I have expected better from you then being so "kort door de bocht". I also expected you to be able to read a bit better what I wrote, and not putting words in my mouth which I didn't say.
Last short explanation for people still not seeing the light:
- Doing the math yourself -> Calculate on thousends of licenses and few people paying the personel, how long this development (which is indeed still made for the paying few) can be sustained. Think business like, not emotional
- Lack of insight -> If one things you can keep that up when a business is loosing money on it, then one has no business insight and live in an illusion.
- As for the skin I said it's not only the skin but the complete rebuilding from DA which is not only the skin but integrating almost everything into DA so including scripts and such. So I didn't spoke only about the skin, so don't do as if I did. I also wrote in bold to make it more clear.
- Payed monthly. -> We al make assumptions about that, but are there enough payments to make a profit still? Related to do the math.
Unanswered questions for the 3rd time!
1.) How long do you people think lifetime lasts in software land? Give examples of other company's where that's the same. Because I already gave several examples of lifetime licenses being just declared EOL, which not even happened here.
2.) Respond to my argument related to that business insight which I wrote generally in post #46:
In other words, do DA have to keep up their honors and promises if that would mean they would be going this way? Also an assumption but nobody seems to think of this realistic aspect, combined with doing the math.
Now answer these and proove you complainers do have realistic commercial business insight then instead of only emotional.
P.s. You guys do know there was a change and DA is not only owned by 2 guys who started it, right (more wager to pay)? And due to the grow with cPanel users, people like smtalk also does not work for free anymore and another great one died unfortunately. Most new users don't know but sysdev knows them.
I do math for myself, not for DA as I have no clue about what they earn, what they want to earn, and what future profits will be. That's not my business anyway. But I just say what I think and that was about honoring agreements. And I think they actually do that in some way (except the mariadb updates) by keeping the versions working. I'm not happy if that would be limited to OS also, though, but that's more a matter of principle and wouldn't affect my business or my loyalty to this panel.
Lifetime in software is as long as the software says it's supported. A B2B agreement can have any and even stupid clausus like actually 'lifetime of your chicken' as long as both agree to it. I'm sorry for them for not adding ' for this mayor version' to the 'lifetime'.
But I also think it's tricky to rename a product I already bought to a legacy version and change things as that is not what I bought. It feels like my garage saying "you don't make me enough money and so from now on I'll call your 'bmw 520 from 2026' a 'bmw 320 from 2003' and we're not upgrading the navigation because you have an old model while slamming an "OLD CAR" sticker on it.".
I've been in business for over 4 decades and have made enough mistakes that I would gladly make again if it in the end would help my business survive or start. Even offering lifetime licences or free domains while having no clue how much a domainname will cost in 20 years or my company would live more than a year.
I'm also very glad I changed that quickly enough. But hey, that's not really helping now, I know.
But how about extensive marketing regarding the new DA subscriptions? With a roadmap? Selling business support contracts? I'd rather pay 200 per year for an active support being a business than 15-30 for a forced monthly subscription. How much of all those legacies would have taken even an 50/100$ per year 'business' version if they were offered? Simply because they are a small business now? That's how you can generated a huge cash flow of your existing customers. Just sell them extra things. Extra functionality at an extra price? A real cluster version or HA setup? Businesses pay thousands for that if it's a one time fee with barely 2 year support. And a few years later after support ended they evaluate your new version and pay it again.
And just at the cost of a declining number of downloads from a server with a legacy version which is mostly licensed functionality based and still works fine for everyone who doesn't care about the super latest mariadb version.
Skins.... I have no clue how or why they choose this way. But... if you test good you find more bugs. If you develop a lot... you end up with more bugs. I'm actually not sure if I'm really happy with this release rate. Once a month an update (excl security patches) is way enough for me.
Also, I have nothing to prove to anyone besides my own actions. I already vented my understanding about DA's choice in earlier topics and even supported it knowing it's less nice for my wallet. But I also respond how I feel about the matter and what I would have done. I can do that without saying DA is doing something wrong. I think they have thought about it enough, but I still feel free to criticize anything I don't know enough real facts about, not something based on assuming I know DA's real business position. Do you?
I kinda also (ignoring the popcorn incident conveniently) "try" not to attack people's opinion or view about a matter. Most of us are not stupid. We have done the math, just our own math. Some are mad because their zero income websites suddenly cost 5 buck a month, some are mad because 500+ euro a month deserves more ... insight.
No forum empathy, no loyalty, no history, but trust in the next year because... well... things go fast nowadays.
Being able to support a controlpanel for 20 years on one-time licenses also shows some kind of strength and commitment that feels less so with this only short-period subscription plan and 'changes'. If you're going to make me pay for it, tell me your view for this/next year, because I'm an active 'investor' now and DA getting into trouble is ME getting into trouble or at leased annoyed beyond measurement if I have to install 100 controlpanels.
Am I so wrong?
This is way longer than intended but ironically also shows another 30 minutes investment
