Boomerang License / USB Serial Issue

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jdel6654

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It has been a while since I last used my licensed copy of Boomerang. All of a sudden it is not working with my installs. I thought it was a Windows 7 issue but it also looks like it is having problems with WinXP which used to work. Is the license itself perpetual or is there an expiration date?
 
You discontinued this Subscription in 2008 and so it had consequently expired - Personal Subscription is the type of license that is not perpetual, unlike all the others.

Your employer still has a Ful Development license you should be able to use when needed, though...
 
John,

Sorry, it's the kind of license:

Special note regarding Personal Subscription License:
________________________________________

This License is sold as a subscription. Once the subscription expires, a renewal fee must be paid to continue receiving updates. If the subscription is discontinued (i.e.: by not paying the renewal fee, when due), the License automatically and permanently expires and all use of the software must be discontinued and all copies in your possession must be destroyed.
Please, note, that this Personal Subscription License belongs to and can only be used by the Named User, whose name appears on the main program window, regardless of who makes the payment. I.e.: if your current employer pays for this purchase, they will not be the owners of this License - you will be and you must take it with you when leaving this employment. Thus, companies are discouraged from sponsoring such purchases - this License is specifically designed for self-employed consultants and cannot be owned by companies (the sole exception to this rule being your personal company, if you are the only employee of such company). This License is not transferable. If you wish to terminate this License, you can do so unilaterally at any time at your own discretion. No fees are refundable.
This type of License is a Personal equivalent of the Full Development License and has no restrictions on Import/Export of any types of supported Objects. This License type is not available through re-sellers.

In fact, it could not be transferred at all. And while you have used it, it was against the terms of the license all the way, but particularly after 2008 expiration.

To restore this license, you would have to re-purchase it in your name. Would you like to do so?
 
Sad to see you run yourself out of business. Guess I'll just use OMW save / restore.
 
This one license type has always had these conditions.

And save/restore has also been around for very many years, so this had always been an option.

It sounds strange to hear this comment, particularly since you never actually paid for this software and never had any right to use it...
 
I have attached a screen print of the license to show that it is licensed. I have also mailed it to you privately. Its in my name. Are you saying your convoluted USB serial licensing process was hacked ? I appreciate the implied respect on my hacking skills, but I can assure you that is not the case. The company that I encouraged to buy your product and who paid for the product put the license in my name - as per your specific requirement. How you license your products is your own problem.

Of course, I won't make the mistake of recommending your tools in the future. You have to be a lawyer with 20/20 vision to even understand the license. I guess I understand now why it's in the fine print.

Save / Restore has been around for a few years and it is the one tools function that Oracle has struggled to move forward. Now that S/R works well, I guess...Se la vie...I guess there's always your SSO product.
 
The word "Subscription" is clear enough in the license name and means exactly what it says - it is not a permanent license and is only valid while maintained.

Of course it's not hacking, it was piracy to use the license beyond its validity period. And it was not in your name to start with, you have cut out the actual licensee name from your screenshot, but we know it was not yours.

We are clearly not in business of supporting pirates, so please don't come back.
 
Well, unless "John Dee" stands for "John D. Noll", in which case it would actually be in your name.

But the subscription period was over in 2008 anyway and you never renewed, so this license permanently expired then. We did discuss the Personal Subscription license terms at the time of the purchase with your employer.
 
Guys,

I am so sorry that I ever suggested that Everest create a 'Subscription' license ~ please accept my apology for the situation.

The Subscription was originally defined as an economical means for Independent Consultants and 'Privateers' to use a fairly expensive and useful product to transport code between clients and do archiving.

The intent was that the software Subscription would be Purchased at a Large Discount and renewed at an 'economical' rate, each year ~ and, circa 2005?, was an initial purchase and an AGREED UPON renewal of around $500 a year. The concept was that Everest would recoup the discount through the annual renewal of the subscription....

At the time, I was, more-or-less, the US Sales 'Voice' for Everest Products. I even did a Tools / Tips / Traps Session at Quest ~ with highlights to Everest Products. I encourage a lot of folks to invest in the program, though I don't know how many actually bought into the program. To those that bought into the subscription, based on my encouragement ~ I am deeply sorry.

By 2008, the renewal was already $749 - $250 more than the originally agreed (and contracted) amount. There is a very sound 'relativity of law' in the US that states, if you purchase a subscription at specified rate, either the Product has to be Cancelled or the original subscription rate must be honored ~ apparently they do things different at Everest?

Everest Software seems to think that their products are aligned with the price of Gold, and that is a sufficiently flawed mentality. Thus, I can no-long recommend the product to my customers.

To Quote a comment from Everest;

[ QUOTE ]
You purchased this software in March'05, the US$500 would purchase 1.163oz of gold at that time. At the time of this last Invoice, 6 years later, 1.163oz of gold would cost US$1,663, so you should really be paying ~18% more than the US$1,407 price we invoiced you for - this was effectively a lower price than the $500 in 2005.

Inflation is not to be discounted, it was massive and we had to adjust our prices. If US$ maintained its gold content, there would be no increase: it is not our doing, it's a policy of your government - if you have to blame someone, please don't blame us.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just like the Wall-Street, blame inflation on the Government ~ not the Greed of individual organizations and their excesses....

As a consultant ~
- It costs me about $90 a night in the Detroit Area for a hotel back in 2005. For the past two weeks, it cost me $93 a night in the same area of town.
- My high-end laptop in 2005 cost me $1500. The Replacement, i7 with Multi-Touch, 8gb ram and a 750gb 7200 drive, that I am looking at right now, is $1400.
- My Microsoft Action pack Subscription in 2004 cost me $399 annually. I recently renewed it for $399, again, and I get the latest/greatest copies of All M$ Operating Systems and Office Products for that Annual Subscription.

NOTE: That the initial discussions regarding the Boomerang Subscriptions Modeled Off the Microsoft Action Pack as a 'Subscription' based software. The Boomerang Subscription was meant to be an Economical means for Independents to Use, Learn and Facilitate to their clients. Microsoft still honors their original subscription rate ~ even though they have spent billions enhancing their OS's and Office Products.

I cannot, in good conscious, recommend a company that inflates the price of their product at such a ridiculous tradition. I share with my clients that the Everest Products are good and work as defined, BUT: Do not expect them to work outside their definition and EXPECT to be dismayed when they get any type of Renewal or Service-Type fees.

Please Except my Apology
Sincerely,

(db)

ps - in the event that you research 2008 prices on the Wayback machine:

License: Per Named User - Full Development (the term of this License is Perpetual) US$2,999
License: Per Named User - Site Limited (the term of this License is Perpetual) US$2,249
License: Personal Subscription - 1st Year (the term of this License is 1 Year) US$1,499
License: Personal Subscription - Renewal (the term of this License is 1 Year) US$749

Now compare those against the currently inflated prices =)
smirk.gif
 
Dan, you are somewhat hijacking this thread: what Mr John D. Noll was originally compaining about was that this License had an expiration date, there was never any talk of any money - he never actually paid for it, his employer did, and he was apparently never going to.

And indeed, despite being named a "Subscription" and with this condition highlighted on the main Boomerang page, it has caused confusion before and perhaps we should really discontinue this type of license, despite the sound logic of your initial advice.

But coming back to the pricing, you are of course hand-picking your comparison examples. There are other examples of prices that rose at the same or higher rate. Plus, as we were practically unaffected by the recent GFC, our view on this matter may differ materially from yours. For instance, our rent prices were claiming up at a much higher rate than yours.

Gold comparison was just one of the views. If you believe in exchange rates, then here's another view: US$500 = AU$715 in 2004 at the exchange rate of 0.70, which adjusted for inflation and allowing for other factors ended up being AU$1,300 in 2011, which at the exchange rate of 1.10 became US$1,430. I hope you would not argue that our prices are inevitably linked to AU$, because we are an Australian company.

Anyway, the pricing point is moot, as the prices are self-regulating in a market economy anyway.

Of course, if your consulting rates were the same in 2004 as they are now, then this may seem excessive, but then the problem really is that your consulting rate growth was stalled (or indeed reversed, taking inflation into account) by other factors, like outsourcing and GFC. And so it cannot be used as a baseline.

In any case, if you were to face a scenario where the use of our Boomerang would make you $10,000 of extra profit, would you be hesitating to pay the $1,400 Subscription fee? - that's a rhetorical question, of course, what I'm trying to say is that your scenario is not the same as anyone else's and so you may or may not need Boomerang, depending on what you are doing. And if one year you do need (and buy) it and then the next year you don't need it, then this issue of the Subscription usually comes up. But then the next year you may need it again, as has happened before and will probably happen again, and then you come back and purchase it again. And knowing your modus operandi, I would fully expect you to drop it now and then re-purchase it again, when a new requirement comes your way. Because when you purchase it against an existing requirement, _IT_PAYS_OFF_ and when not, then of course it doesn't. And this does not have anythiing to do with its price, only with the requirements that you may or may not have at any given time...
 
Dan - apology accepted, however, its not the license terms that are so offensive here. Its the way Everest uses the fine print in the license to try to strongarm people out of a lot more money for fair use of these little utilities.

Everest products get people over little flaws in E1 technology. E1 has little technical gaps where companies get stuck because JDE->PeopleSoft->Oracle failed to fully support a technical feature that is obvious to any developer or CNC. For instance:
1. Job Q changes at the version level (duh).
2. Formatted reporting of version POs and DSs (duh).
3. Source code migration (duh).

So Everest has a niche. As you & others have observed, Everest utilities are expensive. Depending upon whether the license is for a company or for independents (contractors), this could be irrelevant if the product meets the need. For a company, sometimes its cheaper, quicker and safer to just buy the product rather than work around a dumb flaw of E1. Long-term, Oracle should fix the problem, but thats a different story. For independents, on the other hand, my sense is that the price for these products is quite high. Particularly when (if you are lucky) you can use these products maybe once every 3-4 months. So if you get a one-year license, you'll get 3-4 uses out of $2000. Kind of makes you wonder why some other developers don't give Everest some competition. I guess maybe everyone is waiting for Oracle to fix these .

What independents should know is that the subscription means you really don't own anything. The products are time-locked. I've helped spec contracts for a lot of software over the years for businesses and personal use. The big guys have time-locked features. The little products don't do time locks. The important thing I think independent E1 people need to know is that Everest fine print has to be read carefully and the licensing process is ridiculously messy (USB serial key licenses). If you expect your $2000 to get you something, caveat emptor, it may or may not.
 
John,

Again, there is no fine print anywhere in our licenses: this edition is actually named "Personal Subscription" with the word "Subscription" used in its normal meaning. This is a single such case among all our licenses. It was originally designed for freelance consultants, but is actually mostly used for such one-off jobs as what your employer purchased it for.

Your employer knew about this, but they wanted a cheap temporary solution, hence they paid for this subscription license. Remember that this Subscription's 1st year cost is ~1/3 of the full price of this tool. After they finished using it, they opted not to renew, so it had expired. And then they illegally gave the now useless and unlicensed software to you, if they in fact did. At no cost to you, I should add. And then you have been abusing the grace period for a year afterwards. That about sums it up. What it is you are unhappy about with us in this situation I cannot fathom. In fact, under the circumstances, you owe us a year's Subscription fee for your usage.

If you now claim that you did not understand that this was dishonest, that this constituted piracy and was not legal in any country of the World, then this speaks of you and not of any non-existent fine print. I'm sure _every_ other developer understands what the word "subscription" means, especially when it's printed in large red letters across the main screen of the program.

As your employer had observed, it was much cheaper to purchase our software than keep paying consulting rates for the same work. This software pays off when used, so irrespective of the absolute $ figures it is what is usually termed "cost-efficient" and "inexpensive".

But of course, and I keep repeating this, if you are not really using the software to its potential, then it may appear to be too expensive for the task, in which case just do your cost/benefit analysis before you start and you would not have any issues with it.

And of course, if such software was easy to write, there would be dozens of vendors writing it. You have to first understand the complexity of this task, before you make any comments about the pricing or competition. This is specialized software, it has limited market and very high complexity, our pricing is probably an order of magnitude lower than anything comparable coming from any competitors. It's a fact. Look around and compare, before you make any such statements.

Anyway, I have no idea why you would bring up any such groundless accusations against an effectively innocent bystander, from whom you have also just pirated a year's license fees. Whatever your problems are, we have not caused them. The gist of your complaint is really that we stopped you from causing us more harm than the already stolen subscription fee for a year. Gosh, I would not want you to be our employee...
 
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