I would like to take this moment to ask that you institute an “upgrade” or “trade in” process for commercial modules that offers a discount to users who are looking to step up to purchasing more modules. This is something I’ve ran into and asked your support. It can be very upsetting to purchase System Builder Plus to realize you really should have just went all out on Call Center Builder because you need VQ Plus and/or QXact Reports. Perhaps that realization comes a month in, maybe it comes 2 years in. I know a lot of people that use FreePBX don’t do telephony all day, every day. It is very easy to make a mistake that basically makes your $525 purchase useless and requires you to spend $1275 all over again (or in the case I gave $475+$795, at which point you might as well just by the $1275 call center bundle).
Now onto this news. When I saw the blog post on this it was before the email or this forum post. I checked all over other forums as well looking to see if anyone was discussing it. It seems like now there is some discussing so I can bring up some of my concerns.
Major Security Vulnerabilities. If plans haven’t been made to allow patching of major security issues that might arise in commercial modules without requiring someone to purchase renewals, I STRONGLY recommend you reconsider.
EPM. How is this going to work with EPM? Firmware updates won’t get pushed to me anymore after the first year? New phones won’t show anymore after the year? For me, I use the same phones for a LONG time, they really don’t change often and there are only a handful of popular brands and models anyway. But firmware is something I constantly update because it is a simple way to make sure new features and bug fixes get pushed to phones. Yealink is what I use. Some of Yealinks firmware updates even address issues the phones have with FreePBX and other commercial modules. If this stops I’ll have to consider looking for a way to upload firmware to EPM on my own (is that even possible?).
System Admin Pro. So after the first year, does the ability to upgrade FreePBX through the GUI stop? I’ve had a handful of issues with it to begin with (updates saying they complete but nothing actually happens or updates not showing up in the GUI and having to do them manually anyway).
As someone else mentioned, bugs. I really hope that the “year” isn’t some hardcoded thing because if you guys release a module update that breaks something or introduces a substantial bug, people are going to get very upset that something they paid for doesn’t work. People are much more forgiving of these issues when you can submit a bug report and know that more then likely someone will fix it and it will get pushed to you through a module update. When that stops being the case people are going to be much less forgiving of issues that prevent the module from doing what it is supposed to do. Also realize that this will surely cause a decrease in the number of users running the most “recent” modules, which means less testers and less bug reports, but not necessarily less bugs.
I’ll stop here as I have work to get to. But I sure hope this doesn’t negatively effect my deployments.
Firmware is not included with EPM when you download it. Firmware is downloaded on the fly when you select it. Therefore you will always have access to Firmware from EPM even if your renewal is expired. This concept only applies to Firmware(s)
We have mechanisms capable of addressing security issues if a major vulnerability in a commerical module surfaces that we feel needs to get out to everyone.
Andrew addressed EPM above.
Sysadmin Pro is the same a Sysadmin with some advanced features enabled if you get the pro version. Sysadmin is also the module that is required to interoperate with the licensing system as well as other fundamental capabilities it provides to both commercial modules and some Open Source modules such as firewall. As such, in its current state there is no renewal needed for it and you will continue to be able to get updates for it since everything else depends on it.
On your point 4, if you are referring to outside bugs that break an exisitng commercial module, as already addressed, such bugs are almost always a bug in the source outside of the commecial module and as such are fixed there, not in the commercial module. If you’re referring to releasing a new commecial module version that introduces a bug, that is always possible, software has bugs, in all industries. We try hard to test and avoid them but they do occur. As I’ve indicated elsewhere, this is not a “change” as the license has always only included 1 year of updates, consistent with lots of software. In many cases with other licenses, you can’t even get support after a few months. We tie both the renewals and support access to the renewal license so we don’t create that restriction.
You are right that there will be some impact on people not downloading the new modules. Given our stats and the general industry trend, we don’t anticpate this changing substantially. There are many people who don’t run the latest simply because “if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it” mentalities or they are just too busy and the PBX is sitting in a closet. This isn’t going to change anything for that contingent. There are also many people who do upgrade whether to keep current, get new features, etc. And what’s common to everyone is an expectation of strong commercial / mission critical support of the commerical module base and the FreePBX Open Source base that it runs on. This ensures that we can deliver on that and it’s why it’s always been part of the licensing.
It sounds like sys admin Pro will be an exception since it is so tightly coupled to the core freepbx distro.
I leave it to the devs to say where most bugs exist. I know I’ve had a fee bugs, but I don’t dive into the code fixing it to know where they originated… EPM Examples; dual patterns stopped working, firmware slot selection stopped working, editing the basefile wouldn’t save changes, I’m having an issue currently with not being able to save changes to an extension ucp custom settings from EMP just get errors in the gui (they don’t pick up the default template option but instead are using ucp custom settings but those are blank for some reason), and a few in forgetting. EPM is excellent so don’t take my comment the wrong way, but some of those bugs would make it near impossible to use if not addressed. System admin just doesn’t always work for updates. Nothing would get the latest -6 upgrade to take +even though the GUI said it did) and I ended up on the CLI instead.
I’m just thinking of the user who submits a ticket because something is broken in a commercial module. It takes 3+ months to address the problem created by that update. Meanwhile the user runs ocer the license period since they only had 2 months. Tgey don’t get the fix. That’s unfortunate IMO.
I doubt we will ever see an upgrade/trade up system. Unfortunate. Someone who spend ~$600 in a bundle and after a month they realize they need call center (didn’t realize they couldn’t make a queue work now they wanted) isn’t trying to game the system, just looking to reasonably compensate you without double paying.
Bug response time is completely dependent on how quickly it gets reported, the severity of the bug and other factors. We triage ALL bugs weekly, and in between that time we monitor everything. There are bugs that get fixed in hours, others much longer. It’s a matter of resources, bug priorties, availability of temporary work arounds, etc. No different then any software.
I forgot to comment on your inquiry in your earlier comment on bundle upgrade programs. We have not had any such programs in the past though we’ve had some pretty incredible sales at time. (Think Cyber Monday, it’s coming up VERY soon!) That does not mean we would never do such programs. We are constantly evolving our capabilities and always listening to our customers and resellers. I can say that today we don’t have the technology built into the portal to create such an “upgrade bundle”, and doing an upgrade would require us to enhance the system to do such as it wouldn’t otherwise scale. That doesn’t mean we will never do it, but it means we can’t just decide to do it today even if we thought your idea was a great idea since we have to have a way to implement it first.
Could you verify that the support licensing is required to be for consecutive years? If I am reading this correctly in your example if we move the date out 3.5 years a person would have to purchase years of support for every year the module was not under support to get to the current version therefor having to purchase 4 years of support for the module to get the current version. Is that accurate? If so I am not seeing that reflected in the ToS unless I am not reading it correctly. At that point for some modules it almost makes more sense to repurchase the module in question depending on the cost of the module vs the cost of support.
You always have that option, though for modules over $100 it would take several years for that to be cheaper and for modules under $100 it would take over 3 years.
The modules come with a year of updates and support from the purchase date. After that, renewal contracts start from the date of expiration, so the information is correct.
I’ve paid through the FreePBX GUI for three years of renewals for the two modules that were showing Renew icons in Module Admin. Should have read the email more closely regarding the discount through the portal! The payment seems to have gone through as the Portal now shows that I have support on those modules until 2018.
The only issue is that module Admin still shows a Renew icon. If I Check for Updates then open the details for those modules in Module Admin and then click on Renewals I see the following:
This Modules Free Upgrade period is ending.
Your licence for Free upgrades to this module will expire on 2015-11-16 00:00:00 UTC.
This module will keep functioning, but you may miss out on new features if you do not renew your subscription.
By keeping your subscription active, and renewing before your update period expires, you are eligible for significant discounts.
If you have selected ‘Auto-Renew’, your subscription will automatically be renewed 30 days before it expires.
Any suggestions on how to get it to show the correct date would be appreciated before they stop updating.
I can’t see anything in the System Admin module that would tell me about the renewal status of these modules either.
There can, sometimes, be a delay of up to 24 hours before the mirror CDN is updated. I kicked off an update job, just to make sure. Can you confirm that you’re not seeing that warning any more?
Thanks. Looks like that fixed it. I paid on November 5 so it definitely wasn’t a 24 hour wait issue. Renew icon and tab gone from the modules. Sysadmin is now showing the new dates as well.
One more issue though. Sysadmin is still showing that updates expire on 16 November. My copy of UCP for EPM is also showing an expiry date of 1 Dec 2015. Neither of these modules are available for renewal in either Module Admin or the Portal.
Has the option of renewing from the module interface been disabled? I am not seeing that option in module admin on any of the systems I manage anymore, it was there the other day.
You should contact support, but, you won’t see the renew option in module admin if your modules are not due for renewal. Check in Sysadmin Admin → Activation to see when they will expire.
I spoke with Chris about it and he was able to help, I did not realize that you have to select Check Online before renew becomes availible. I believe my confusion came from Buy being an option without having to select Check Online first. I think it would make more sense for the system to show renwable modules without having to chack online first. It should be fairly simple as the system already stores the dates in System Admin. On an OT note it would also make the module easier to use if Rollback was in the Action menu rather than the side menu under “Previous”.
I have opened an Issue recommending these changes (FREEPBX-10930).
Thanks for the help and I apologize for wasting anyone’s time with this!
