I wholeheartedly disagree with you on this.
I don't know if you are familiar with Craftsman tools or not.
Those are hardware things, not software, so you are making a faulty comparison. In software world it works differently. So totally not comparible.
It does not work in software land like that and you know it, there are only a very few exceptions to this.
I can easily refute all your arguments.
what I originally bought including to continue to be able to use MySQL.
Exactly where is stated in your agreement that you will get new Mysql versions every time?
MariaDB being EOL does not mean you can not still use your DA license or your mysql. And fore sure you can run with an EOL Mysql version. That it might be not that safe is a different thing.
I believe they were shortsighted
Maybe true. But 2 stars is way too less. They started at 2003 and wanted to try to give everybody as much as they could with great service. Not a single other similar company ever tried it this way, gave that service, gave temp licenses to move servers. They were the first company starting with a personal license for hobbyists which forced the other big ones to finally make something similar too. And DA was cheap and still is!!
They tried to keep it lifetime as long as they could. But at a certain point it's not possible anymore.
Your account is from 2005, so longer than mine. You think you should still complaint? With 20 years of free updates and upgrades and still no EOL?
I think you're totally unrealistic if you had that good service for 20 years and DA did so much good work to only reward that with 2 stars. That's more a reward for the competition which did way worse things.
Combine that with the fact that you think you can build a business on those promises, says more about you then about DA.
It's not wise to make a business plan this way. Every ICT guy knows software will not live forever, every ICT guy knows that you can't build anything based on that because there is always the risk a company can go broke or just stop with their businesses.
And then? Then you have servers suddenly not working anymore, even less as now. Without a backup plan? Really? Any company should know better than that.
I don't know why you defend them. You used to be as angry as me about it.
Who says I'm not agry about it? I was very angry in the beginning. We're 2 years further. Angryness is an emotion and has nothing to do with doing professional business. I used to be angry but I calmed down in that time and looked at it professionally.
So what am I? I'm still a bit dissapointed that it has to go this way.
So why do I defend them? Because I hate al the hateposts here on the forums to a couple of guys who tried to make the best for us, more like a friend way than a business way.
Did they cause a problem for being too friendly and less business like? For sure. But at least we all could profit from it for a long time.
Next to that when the anger settled down I tried to look at it professionally. And when calmed down I seen again what they did for us all those years. Even how they tried to keep the lifetime licenses alive.
But if you see the enormous flow of ex CP users which came over, once DA had to close the selling of lifetime licenses, that already instantly told me as professional businessman that they only would do that because else they could not earn enough anymore.
If you think about the thousends of licenses out there, often for free with VPS or for 5 euro/dollar month, where DA does not get any money from anymore then *any* business will go out of business after a certain time.
I know, it's their own choice and fault, but that does not mean they have to go out of business if they can't cope anymore.
As you also know, they shortly tried to keep the lifetime licenses as they were by starting to ask a support fee for new licenses and shortly had the fee if one wanted the Pro Pack. Unfortunatelly that didn't take long.
So what does that tell you? Think logically.
Also new people were hired like
@fln who's doing a darn great job to make all kinds of adjustments, improvements and features. What do you think some dev like he will cost. How do you really expect DA to keep peope like that and themselves paid with lifetime licenses paid for years ago? That money is all gone.
So why do I defend them? Because they are still trying to be as friendly as possible.
Any other company (like my example vBulletin but there are many others) would have declared those licenses end of life if they felt it was destroying there company in time. What does DA do? They still try to give you as long as possible but now with new OS and new MariaDB not anymore, you will have a still working static version.
However, to still be friendly to all those people they only earned from once, they still offer the option to convert their lifetime licenses to a modern lifetime(!!) license for half the price of a normal license. Which
not any other company would have offered. Any other would just have declared end of life and so end of story. Would you rather have that?
Would you rather have DA to go out of business because they have to live up to the lifetime licenses and they can't anymore? What's with your business plan then?
Or when they have to sell it for the same reason and then the new owner (most likely the cpanel owners), will either stop all lifetime licenses or also have everybody pay 250 dollar a year for support? How's your business plan then?
And that's why I defend them.
And if you only want to give them 2 stars, then that's an emotional decision, not a professional one. And if it's a professional one than sorry but in that case you're out of your mind.
It's hard for all of us, also me, but realisticly and professionally we all know nothing lasts forever.
Edit: fixed some typo's.
www.trustpilot.com
.. 
. Thanks for the idea.
