>>Let's call it a fifty dollar program for the public to use, How do I protect it from most pirates?
You can use defox to require a key and also prevent your app being hooked out of memory or decompiled to discover your protection scheme. Defox's protection is written in ASM and needs a Journeyman hacker to pick apart.
And/or you can add VFP Compiler to make it simply not worthwhile trying to break your protection.
Defox is free, VC costs a few hundred $.
"... They ne'er cared for us
yet: suffer us to famish, and their store-houses
crammed with grain; make edicts for usury, to
support usurers; repeal daily any wholesome act
established against the rich, and provide more
piercing statutes daily, to chain up and restrain
the poor. If the wars eat us not up, they will; and
there's all the love they bear us."
-- Shakespeare: Coriolanus, Act 1, scene 1
