Richard G
Verified User
Which prooves how special the licenses and attempt to please customers was from DA. And that they were kind of the only ones in software business. Especially with this kind of software. But it also shows they were a bit too enthousiastic and naieve to think a business could keep this up. And as long as they were with them 2 and maybe 1 or two others helping them they might have thought they could keep up. But not really a lot of new features appeared either.
Anyone who really thought this through as a professional business would have known that at a certain point in the future they would run into the limits of what is possible. DA found out the hard way.
Is that their own fault? Yes for sure, but at least they tried and are still trying but the limit is reached, which is clearly to be seen with the cutbacks now. They can't do anything else then breaking the promise to update the other software. They still keep their promise to keep our DA license active and updated.
In my thoughts you can't demand a company to keep something up which not even any other similar (let alone same branch) company is or have ever given. To me we can be glad that take kept it up that long and still keeping it up for the time being.
It does. Just not with newer versions of OS and Mariadb anymore. And they never promised they would keep support and updates for all OS versions. And if an OS support stops, so will logically the software running on it. Becaue that will turn EOL at a certain time.
We were never promised lifetime OS support. We did however get it for many years but that stopped now.
And you do see the smilie and know the meaning of smilies right?
However I -do- agree the other point you make partly. If we would update all the software itself, then they should not prevent us from doing that by blocking MariaDB updates for example.
I said partly, because there is no statement in the official agreement (only somewhere on the site where MariaDB was not even mentioned), and not in the e-mail you got.
But since we with external licenses had way more expensive licenses we would have more reason to complaint anyway.
You mean a lot more years? Well... most company's don't even live that long in software. I'm glad they are still around and we still get updates. Our EOL issue starts in juli next year so we still got a year. And if they do what is suggested to give us the opportunity to have the OS keep it updated then even a couple of years longer.
So due time is given to change or the get over to something else for people who feel themselves downsided by them.
So concluding, did they dropped the ball on updates and for a big part on the lifetime licenses too? Yes they did, there is no disagreement in that.
But it's not fair to punish them so hard for it, because:
1.) Anybody with a real business mind could know this was something impossible to keep up on the long term and at least they tried while no other company did and still doing it in fact! EOL is next year! And maybe then we even get a way to keep MariaDB updated we will have to wait and see.
2.) And also always kept being the same while competitors or other company's just stopped licenses and at least were raising prices all the time.
3.) They are trying to compansate by giving the option to convert to half price modern licenses to keep their business running as well as the customers business!! They don't need to do that in this situation, but they do.
4.) Other company's would have accepted this mess threads, they would have closed them, declared the whole lifetime issue end of life and had been done with it, end of story. DA still does not.
There is a difference between things which are supposed to be and how things work out realisticly. And I do agree with you that it "should have been" that way, but realisticly it's just not possible anymore.
That does not make them automatically a bad company, they made some naive decesions in the past. Haven't we all?
So blaiming them they did wrong is fair.
But it's just as fair to also state that they tried the best they could and are still trying is just as fair and since almost nobody is doing that, I am. In spite of the fact that I'm dissapointed too, but it is what it is.
