What is the future for Legacy DirectAdmin License holders?

[beansbaxter]

Does it have to be RHEL? I'm pretty happy @ debian.

The intention of my post was less about making it OS-specific, and more about OS-cycles...

Lifetime Licenses continue to receive updates for the full support period of a the assigned OS cycle.

And then pay a one time fee, per license, for every OS cycle upgrade.

 

[skym4n]

I didn't charge my server or vps customers for DA. It was a value added service to attract customers. I sell cheap VPSs. The monthly license now is more than the VPS itself.

Since I held up my end of the agreement I expect DA to do the same.

These rapid changes can lead some businesses to bankruptcy.

Unfortunately, when we depend on other companies or people we are susceptible to this problem.

This is why I believe that everyone who has a business always needs to have a plan B.

For those who sell VPS and find the value of directadmin impractical, the ideal is to use Cyberpanel, the ones I have tested so far have been the best.

I only have an external lifetime license, so my loss is not very big.

 

[floyd]

This is why I believe that everyone who has a business always needs to have a plan B.

Of course. But when you think of all the other organizations we depend on its hard to have a plan B for everything. But I ain't going bankrupt either.

 

[d.dobrev]

The intention of my post was less about making it OS-specific, and more about OS-cycles...

Lifetime Licenses continue to receive updates for the full support period of a the assigned OS cycle.

And then pay a one time fee, per license, for every OS cycle upgrade.

You can bet their greed won't be satisfied. And let's be fair - that's exactly what this (their push to force us into monthly payments) is

 

[floyd]

I understand there may be a lot of license abuse. But DA doing what is doing now is not going to make those people suddenly start paying for a license. That money is still not going to come in. The abusers don't even hurt DA because that money would not have come in anyway and it doesn't actually cost DA anything. When an abuse happens no money comes out of their bank account. Its just hurting us, the ones who didn't abuse a license.

 

[Richard G]

The abusers don't even hurt DA because that money would not have come in anyway

Well for that part you are wrong. There should have been a wave of revenue due to the cPanel flow of customers coming over when CP raised the prices so enormously.
Seems (if I understand correctly from DA), that this did in fact not happen. They paid for cPanel, so they would also have been paying for DA. Since this is not happening, the lack of income must be due to the fact that at least a big part of them is or has been buying 2nd hand lifetime licenses. So in these cases money would have been coming in, and we wouldn't have that MariaDB issue now.

For the rest I agree with you. Often with software, new users who start using illegal software, don't pay for it either way. But this is a bit of a different case as there was already payment for CP.
Again, if I understood everything correctly.

 

[floyd]

Well for that part you are wrong. There should have been a wave of revenue due to the cPanel flow of customers coming over when CP raised the prices so enormously.

You might think so but what if they simply chose another panel? Maybe they didn't come over to DA.

Seems (if I understand correctly from DA), that this did in fact not happen. They paid for cPanel, so they would also have been paying for DA. Since this is not happening, the lack of income must be due to the fact that at least a big part of them is or has been buying 2nd hand lifetime licenses. So in these cases money would have been coming in, and we wouldn't have that MariaDB issue now.

Well then since JBMC has tightened up the security of the licenses then the money must be flowing in now with legitimate purchases. We should see the MariaDB problem go away soon.

 

[Richard G]

Maybe they didn't come over to DA.

Really? Have you been away for some years maybe? Because you clearly missed the load of ex cp users coming over here that time.

the money must be flowing in now with legitimate purchases.

Wishfull thinking. Why do you think the tighening up of security would suddenly raise the level of money?
And which tightening of which security?

 

[floyd]

Wishfull thinking. Why do you think the tighening up of security would suddenly raise the level of money?
And which tightening of which security?

If the point of updating the license arrangement is to stop abuse then those abusers will have to start paying now. My argument is that those abusers are not going to pay. You say I am wrong. You said that previously they were paying for Cpanel so now they will pay for DA. If that is true then the money should be coming in now that the abusers have to pay.

Maybe we are talking about different things and our points have gotten lost.

 

[Richard G]

If that is true then the money should be coming in now that the abusers have to pay.

That would be correct, but then you have to catch them first. The problem is that this is not so easy. And for that reason I don't think money is flowing in at the moment.

So we're talking about the same, only we differ in opinion about the thought about how many of them are found/catched. Which is why I think money is not flowing in a lot. Otherwise indeed the MariaDB decision might be retought again.
Personally I think cutting back on MariaDB won't result in more revenue either.

 

[floyd]

That would be correct, but then you have to catch them first. The problem is that this is not so easy. And for that reason I don't think money is flowing in at the moment.

So the new license system didn't stop the abuse? Then changing the license system was a waste of time. I thought that was the whole point. It certainly complicated my life.

Actually it is pretty easy to stop the abusers. They know who the legitimate users are because they are the ones that made payments. Everyone else is not legit.

When you stop a thief he doesn't all of a sudden start paying. He moves on to the next thing he can steal or starts using something free. That is why the money is not coming in.

 

[Richard G]

So the new license system didn't stop the abuse? Then changing the license system was a waste of time. I thought that was the whole point.

No and no and no.
No, it didn't stop the abuse, because you still have to proof abuse, wich is hard as you can see. But a few most likely are catched but way not enough.
No, it wasn't a waste of time, because we got rid of the license ip changes, making installation a lot easier because we didn't need to make these changes anymore.
No it was not the whole point. The point was the combination of trying to stop abuse and also make installs easier so no ip changes were required anymore.

People can also still keep the 1.643 running with old software, maybe the abusers do to, i don't know.

When you stop a thief he doesn't all of a sudden start paying.

A thief yes. But this is no good comparison. A thief would also have been using a nulled cPanel (if exists).
So these are more a grey area.

We already agreed that normally (so thief) they won't pay either way indeed. But here are a lot who already paid a lot before, so they were not thiefs to begin with. And the question is only now, did they became thiefs or did they all went to NOC's which already providerd servers with DA licenses on them? Which would be legal again. Hard to say.

Either way, it doesn't matter. DA has asked in this or another thread of idea's to get revenue or other solutions instead of removing MariaDB.
They are still open to idea's. But most do not bring in enough it seems.

 

[floyd]

No, it didn't stop the abuse, because you still have to proof abuse, wich is hard as you can see. But a few most likely are catched but way not enough.

As I have already stated I think its trivial to find the abusers.

No, it wasn't a waste of time, because we got rid of the license ip changes, making installation a lot easier because we didn't need to make these changes anymore.

Actually it made it a lot harder for me and I mean a lot. I had a system to have DA automatically given to a VPS when someone ordered it. I already had all the LIDs and of course the CID. It was very easy for me to automate the system. I had a template with DA preinstalled and when they booted it for the first time it would update DA and assign the license id to it automatically. I didn't need to change IPs because I already had a set of IPs to go with the VPSs that would have DA preinstalled. Now I have to keep track of hash keys which is a lot harder than tracking IPs.

When they changed the license system it completely ruined my system so much so that I don't even offer DA anymore to VPSs. It really pissed me off. You can go back and find my comments on it. I could probably do something like that again but the whole thing really dampened my enthusiasm for using DA. And now with the internal lifetime licenses being obsolete in a little over a year it doesn't make much sense.

I will probably pay for the regular licenses at some point to use on 1 or 2 shared servers but I won't be sharing my enthusiasm about using DA on any other public forum.

 

[floyd]

@Richard G I want you to know I mean no disrespect. You are a great resource and willing to be very helpful. Just because we may disagree on something that doesn't mean I don't respect you. I just wanted you to know that.

 

[Richard G]

You can go back and find my comments on it.

Yes I remember that part. I just didn't remember that it was you. I thought it might just be easier to create such automation as you don't need to automatically fetch ip and license id and that. Only license key.
But rebuilding something like that takes time and I can ofcourse understand that the view of the upcoming work to automated it again dampened your enthousiasm.
I don't know how this is for others. I thought it made life easier, but indeed changes must be made. I do understand that for you this was really someting you were not waiting for.

I want you to know I mean no disrespect.

Thank you, but I didn't felt any disrespect from you in any way.
And I honestly want to say to you and also to others, that I also do not mean disrepect if I have a discussion and we try to convince each other of our arguments about our opinions.
It can always be the case that it ends up with the fact that somebody disagree's with the other party.
So really don't worry. I also respect you too, and you're also often very helpfull. And if we disagree about something, that's all there is. We differ of opinion about something. I still respect you too!
Which is very normal in the world. It's impossible that everybody agrees with everybody.
So as far as I'm concerned, no disrepect in either way even if we might disagree about something.
Just to be sure, if I would get angry at somebody, I would also honestly just state that and add the reason for it.
So don't worry discussing with me, I like to discuss as long as it's done in a decent way and I have never seen you even near indecent.

 

[floyd]

No, it didn't stop the abuse, because you still have to proof abuse, wich is hard as you can see. But a few most likely are catched but way not enough.

It just seems to me that all the recent DA installs have to contact the license server at some point. The license server should know if a install is legit or not. The only way I can see abuse happening now at this point is someone using a very old version of DA (which really I wouldn't worry about) or nulled versions (which you can't do anything about).

I have in the past (years ago) been able to fool a DA install and use the same license on multiple servers. It was just an experiment just to see if it could be done. I may have even reported it. I can't remember. Of course I didn't continue with that.

If it is known how abuse can happen surely they can stop it.

 

[Richard G]

It just seems to me that all the recent DA installs have to contact the license server at some point.

Yes, every version after 1.643 is using the new licening system so indeed DA installs contact the license server regularly. Lot of users still use that too and it's legal to use an old version.
But the license server can not determine if a license is valid or not. Hmmz.. how can I give a good example.

I don't know if this is a good one but I will try. Also I don't want to give out too much info about how system might be tricked, to prevent others from getting idea's here. So it's a bit of a hard one to make this clear and make it better argumental.

Oke suppose you sell me your internal licenses. Now I change the netblock and I start using the licenses.
How can the licensing server determine that I'm having rented a server of you on a different netblock or that I just am abusing the licenses because I should have been able to buy them without servers? Licensing server all doesn't know that. It knows there is an account, which x licenses so x ip's can be used so x amount of license keys can be used.
There is some more trickery to this but I won't go giving better examples or additional options about this one in public.

So as you can see, the licensing system can't determine that I'm using in fact illegal licenses at the moment. There sure are other tricks to find out. But since there are many many many licenses out there, it's an enormous work anyway.

So it's not like using the same license on multiple servers, it's using licenses from company's who stopped or using licenses from company's illegaly selling them or selling part of their licenses.
In fact it's legal to use the same license on 2 servers, but only when moving servers. And for sure you're not the only one testing things. Nothing wrong with testing. But there is a difference between testing and abusing. We don't abuse.

If it was so easy to stop that abuse, they would have done it already. But they are too friendly.
And as you can see from the few complaints here, did you see how hard it is to even get decent verification info that they are indeed valid owners? How they talk and talk and turn around continuously but without giving the information? And even if giving information, it's not the same what DA is asking for?
And then we're just here on the forum with 2 persons until now. This gives me (imho) an impression as to what is going on in the ticket system, because they also open multiple tickets as you could read.

So well.. if you would have a very good idea how to catch those, I think DA would be very interested.

 

[floyd]

I guess then I wonder why even bother with a license system if it doesn't stop people. Just use the honor system. The license system seems to be like a door with a sign that says "Authorized Persons Only" but doesn't actually lock and keep anybody out. What does the license system actually do if not stop the abusers?

 

[Richard G]

What does the license system actually do if not stop the abusers?

I don't know everything either. At least it takes care that some are catched and also that only so many license are in use as are sold. Like other software does.
Otherwise everybody could download a DA setup and start a server without a licensing system.

 

[netswitch]

Either way, it doesn't matter. DA has asked in this or another thread of idea's to get revenue or other solutions instead of removing MariaDB.
They are still open to idea's. But most do not bring in enough it seems.

I don't know of another place for ideas or proposals regarding possible solutions to the LLO issue ( and new pricing scheme globally ), but what is certain is that there is zero feedback on proposals made here.

There was also a call for transparency on this thread but there is absolutely no transparency from DA, there are rumoured confidential deals for huge accounts, there is all this "we are loosing millions to licence abusers" claim but not much details to explain the issue (except a little from smtalk a few pages ago) and in all cases I don't see any interest in proposals made here.
At this point we don't even know if the company is still profitable or if this licence abuse is killing it, we have no communication on how the licence sale is going, what is the market share of DA ?

What I feel is that it is now overpriced and that must hurt sales in some way.
Trying to force LLO to switch to the paid model by dicutable tactics it not what a profitable business would do so this keeps me worried.
But on another side, I claimed here multiple times that I was willing to send them ~5K$ / year if we they accepted a more reasonable pricing for the conversion of all my owned intenal licences, they never bothered reply of even contact me so I guess they don't care and business must be good..
But then why bother hurting their image and legacy customer base with this kick in the ball to LLO which are mostly customer promoting them since the beginning ( 2005 for me). I really don't understand the situation.