DirectAdmin v1.653 RC

[wtptrs]

@fln If you're indeed planning on phasing out Lifetime Licenses completely, could you at least post a roadmap of when various services will stop being supported? Or a de facto EOL for Lifetime Licenses?

I'm sorry but

"For all the other posts regarding legacy licenses, the legacy codebase flag and explanation of limited maintenance was introduced over a year ago (https://docs.directadmin.com/direct...l#what-is-legacy-licenses-and-legacy-codebase) so there is no new announcements to be made."

is a non-answer. This way on top of phasing out Lifetime Licenses, you're also keeping all current Lifetime License users in the dark on how to plan for the future, as future support for any core service (Apache, PHP, ...) can just disappear at any future point in time, without prior warning.

Also, why is this important change not part of the v1.653 release notes? Any customers not reading this forum will have no idea what's happening.

 

[brc]

If

The popularity of retail Pro Pack licensing has surged over the past few years while volume growth of legacy licensing (licenses without Pro Pack) has dropped to record lows.

if that were true, DA would not be worried about creating restrictions to force old customers to upgrade. They would just stop selling DataCenter/legacy licenses and, per your understanding, they would keep dropping until reaching an insignificant volume

 

[wtptrs]

@fln In November PHP 8.3 will be released. A few days after that, some of our customers will probably ask us to include it as one of the options in the PHP Version Selector. If you're planning on disabling PHP 8.3 in Custombuild, could you at least have the courtesy to inform us about this now, instead of us having to find out about this in two months from now? We will need to go over all our shared and customer servers and decide for each of them if we can keep the legacy license, upgrade the license or migrate to another control panel. We would like to know this as much in advance as possible, as I'm sure you can understand.

Again, I understand wanting to get rid of the Legacy Licenses. Although a lot of Lifetime License holders are not making you a lot of money right now, we have spent many thousands of dollars in the past buying these licenses. The way you're going about this (not just stripping out new Directadmin features but actively disabling core OS services which have nothing to do with Directadmin, without informing your customers and without any advance warning) is incomprehensible.

 

[Active8]

would you at least have the courtesy to inform us about this now, instead of us having to find out about this in two months from now? We will need to go over all our shared and customer servers and decide for each of them if we can keep the legacy license, upgrade the license or migrate to another control panel.

Yeah it weird that DA still don't have made any announcements , people are running in circles right now.
DA staff please stop referring about the old codebase announcements , that one has nothing to do with this problem.

Specially providers who are reselling (datacenter license) really want to know what is coming next.
I have spoken Transip (large provider here in NL) about the legacy licenses they even didt knew it! they assumed that the core components still will be maintained by legacy DA control panel

I have point them to this thread and now they are going to contact DA because of this last minute decisions of DA

 

[beansbaxter]

This topic deserves a dedicated discussion thread, to not get lost inside this DA RC update thread:

What is the future for Legacy DirectAdmin License holders?

@exlhost please make sure you are using non-legacy DirectAdmin license. MariaDB 10.11 will not be supported for legacy DA products. I've been thinking about this entire situation, and I'm super bummed out about how things are appearing to play out... From a business perspective, I can be...

forum.directadmin.com

I hope DA will work with legacy holders to find a proper compromise.

 

[Richard G]

Yeah it weird that DA still don't have made any announcements , people are running in circles right now.

There will be an announcement for sure. As far as I understand, at this moment several idea's and options are thought of. It's really not an easy decision on which way to go, and they are trying to find out the best way to go for both the customers and the company.

It's taking longer because:
a.) It's a really hard decision out of several options and they want to keep customers as happy as possible while also keeping the company alive (so get enough resources), there is more to it then I also thought.
b.) They know that once they make a decision and post it, it has to be a very good and clear statement, so there will not be any unexpected things anymore like happened now.
c.) Since the datacenters have most legacy licences, that makes things a bit more complicated. But it's good some contact them now.

Feel free to add any idea's to them directly.

I hope DA will work with legacy holders to find a proper compromise.

As suggested before, send in a ticket or mail with your idea's, I did too. They are listening to idea's and investigating if they possible options they can choose from. If you have a good idea, don't wait telling them.

This topic deserves a dedicated discussion thread, to not get lost inside this DA RC update thread:

I second that thought.

 

[Jayjayuk]

For me personally. I think all licenses should be bought up to the same 'codebase' or whatever they want to call it. so it includes all the PHP versions and standard MYSQL, MariaDB.... Custombuild.

Then if you want support and the extra features you need to pay for the retail licenses. So for example, the Limiting of websites, Wordpress manager, the more advanced backup system that is in the pipe line. Admin SSL manager. (pro pack)

So you have 2 options for webhosts; DA Standard or DA Pro

DA Standard can be the host licenses or the existing owned ones with the option to upgrade to pro pack at the discounted rate, meaning that hosts can give the option for the upgrade.

DA Pro - Get the pro pack, retail license with support.

 

[Richard G]

There is no Pro Pack anymore, there is legacy codebase and modern codebase (so with former pro pack included).
Changing everything to 1 codebase is one of the idea's which is thought of too.

There is already an option in place to upgrade legacy lifetime to modern license via the conversion option.

 

[wila]

It's a breach of trust.

So even if we buy the upgrade who is guaranteeing us that they will not play a similar shenanigan again?
This not bode well for trusting a solid future.

And all of that's on top of the current unstable upgrade scheme's we are already facing. It was a SUPER stable product and nowadays I do not dare upgrading anymore as that there is ALWAYS something that falls over.

 

[dwight_d]

It's a breach of trust.

So even if we buy the upgrade who is guaranteeing us that they will not play a similar shenanigan again?
This not bode well for trusting a solid future.

And all of that's on top of the current unstable upgrade scheme's we are already facing. It was a SUPER stable product and nowadays I do not dare upgrading anymore as that there is ALWAYS something that falls over.

I agree. I think a lot of the concern here is surrounding their artificial limitation of core software. Most were okay with the legacy codebase announcement; however, I don’t think anyone really anticipated it affecting things like MariaDB.

Did it really take a lot of development effort to support MariaDB 10.11, or was it just a version bump in CustomBuild? If the latter, than I don’t know if I agree with this decision. I echo the thoughts of everyone here when I say that third party software should remain unaffected by your legacy codebase depreciation plan (unless it takes a significant amount of development time to support within the panel).

 

[apogee]

anyway, we canceled the migration, we thought DA was more honest, but no they are not, wouldn't be surprised if they sell to webpros soon.

 

[apogee]

shame on you, i have once again lost faith in humanity, yes, it's only bussines, but shame on you all the same!

 

[wila]

Well I can live with having to pay some money to keep the legacy "lifetime" licenses supported. Nobody can work "for free" and I think many will understand that lifetime licenses must have a limit somewhere.
But this is not the way to communicate that.... the main issue I see here is how it is communicated (well it's not communicated...)

 

[dinhphucv]

Well I can live with having to pay some money to keep the legacy "lifetime" licenses supported. Nobody can work "for free" and I think many will understand that lifetime licenses must have a limit somewhere.
But this is not the way to communicate that.... the main issue I see here is how it is communicated (well it's not communicated...)

People agree to pay a reduced monthly fee to keep their license up to date but no response from DA. Litespeed does have lifetime license with reduced yearly fee compared to monthly subscription.

 

[woktron]

However, take in account that a lot of new features were added too. The more things present, the more things can go wrong.

Feature creep! Not necessarily a good thing if these features cause instability and you don't have too much interest in those features to begin with.

We initially opted for DA primarily because it was light on resources, stable, fast and was fully separated from the core OS. These properties have all eroded or are non-existant at this point.

But I never disturb them little things.

Neither do I, I probably opened a ticket only a handful of times in more than a decade and these instances were mostly of an administrative nature. The fact that we now have different lead developers is not necessarily a plus either in my view, because with this change, DA have shifted direction quite drastically, and as much as it pains me to say - certainly not always for the better.

but there are all kinds of hooks and things to think of so at some point some decision will be made

I really don't see them backtrack from their decision, but I do hope I'm wrong.

All of this is ofcourse more of a wider, systemic issue. Sure, you need money to continue development of software. But at the same time developers in general have become an entitled bunch, demanding an ever growing piece of the pie. Disproportionally so, in my view.

For me personally. I think all licenses should be bought up to the same 'codebase' or whatever they want to call it. so it includes all the PHP versions and standard MYSQL, MariaDB.... Custombuild.

Then if you want support and the extra features you need to pay for the retail licenses. So for example, the Limiting of websites, Wordpress manager, the more advanced backup system that is in the pipe line. Admin SSL manager. (pro pack)

Whether it is called pro-pack or not, this is the right way to go about this!

I also have to echo that communication and transparency is everything and this was and still is lacking with DA. You would only find out about this particular issue if you read the forum. If you don't then you are in the dark and that is just not acceptable and I do hope that this is not intentional.

DA should send out mailings with a clear roadmap for the next few years. To be abundantly clear, we prefer working with companies who do have their house in order in this regard. Trust is key!

 

[Richard G]

support costs $90 per year

I thought cP was over 100 dollar a year? More like 140 dollar? But still... so you pay for cP but expect DA to be free forever or what?
What did you say when cP decided this? Also posts about cP screwing you over? One just can't expect to have a lifetime for free forever.

Ofcourse this kind of change should have been much better communitated, this was unexpected, but your comment isn't quite fair either imho.

I also have to echo that communication and transparency is everything and this was and still is lacking with DA.

Fully agree to that one.

 

[wila]

Just checked a server of a customer of mine.
They are on a Personal license, valid until 06/24/2024
The license reads "Legacy license", so they are in this too?

I won't be able to explain that to them. Guess I'll end up moving them off DirectAdmin as they don't really need it anyways.

 

[dinhphucv]

Just checked a server of a customer of mine.
They are on a Personal license, valid until 06/24/2024
The license reads "Legacy license", so they are in this too?

I won't be able to explain that to them. Guess I'll end up moving them off DirectAdmin as they don't really need it anyways.

Personal license with 10 domains is what most regular people need. Forcing people to move up to personal plus with 20 domains?. Personal license still have a yearly fee, moving to an upper license will increase the cost from 24 a year to 60$ a year... ?

 

[Richard G]

Personal license with 10 domains is what most regular people need.

No it's not. It's probably what you guys want to sell. Personal license always has ment to be personal, not intended to re-sell to customers to start with.
Most people use a hosting account. This is for the happy few who know how to manage a VPS or something or have a small company themselves.
And then wow 60 dollar a year.... oh wat a lot of money that is, pffffff.... compare it to the similar license of the competition. Still have a great deal.

@wila yes you're in this too. Prepare them they can update until 2026 and then prices will go up. You can do that.
Good luck moving them off from DA, because Plesk is twice expensive and cPanel is 3 times as expesive as the personal plus license.
As for the end date in 2024, as long as it's paid for, you can use it (was stated), so they acn prolongate to 2025 and 2026 if wanted. Or convert to the personal plus if they really require MariaDB 10.11 for some reason (most don't need it).

 

[wila]

@wila yes you're in this too. Prepare them they can update until 2026 and then prices will go up. You can do that.
Good luck moving them off from DA, because Plesk is twice expensive and cPanel is 3 times as expesive as the personal plus license.
As for the end date in 2024, as long as it's paid for, you can use it (was stated), so they acn prolongate to 2025 and 2026 if wanted. Or convert to the personal plus if they really require MariaDB 10.11 for some reason (most don't need it).

Not me.. it's their server.
I just recommended to them to use DirectAdmin for easier management. They can use it, but it has been artificially limited.
I never complained about the money. They would happily pony up more, but not if you change the terms one sided on existing contracts.
It might not be how DirectAdmin sees this, but it certainly is how my customer will see it (and so do I).

They don't really need a management panel for the few websites they have.
No need to be condescending and putting words in my mouth that I never said.
For myself I have some lifetime licenses, it's a different story.

These shenanigans make me reconsider on recommending DirectAdmin..
Actually it makes me reconsider this whole hosting business as it isn't an important part of my company anyways.
Getting tired of this BS.