[suggestion] Lease option
- Thread starter Blandt
- Start date
TimeWizardCosmo
Well-known member
$80 bucks a year would seem pretty reasonable to me.
Blandt
Well-known member
Let the business brains figure it out. I'm sure they will figure out a good formula, if they accept the idea
AmericanForum.com
Well-known member
Leased licenses could attract few folks.
figure out a good formula and it might be a good idea
You mean leased with hosting included ?
Nick
Well-known member
Good. I couldn't imagine having to manage enforcing the take-down of instances on forums whose leased license has expired and not been renewed (even if this is handled by a third party, the company (i.e. XF) would still suffer financial losses).
The goal is to encourage continued renewal to support continued development.
- Leased license -> Run for a year -> Expire -> Don't renew -> Dead-end / no development support
- Owned license -> Run for a year -> Expire -> Don't renew -> Site becomes out-dated / new features released later -> Renew -> Development supported
AmericanForum.com
Well-known member
Nick that's why I mentioned hosting included with this option ... easy to shut forum down when lease expires on non-renewal.
Blandt
Well-known member
Enforcing is very straight forward. A simple email to the hosting company. that's all it takes
They should worry more about run away torrent sites
Blandt
Well-known member
Not all want a hosted option, Although that could be a nice option easily implemented with a simple contract with a reputable hosting company, that will take care of everything.
AmericanForum.com
Well-known member
Blandt
Well-known member
IPB leads the market in this feature ... rates as low as 5 or 10 bucks a month.
Well we hope not for long
Peggy
Well-known member
I really can not see them taking on the headache of offering hosting. They're the best forum software developers. Anything else, IMO, would be out of their league, and a waste of their talents.
David McHenry
Active member
Thats not so much a leased license as it is a hosted license. IPB has a good business model of this but most the time all you hear is complaints about the hosting, or people not being able to modify the files to their needs.
Lots of headache with probably little return at this stage.
Blandt
Well-known member
They are not taking any headaches at all.
A simple contract with a hosting company. The hosting company will agree to install, maintain, update, upgrade, collect and the whole taking-on-the-headache part is shifted to the hosting company.
At the end of the month they send a check to xenforo for the number of accounts.
Very simple and most reputable hosters will kill for such business opportunity
Blandt
Well-known member
I do not agree, because whoever chooses the hosted option is probably just a business owner who wants to plug-n-play. in other words do not want to hassle with servers, installs ..etc..
They want someone who does things for them, they just want to run the forum.... and it's a considerable segment ...
HannahP
Well-known member
How so?Enforcing is very straight forward. A simple email to the hosting company. that's all it takes
Part of my job is handling abuse and DMCA complaints for a large hosting company, and I would never shut down a site based on an email complaint that didn't either follow DMCA protocol exactly, or include a valid, verifiable subpoena from a court that has jurisdiction in California (where we're located). Any host that shuts down a site based on a generic email complaint is either inexperienced or stupid. How do I know the software is unlicensed? Or more importantly, how do you prove it's unlicensed. That person you're complaining about is my customer. And as a customer, do you really want your site to be at the mercy of any crank with an email address?
DMCA exists so that the host doesn't have to make a determination of valid use (since we're not qualified to do so), so it could be used in a license dispute case like this. But bear in mind that DMCA also has a counter-notice clause, so if you send me a DMCA notice and I disable the site, my customer can file a counter-notice. What that does is give the complaining party 14 days to file a district court suit against my customer. If they don't, the site is re-enabled. So the bottom line with DMCA is you have to be prepared to file a lawsuit if you want something removed permanently. That lawsuit comes at a price, and I don't know if that price is worth the cost of a forum license enforcement.
What I typically see are DMCA complaints from very large companies that have the means and intention to follow up. And they are usually complaining about fake apparel sites; expensive name brand knock-offs. I'm not saying that it's impossible to shut down a site for a software licensing issue, but if the person supposedly using the unlicensed software wants to argue the point, their site will be back up in 14 days. That's not some renegade host's strategy, it's how DMCA works.
HannahP
Well-known member
No. Because that puts me in the position of mediator, and I can't (won't) do that.
We run into a kind of similar problem on a constant basis, where someone hires a site developer and that developer opens an account with us to host the client's site. Then later on down the road the two parties part ways and the client now wants access to the account. Now I might be able to look at the site or the domain registration and reasonably assume that it is indeed the client's site, but the developer is my customer, so unless the developer wants to hand over the account access information, the client is screwed. It brings me no joy to tell someone that I can't give them access to what appears to be their site (just like it would give me no joy to tell a hard working software developer that I can't mediate their dispute, even if I think they are in the right), but it's not my judgment to make.
So in that way DMCA was a very welcome addition to the scene. The rules are clear cut, and as long as I follow them, my company has "safe harbor," and can't be dragged into some lawsuit that we shouldn't be involved in. I worked in hosting pre-DMCA and it was extremely difficult to handle these kinds of complaints. Someone was always threatening to sue you and you had to try to decide what exposed you to the least amount of liability. It was a nightmare.
We run into a kind of similar problem on a constant basis, where someone hires a site developer and that developer opens an account with us to host the client's site. Then later on down the road the two parties part ways and the client now wants access to the account. Now I might be able to look at the site or the domain registration and reasonably assume that it is indeed the client's site, but the developer is my customer, so unless the developer wants to hand over the account access information, the client is screwed. It brings me no joy to tell someone that I can't give them access to what appears to be their site (just like it would give me no joy to tell a hard working software developer that I can't mediate their dispute, even if I think they are in the right), but it's not my judgment to make.
So in that way DMCA was a very welcome addition to the scene. The rules are clear cut, and as long as I follow them, my company has "safe harbor," and can't be dragged into some lawsuit that we shouldn't be involved in. I worked in hosting pre-DMCA and it was extremely difficult to handle these kinds of complaints. Someone was always threatening to sue you and you had to try to decide what exposed you to the least amount of liability. It was a nightmare.
ManagerJosh
Well-known member
not all countries or corporate entities respect DMCA.
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