Igor, IgorImage, and Igor Plugin Downloads

We have three program files available for download. All three are self-extracting archives and will work on any Macintosh running OS X 10.5 or later.

Igor™ is the Igor animation program. The download will run for thirty days without a license, after which a license must be purchased to continue use.

IgorImage™ is the Igor image creation and manipulation program. The download will run for thirty days without a license, after which an IgorImage™ license must be purchased to continue use.

IgorPlugIn is the Igor web plugin, which is necessary for playing Igor™ games and toys on the web. The IgorPlugIn is free. Any WebKit-based web browser (such as Safari or OmniWeb) will work with the plugin. The IgorPlugIn should be placed in the /Library/Internet Plug-Ins folder.

You can also download the PDF versions of the manuals for Igor and IgorImage and look them over all you want.

There are also reference files which the Igor help system uses. Click here for an explanation of the Igor help system, which is a little . . . different. Igor uses three reference files: Modeling Reference; Shot & Scene Reference; and Story & Game Reference. IgorImage uses a single reference file called IgorImage Reference.

Click here to register before first purchasing licenses.

Click here to purchase licenses.

Click here for an explanation of the Igor help system.

Now, let's talk ownership. This is where license agreements are usually placed. Let's face it, most of those are just ridiculous. So here's the way it works: Anything you make by using Igor or IgorImage, be it animation, game, or picture, is yours -- provided, of course, you own any work you put into it (like image files you manipulate with IgorImage). They're the work of your mind and hands and as a writer and programmer I think they belong to you.

But Igor and IgorImage, they're my work, and in the same way and for the same reason they belong to me.

So what am I selling with the licenses? The right to use. Buy a license and you can use that version of the program forever.

This may sound like a weird new idea, some strange innovation that's been cobbled together to deal with the easy transferability of data through computers.

But actually, this has been going on a long time. Painters and photographers have been licensing the use of their work for a long time. Famous people have been selling their endorsements (selling the value of their name) for products for ages. There's nothing new here. The thing that's unusual is that now the licensing of such things has become available to everyone where it was once the province of printmakers and advertisers.

Inevitably, a large body of law has arisen in connection with this because not everyone who uses somebody else's intellectual property has done so with proper permission. Now, here's where the innovations have outstripped what's going on. The truth of the matter is that these laws have become unenforceable. There's no real way to prevent someone from stealing intellectual property, and the people who are trying to prevent it are pretty much doomed to failure.

The reason they're doomed is a simple matter of numbers. There are more people who want free stuff than there are people trying to stop them from getting free stuff.

Look, I'm a decent programmer (as I hope the Igor software shows), but I'm not an expert in security. If I were willing to work at it for six years (the time it took me to write Igor), I could probably cobble together something good in the way of protection. Or if I were willing to pay someone who had spent time working on this problem, I could get some serious nasty protection for my programs.

But what would be the result of that? I would have issued a challenge to hackers. There's one thing I know about programmers. They love a challenge. They'll stay up for days with nothing but caffeine, sugar, and adrenaline as company to crack something like that. And anything can be cracked. Anything. There's no such thing as perfect security.

So what would I gain from doing all that?

1. I'd annoy nearly everyone wanting to use my software because the security measures would put some annoying burden on everyone trying to use it. I'd like people to use Igor. I spent six years coding it.

2. I'd have gotten people focused on cracking my security which I didn't want in the first place.

So why do I have time limits on Igor and IgorImage? Why don't I just distribute them as shareware?

Because to most people shareware feels like freeware. They don't think of it as something they are trying out and need to purchase if they want to keep it (like a test drive in a car). Most people need enough sense of the necessity of purchase in order to buy something.

So I've settled on the test-out period with web-purchased licenses. I don't think it's perfect, but I think it is neither too annoying to users, nor too much like freeware. I think it's a tolerable compromise. If someone has a better idea, I'll be happy to hear it. E-mail me at "centrallab" (without the quotes) "at sign" igoranimation.com.

Now, someone out there may decide that they don't want to deal with that or pay for licenses and they might hack the program. I can't stop them. They shouldn't do it. It's illegal. But I can't stop them. Hacked versions of commercial software show up all the time on various sites. People try to chase them down and remove them, but like pirated movies, books, and music, there's no real way to stop them.

Someone will do this. The question is what will other people do once such hacked versions become available. A lot of people feel like suckers if they pay for something if a free version of it is available, regardless of how that free version came to be. But it's unwise for people to feel slighted because someone else got away with something. It's too easy to feel that the luster is off something because someone else managed to trick their way into it. Too much of that and we all end up living in a world where everyone tries to grab all they can without regard for anyone else.

There are plenty of people who don't feel this way, who are essentially honest, but still don't like to pay for intellectual property since they think if there isn't a physical thing there isn't really an act of theft. That position has a certain solidity to it, although it tends to be self-serving.

There's also a view that things like software and images and stories are part of the commonwealth of humanity. This view has philosophical merit, and if we lived in a society that did not require a constant inflow of money for people to be able to survive and do their work, it might form a strong challenge. But in practical terms you can't have an intellectual propertyless society unless you have a propertyless society. This opens a larger can of worms than I care to get into.

I hope that Igor and IgorImage catch on and that I can continue to improve them over time, but that only makes sense if it's worth my time and effort to do so.

My point is this: Creating intellectual property is just as much work as creating physical objects. Igor and IgorImage are software meant to help people do such crafting. So if using the tools you make something worth the purchase, isn't the tool itself worth the purchase?

What about the IgorPlugIn then? Why is it free? Because it makes it easier for people to enjoy the fruits of other people's creations. It's meant to open up audiences. The existence of the IgorPlugIn makes the program itself more useful and therefore, hopefully, more worth the purchase.

Igor Downloads