Who can be hosted on Frontier and Manila

[Eveline Frei]

At 00:01 +0000 2005.06.16, webmaster at userland.com wrote:
>  <snip>
>  Our goal is to better understand the composition of our customer 
> base and how they are using the product.

Accepted but this could be done in a different way like eg. asking...

>  Companies in the Manila hosting business have a different set of 
> priorities (performance, support costs, multi-site admin 
> functionality, stats etc.) then say a school or business with 
> several hundred blogs looking for an easy to implement low-cost 
> tool. Yes, there are overlaps, but it can have an impact everything 
> from how you structure the company to feature / functionality 
> decisions at the product level.

Ahhh...yes...but I fail to see why a problem like this which, btw. is 
one every software developer has to deal with, needs a change in the 
license.

>  When we took over the company there was not much data on the 
> customer base, so we have tried to balance both sets of needs.

Again, other vendors solve this problem of lacking data by asking 
thwir customers in what area they work and in what area they will use 
their product and not by changing the license. Quite often, ypu will 
have to re-register and fill in your data yet again when you upgrade 
a product but it does not (and in my opinion should not) influence 
the type of license.

>  I think you will see that in Manila 9.5. In addition, we felt there 
> was a need to protect UserLand from a ReallyBigCo buying a bunch of 
> licenses and giving away thousands of sites for free. A 
> VAR/Reseller agreement is a simple way to manage that possibility.

So...what..pls tell...is wrong with BigCo buying a bunch of licenses 
and giving away thousands of sites for free? After all, they did pay 
for the software and they did buy a bunch of licenses...so...what 
they do with it is their problem not Userlands...

When I buy Filemaker Server Extended, It is up to me how I use the 
copies I bought. I may use them as a in house CMS but I may also use 
them to host a bunch of databases, some of them used as CMS some of 
them just online databases... but the point is: _It is up to me_ and 
Filemaker Inc. does _not_ make me come by and talk to them and ask 
for their permission and work something out with them.

I deliberately used Filemaker because Filemaker Inc., to my 
knowledge, has never been accused of being the most customer friendly 
company around. There are other examples around.

Stephen B. Waters wrote:
>  Userland is either in the software business or in the hosting 
> business. Which is it?

Did this question ever get a response?

One additional point to this: I have not seen an announcement 
anywhere that the licencing was changed to be more restrictive. 
IANAL, but in my limited knowledge, I have come to believe (and I 
have to keep to those rules myself) that a change like that would 
have to be announced for some date in the future and could not just 
be slipped in like it seems it was in this case. So, as far as we are 
concerned here in Europe, I am not even certain that this change is 
legal.

And one more point that all too often is overlooked...loyalty...I 
know a weird word to use in this context. I am not counting how many 
thousands of dollars Userland has received from us for the privilege 
of being allowed to use a bug ridden program and to be showered in 
abuse when we dared to report these bugs and to try and insist on 
having them fixed. I am saying "us" but there are many Userland 
customers around with the same and/or similar experience who spent 
more money and time than we did and got the same or even worse 
responses.
Ok, since the new mangement the abuse has stopped.
I did blink when my loyalty was honored by the new management by 
raising the price without me getting anything in return. But now, 
finally, after one year, we have a new Manila release so something 
has been happening. But again, instead of just letting people have 
something from Userland for a change without any trapdoors or hidden 
strings attached, no, with the new Manila release, we are given a new 
license that restricts our rights to use the software.
Is this really the way to treat customers who stuck with Userland for 
all these years?
And please, don't tell me, it is no problem, etc. to work something 
out with Userland. Fact is that before, we were allowed to use 
Frontier/Manila any way we wished and now, we are not anymore. In my 
book that reads as restriction.

cheers
eve