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?
I started from the bottom answering, but no you're no wrong with stating 20 years on a on-time license is showing some kind of strenght, but you also should now this is not sustainable, ofcourse depending on the income.
As for the "investor" part, you're also not wrong, but I don't understand what you expect from that. Almost all company's, same with concurrent panels, are using monthly payments these days and no long term licenses anymore. I don't see the other company's giving a view for this or next year either.
I kinda also (ignoring the popcorn incident conveniently) "try" not to attack people's opinion or view about a matter.
Depends on what you call attacking. I attack if people start using terms as stealing and that kind of slander. And for the rest I try to just discuss and convince people from other arguments, which most of these popcorn complainers don't even look at.
What also is very remarkable, is that if we got some like that again, it's almost always people with internal licenses, either not understanding the rules (bought from data center and thinking they have rights) or even people who were selling some servers or vps and got the licenses very way cheaper than we external license holders, sometimes even for free, and have earned their money back 20 times.
Which is now also the case as you could see the "500 dollar or so" mentioned, so he has no clue as to what an external license costed.
I also agree bout the honoring, but still don't see your answer about how to honor if it's going to loose you money.
That's why I think that one can have an opinion that a company should honor their promises, but not factually can "blaim them that they don't because I do to" or "apple does too" or whatever.
I have 0 issues with people having an opinion they don't like the situation and that it feels wrong, I feel the same, don't like it either. But I try to look as to the why this is happening, related to the experiencs with DA and services in the past. Which prooves they are not trying to steal from us. That's something else than critisizing, which I don't have problems with.
Same with what you're saying about the fastly releases and often more bugs which this causes, agree with that too, but that has nothing to do with the licensing system.
What you said about options, I agree to that too. Why not giving lifetime license holders the option to pay a certain amount of money for yearly support which they can pay.
Although the conversion option is fairly the same, you get your license working on half price, but monthly payments. I don't know why they are doing it, but nothing is done without thought and it's not for stealing otherwise montly prices would have risen also for a long time, because that can easily be done compared to multiple price raises of the competition.
Lifetime in software is as long as the software says it's supported.
Software doesn't talk, so it can't say how long it's supported. The developer can, so as long as the developer says it's supported, then yes I agree.
However I point again to cPanel, WHMCS, vBulletin which either declared their lifetime licenses EOL or just don't support them anymore. It's not uncommon what is happening here.
but trust in the next year because... well... things go fast nowadays.
Well.... tell me how you see trust in other company's which also using monthly payments, like almost every company in software land these days. We're already 2 or 3 years further than legacy declaration, and it's still working and updated so I don't really mean what you want as proof or what you expect with this.
and we're not upgrading the navigation because you have an old model while slamming an "OLD CAR" sticker on it.".
Well.... in fact this is exactly what is happening. I know about Audi and Mercedes cars, which still are produced which look a bit different exterior but still are Audi A8 for example and the navigation is indeed not updated anymore after 6 or 8 years.
But I know what you mean, I felt the same, but that is emotion. I still don't like it, but gave it a rest as I know DA is not out to get us and they also did not declare lifetime EOL or just static which they could also have done. And then all versions did not get updates anymore and just that version of that time woudl work.
But they choose to still give us new versions, new updates, just now cutting out on MariaDB and new OS. I dislike that heavily too, but I'm glad they did not choose the other option earlier on to just do what WHMCS or vBulletin did or cPanel did.
What I still don't understand (which I agree with you) is why they only keep using discounts for like datacenters or people buying a lot more licenses, but not also offer upgrade support for example yearly for lifetime licenses which -could- generate income.
But let's say they would use the pricing of conversion, so half price of monthly, which would mean 180/year. How many woudl pay that? That's also realisticly looking at it.
And seen in the other thread the complaints and fuzz when somebody suggested 5/month, then the world was too small. So I don't think that would generate enough money. However on the other hand, one should try it before just shooting the idea off imho.
Nothing wrong with critisizing, in a fair way, not by blaiming, slandering and calling it stealing what others did.
I'm also very glad I changed that quickly enough. But hey, that's not really helping now, I know.
It does, because it says you with 40 years of experience also made mistakes. And DA made them too for sure, especially by selling way to many lifetime licenses in the past and waited way to long with stopping that method. With 2 enthousiastic guys which thought they could keep this up with programming and some help from people like smtalk for example.
So to answer your question:
I don't know enough real facts about, not something based on assuming I know DA's real business position. Do you?
No I don't, but as you I do know the past of DA and how they treated us, gave service, not raising prices for monthly subscribtions, which all prooves to me that they are not out to get us, but somewhere a mistake is made and they need to do it for whatever reason.
Are incoming going lower? I don't know. Is it because not it's not 2 people but also company's like the one from SMtalk who co-owns now and developer like fln needs to be payed wagers? I don't know.
Only thing I do know is that they are not out to get us and never were. For some reason that triggers me and no matter if it's a friend or a company then I start defending, I'm just that kind of guy, just like I critisize if I don't like things. Like in the first discussion topic where I used another (but more emotional than business like) position.
Glad to see your arguments and not laying words in my mouth now. And as you can see, I even agree with you on most points or maybe even all points.
