Foreword: I hope I didn’t misunderstood the Commercial Module EULA paragraphs 1.5, 3.2 and 3.1.2 (read about them here).
With the above precondition will be nice to have a FreePBX enhancement on the License reporting page of System Admin’s Module in order to show NOT ONLY Global and (if any) Module specific Licenses’ expiration dates BUT ALSO to show, for each purchased and Licensed products, the Module specific annual window (in a form like: module name/purchase date/date start/date end or something similar) during which the Module upgrade is permitted/allowed by Schmooze Com Ltd. (I meant: permitted/allowed…once the unambiguous “Yearly Upgrade Fee” was paid as per Commercial Module EULA references reported above) .
Interesting is to lowering (not removing!) the emphasis on Licenses’ reports which have a due date in a (really!) very far future - 25 years for modules bought with the “Outright purchase” Commercial Module EULA’s option - and start providing a report for Modules about which - due to cited CMEULA - management role has a more day by day (or year by year) impact.
I really don’t care to know that my FreePBX Distro’s Licensing is going to end in 25 years (In 2030 I hope to be there to see…yes…with the eyes of a 60 years old man!): I’m more worried to be acknowledged about things that require a day by day (or, better, year by year) management.
Are there yet (automatic) procedures to warn (Warning e-Mails sent by Schmooze/User Portal Warnings pop-up?) OR to inform (via FreePBX GUI/CLI Commands?) FreePBX Distro administrator about Modules yearly upgrade windows during which those Modules could receive updates?
Thanks for taking the time to read the software agreement, I’ll try to explain what is going on with those sections, and would welcome anyone to read them for more details.
We currently provide email notifications for our annual peace of mind plans as they expire or get close to renewal dates. When needed in the future we will also provide notification mechanisms for commercial modules as well, the CMEULA states commercial modules receive upgrades free for a year, then you must pay a small percentage of the original cost of the module to renew the upgrade ability. This is something that has never been enforced, therefore there has not been a need to spend time writing code or back end mechanisms to monitor and notify of something that we were not enforcing.
Sometime in the future when we roll out paid software updates it will be in a fair manner, to ensure that we can continue to financially support the commercial modules as the base FreePBX capabilities continue to grow with changes in FreePBX, Asterisk, CentOS and the hundreds of other dependencies of building the world’s most prevalent PBX, we need to plan for ways to continually support the ongoing development of applications that end users and resellers of FreePBX depend on to run their businesses. When we do begin to require you to pay for upgrades past the first year, we will provide mechanisms to provide notice likely within the sysadmin license section, and by automated email notifications, like I said earlier we aren’t enforcing the upgrade periods now, so there has been no reason to spend valuable developer time to build any notification mechanism around this.
We do not currently offer month to month or annual licenses, for modules. We have considered doing so for some modules that it would make sense for, like some of the higher cost modules. However some modules such as Endpoint will likely never be month to month, as we could see people setting up their devices then never paying again. It’s one of those things we have to be very careful of rolling out to make sure we are making the right business decision. We will have everything in place on the back end, if we choose to offer modules annually or month to month, however we do have the EULA updated to give us that ability in the future.
Thanks Preston to share with me Schmooze Com Ltd. point of view about that: now the puzzle’s pieces have found their right place in my mind and all is more easy to understand (the lack of such alerting/reporting mechanism into the FreePBX GUI).
I was (I’m) not really worried about the annual fee nor about the “Legalese” behind CMEULA…there aren’t doubts: it’s right to pay developers to develop commercial software and to constantly enhance/fix commercial software they creates (the same should be told about community driven development…). That wasn’t at issue here.
I was more worried about to not see such alerting/reporting mechanism (and the only emphasis on Licenses reports that are going to end in 25 years in the future!) but, without such type of commercial enforcement by Schmooze Com Ltd. (provided for by those Commercial Module EULA’s paragraphs) as you told, that alerting/reporting mechanism itself is useless.
I feel strange: Am I the only one that explore system’s aspects like these ones? I mean not only from the typical System Administrator point of view…
When the time comes that we have in place the yearly upgrade maintenance built into our portal and decide to start enforcing this sysadmin will display when these expire and a full email alerting system will also alert you with plenty of ample notice.