that your application calls.
Live program
You can see a Delphi program protected by the Orinoco Activation Server here: Orinoco eReader — a self-publishing eBook reader.
Looking for the in-application licensing system instead?
If you want a licensing system that lives entirely inside your Delphi executable — trial periods, demo modes, rent licenses, permanent licenses, module unlocking — without running a server, take a look at Proteus, my other (separate) licensing product. Proteus and Orinoco solve different problems and can be chosen independently.
Price
The Orinoco Activation Server is 40 Euros. VAT or sales tax may apply.
Source code is delivered after purchase.