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licenses for life or to renew
- Thread starter nitro76
- Start date
To what @Rodolfo said there is no ETA for v4 yet. But he is working on V4 and apparently V4 is based on new system/coding or something like that.
V4 won't have any licensing as it will be a Open Source software. However, the official paid features will be only available in the SaaS which means that anyone wanting to use paid V4 features will have to use the SaaS.
This SaaS will be like a Netflix (bundled paid extras included in the base price) + ability of buying all sort of extras. Some benefits of the SaaS are that there's no licensing concept for the base software so you pay for a fine tuned managed service (server, maintenance, tweaks, updates, etc.) directly to Chevereto rather than deal with hosting companies or server administrators.
This obviously means that there won't be any upgrade fee for licensing concerns.
This SaaS will be like a Netflix (bundled paid extras included in the base price) + ability of buying all sort of extras. Some benefits of the SaaS are that there's no licensing concept for the base software so you pay for a fine tuned managed service (server, maintenance, tweaks, updates, etc.) directly to Chevereto rather than deal with hosting companies or server administrators.
This obviously means that there won't be any upgrade fee for licensing concerns.
Rather disappointing news, as like most SaaS software ends up, the best or most useful features are put behind this wall to "encourage" people on to a SaaS plan.
I understand why you'd go this route though, the money-to-time ratio is way better... but sucks for all the honest server admins though who do know what they are doing. 🙁
Taking into account that you aren't a customer, I assume that you use Chevereto Free or you just pirate the paid edition. I hope you don't pirate it, but the fact that you totally omitted any comment on the Open Source V4 licensing makes me think that your opinion comes from someone worried about access to these features.
What is actually changing here?
That the software main distribution system and commercial activity will be under the SaaS umbrella. V4 will be Open Source and nothing will stop third party devs to offer and sell plugins for the Open Source edition. Is just that I'm abandoning the self hosted business because I'm sick of it and I want to be focused in the software, not its server.
No, I'm not a customer yet, I am running the free version and evaluating it's viability as a solution for community image hosting. Quite frankly, I'm appalled that you even suggested I might potentially have pirated it or might do so in the future. I certainly hope you don't treat all your potential customers this way.
Worry about access to potentially wanted "official" features when you make them SaaS only is an issue for your self-hosted customers (I don't know why you've implied this is only an issue for pirates). Consider this scenario: You create an official plugin for SaaS v4 product, lets say it's a "Comments" plugin.
Self-hosted website owners who would benefit from such a plugin have this issue:
1) Just put up without it.
2) Make it themselves or pay/wait for someone else to... (who will at some point in the future end support/abandon the plugin, thus making it incompatible with future updates, stopping owners from updating the Chevereto unless the plugin is abandoned or migrated to something new.)
3) Sign up for the SaaS product instead.
Now, I understand you're sick of hosting issues and that's fine. You're releasing v4 as Open Source, that's also fine. I'm just disappointed I won't be able buy any future official plugins (even as encrypted versions) or pay for premium support without being a SaaS customer. There are many reasons why owners would want to stay self-hosted.
I tried everything in 8 years in this business (self hosting) and the SaaS is the outcome of many years of frustrations and problems. I'm not jumping to SaaS because I just want to make money, is because self hosting is not really a business for me anymore. The return that I'm getting is extremely low, every year, which is just a sign of our modern times.
V4 and the SaaS also represents an evolution of my capacity and skills as I don't want to keep doing the same thing forever and I like to push myself forward.
I think that you underestimate the power of Open Source and simply you don't believe that the user community will came up with plugins and add-ons that are totally outside my radar. The SaaS and Self hosted target different markets.
Finally, at the end what matters is that any software needs money to keep development so I'm about to earn that money via SaaS. At some point you will realize that the SaaS will pay the bills and development for everything, including the self hosted version.
Is all part of the plan, I've been developing this project for 12 years. Just wait and see.
P.S. Regarding the piracy thing, it was just a possibility among the two I mentioned it. Thank you for using the Open Source edition.
V4 and the SaaS also represents an evolution of my capacity and skills as I don't want to keep doing the same thing forever and I like to push myself forward.
I think that you underestimate the power of Open Source and simply you don't believe that the user community will came up with plugins and add-ons that are totally outside my radar. The SaaS and Self hosted target different markets.
Finally, at the end what matters is that any software needs money to keep development so I'm about to earn that money via SaaS. At some point you will realize that the SaaS will pay the bills and development for everything, including the self hosted version.
Is all part of the plan, I've been developing this project for 12 years. Just wait and see.
P.S. Regarding the piracy thing, it was just a possibility among the two I mentioned it. Thank you for using the Open Source edition.
Honestly I wouldn't have been bothered if you said it was all about the money, thats fine, everyone's gotta eat... devs too. Really, I was only expressing disappointment that setting up as a self-hosted site would mean missing out on features I could want in the future.
Unfortunately, I've been bitten by third-party open-source & paid plugins for other software far too many times. Third-party plugin devs can almost be fly-by-night sometimes and I certainly can't count on them being around years into the future still keeping them up-to-date. I can only hope chevereto devs will be different, but history has taught me otherwise.
This has not put me off using Chevereto, I am awaiting appropriate feedback from others before purchasing & working out a migration plan.
I do share your concerns about third-party devs and I hate when that thing happens. It happened here and I've seen how it happens everywhere. That kind of awful situation is the consequence of no control on the stuff being distributed for the system. This is not like when you put games into a console, this is source code so there's no limits on how bad things can go wrong with third-party devs. I feel the same as you regarding this concern.
The SaaS address this, but in the self-hosted is impossible. However, I do have some plans in my head that will help to keep the self-hosted neat.
For example, I do still have one of the core concepts that I came up before V2 which was the concept of making Open Source the mature stuff. Chevereto Free is that concept applied to V3 and while V4 and the SaaS changes distribution, that concept is still unaltered and we will see SaaS stuff going Open Source.
By the way, I don't have the door closed for selling stuff in the self hosted, but is something that I don't longer enjoy doing. I prefer to release my stuff Open Source and keep my sales to stuff that I can guarantee its reliability.
The SaaS address this, but in the self-hosted is impossible. However, I do have some plans in my head that will help to keep the self-hosted neat.
For example, I do still have one of the core concepts that I came up before V2 which was the concept of making Open Source the mature stuff. Chevereto Free is that concept applied to V3 and while V4 and the SaaS changes distribution, that concept is still unaltered and we will see SaaS stuff going Open Source.
By the way, I don't have the door closed for selling stuff in the self hosted, but is something that I don't longer enjoy doing. I prefer to release my stuff Open Source and keep my sales to stuff that I can guarantee its reliability.
I do like this slow-lane feature releases method. I don't want to high-jack this thread any futher, however I had asked several pre-sales questions on discord which doesn't seem as active as here (so I later removed them), but is there a thread of a full feature comparison between free and premium?, seems there is much more than what is mentioned on the pricing page.
You are right, the differences are somehow hidden. Here is the relevant link: https://chevereto.com/free