A few years back, DXO required a rootkit on your computer to prevent piracy (and root access to install). Have they fixed that bug? Otherwise, I’m a bit surprised to see DXO advertised here.
[Replying to myself]
The EULA states: “For security reasons, DxO integrates DRM (“Digital Rights Management”) software components in the Software.” When installing, the installer phones home, then requests admin privileges for reasons not clearly explained in the UI:
“The activation process failed because the license file could not be saved. You need administrator privileges to complete the activation process.”
I mean, maybe they’re just trying to write to /etc/dxo/license, maybe they’re trying to add launchd components as root, or maybe they’re going to modify configuration files in ways that are tricky to undo.
Since I don’t have a spare computer to sacrifice to their DRM, I’m going to end my investigation there.
You should have received an email with an activation code. Worked for me.
Yes! I found it, nevermind… D’oh! Now I must erase the first post.
On install / activation on my Mac, I see four outbound connections, to activation.dxo.com, activation2.dxo.com, applicationdata.dxo.com, and download-center.dxo.com. I don’t see any new processes running.
Each time I run the application, I again see connections to applicationdata.dxo.com and activation.dxo.com.
I haven’t seen any connection attempts except when I start up the program.
None of the above prove that it’s not doing something tricksy or nasty. I’m reasonably savvy around the BSD subsystem, but I didn’t exhaustively catalog all process changes. I do keep pretty close watch on all my network connections and traffic, however (just try installing the Adobe Creative Cloud… you won’t believe the network chatter!)
The problem I have with DxO Optics is that it really wants to be stand-alone, and doesn’t integrate nicely with Aperture (which is what I use for organization, tagging, raw conversion, and post-processing). That being said, if you use it in its preferred way as a stand-alone, it does have some very nice capabilities.
It is going to phone home to check the activation code on install and on running. It’ll also download the camera/lens profiles as needed.
Looks like though that BB’s link here killed their activation server. I’m getting DatabaseCannotBeOpenedShop. Googling for that reveals their activation WSDL.
I installed just for grins, I’ve tried version 7 before and it’s worth using unless you’re wedded to another high-ish-end editor.
As for it being the anti-instagram? Nah – you can add light leak, grain, texture, framing, vignetting, blur vignetting, toning. Don’t see lens flare though…
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