The network is used only to buy, activate and download. Everything else happens on your computer.
Create an account on this website and get a key that looks like BOS-7K2M-…. The app itself has no account: the key is all it needs.
The app makes a key pair that never leaves the computer, and sends only the public half with your licence key. It gets back a licence made for that computer alone.
The app checks every download against our signed catalogue and our signature before installing it. It can also install from a file or a USB disk.
The licence is checked on the computer against our public key. Nothing is checked online, and nothing expires.
A shelter laptop, an air-gapped machine, a house where the line is down: activation does not need the computer itself to go online.
Choose Activate with a file. It saves a small request file, a few hundred bytes.
On a USB stick, or send it to your phone.
Open Activate offline on this website and upload the request. You get a licence file back.
Choose Import licence file. Done; it never needs the internet again.
A primary computer and an emergency one, because in a disaster the second one matters. Activating a third is refused until you free a slot: deactivate in the app, or release a lost or broken device in your account. A released device that is still running keeps working; we accept that.
Guides we write or license on terms that allow it. Stored encrypted, in small blocks; each version has its own key, and your licence carries the keys for this computer only. Copying the folder to another computer gives unreadable files.
Content under licences such as CC BY-SA or ODbL, for example Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap. Those licences forbid locking it, so we don't: you pay for the download, the indexes and the curation, and you may share the content itself.
We would rather say this plainly than oversell it.
| If someone… | Then |
|---|---|
| Copies the app, its data and the modules to another computer | Nothing opens: the device key is missing, and on newer hardware it cannot leave the chip it was made in |
| Shares their key | It works on two devices, then stops |
| Publishes the protected module files | They are useless without a key |
| Alters a module | The app refuses it: signatures and block hashes no longer match |
| Modifies the app itself to pull out keys or text | Possible for a skilled attacker. That is out of scope, by design |
This PoC stores the device key in the operating system's credential store (the macOS Keychain or the Windows Credential Manager), tied to the machine. The product also uses the Secure Enclave or TPM where the computer has one.