Hi hmossessi,
(Hi socialfan too)

Thanks for your feedback,

Wow, we do not wish our Community members to be unhappy because of a GPL license switch !!!

So, if someone feels that for his particular situation, he is not treated fairly by this awesome unlimited and free or very inexpensive upgrade, please by all means contact us (after reading the below) using the Contact form (Contact link at bottom of each page here) with your joomlapolis username and short explanation of your case, and we will examine your particular situation, and try to do what we can to make you happy.

But before contacting us please read on:

I would like to explain here a bit more why I believe that this upgrade is an amazing value, that goes way way beyond a "normal maintenance of a non-GPL product":

First of all, it is important to remember that going GPL is a great upgrade for everyone: Unlimited sites, unlimited users, perpetual licensing with all open-source freedoms, no license numbers no hassles or having to upgrade before or as soon as the number of users is exceeded, no hoster-issues with wrongly installed ioncube loaders, freedom to modify the code to your use-cases, and so on (the actual list is actually *very* long, but I tried to keep this short). Plus CBSubs GPL 3.0 has a very reasonable price tag to it for the all-unlimited freedoms it gives and the rich features-set.

Second, it is also important to remember that the fine-grained and controlled proprietary licensing models of proprietary software, by the site, by the number of users, and individual per-site maintenance periods is not possible with GPL-licensed software and the freedoms that come with it.

That's why keeping existing customers happy, even for those who don't see yet (or don't need yet) the advantages of the added freedoms of the new GPL license) during the migration process was very important to us, and that's why we have spent a lot of time to find the best way to make sure that it was a good deal for everyone (or at least the very vast majority of existing CBSubs customers):

• Existing users with unlimited maintenance have a free upgrade to 3.0, automatic, no coupons needed, and have de-facto a well deserved free upgrade to unlimited sites and users. I sincerely don't see any issues here, specially for starter-version 500-users CBSubs with unlimited maintenance, which were most probably needing users-number upgrades.


• Those (like both of you) with a valid CBSubs non-GPL 2.0 maintenance period, but NOT unlimited, and in your cases expiring within next 4 or 6 months, have a huge 75% discount, which makes the upgrade in January actually cheaper than the upgrade of the maintenance period and of the probable upgrade in number of licensed users to come within next year.


• Even for those with expired maintenance periods, the 50% discount is a great way to jump onto the GPL wagon at little cost. Expired maintenance period with the non-GPL CBSubs 2.0 product was meaning purchasing a new license per the license terms, but the licensing system was tolerating "catch-ups" of periods without maintenance. So here too our GPL-migration proposal a much better deal than staying with a proprietary license with expired maintenance.

Thus, I still think that our immediate upgrade offer with deep discounts proposal is as fair as it can get, given the huge benefits it brings.

CBSubs GPL 3.0 is not a simple maintenance release of an existing licensed product like CBSubs 2.0 was towards CBSubs 1.1. The new GPL license makes it not only a very different product with a different license (even if all settings and user data are kept during the upgrade), but it is way beyond a simple maintenance for a product under its proprietary limited license because of the added benefits outlined above and many more.

We have set deep migration promotion discounts on top of a very reasonable product pricing for this upgrade to existing users (to be fully open: personally I was finding such high discounts crazy given the huge added value the GPL gives to CBSubs, but I followed Nick's and Kyle's suggestion to make all existing customers happy during this big holiday season): Such an upgrade would have cost hundreds or thousands with the proprietary license model.

To summarize, with all of that in mind, our primary goal was and still is that existing customers stay happy and rewarded for their past commitments, but can still start to benefit from the unlimited users and sites added values of the GPL immediately, instead of having to wait for the end of their proprietary-product maintenance period.

As already said above:

We do not wish Community members to be unhappy because of a GPL license switch !!!

So, if an existing CBSubs user feels that for his particular situation, he is not treated fairly by this awesome unlimited and free or very inexpensive upgrade (after having read the above), please by all means contact us using the Contact form (Contact link at bottom of each page here) with your joomlapolis username and case, and we will examine your particular situation, and try to do what we can to make you happy.

Of course there is no obligation or urgency to upgrade today, but we sincerely think that it is a very recommended upgrade, and that upgrading now is really a no-brainer, or at least it should be an easy decision.

One more thing: Existing non-GPL customers can upgrade now their product in their membership tab in their user profile on this site to the new CBSubs GPL GPL-licensed product, and the previous non-GPL product license number information will stay on their profile for a long enough period of time until after they upgrade their existing sites, so there is no urgency to do the upgrade now during the holidays.

Sorry that the above became a bit long. But I hope it helps understanding the thought process behind this huge CBSubs GPL 3.0 upgrade, and why we still think it's a very fair upgrade.

Wishing you all a Happy and Healthy New Year!

mikaelstrom wrote: Is CBSubs GPL 3.0 working on Joomla 1.7.3 and Community Builder 1.9?
URL to Relese Note?

Yes, it should work on all Joomla versions. We do not test unmaintained Joomla versions, like Joomla 1.7.3, and in all cases, we recommend to keep your Joomla installations up-to-date and secure. Joomla 1.7.3 has known vulnerabilities, fixed in latest 2.5. Upgrading from Joomla 1.7.3 to 2.5 should be pretty easy, as it's not a major version upgrade (2.5 could have been called 1.8, or 1.7 should have been called 2.1, whatever way you take it).

EDIT:
Link to release-notes: www.joomlapolis.com/forum/6-news-and-publicity/217670-cbsubs-30-goes-gpl-#217673
(in this thread, page 1)

ozneilau wrote:

beat wrote: But before contacting us please read on:

OK, I read all that. Thanks for the clarification but I'm still struggling with how to explain this to at least one of four clients who purchased CBSubs on my recommendation. They are a not-for-profit association who have paid about AU$370 to JoomlaPolis since installing CBSubs in 2010:

2010-04-06 €95 CBSubs includes one year maintenance
2010-12-07 €35 Documentation Membership
2011-05-29 €19 Upgrade to two years maintenance
2012-11-01 $120 upgrade from 5000 to 5000 and three years maintenance
2012-11-20 €48.75 Advanced Membership

First of all thank you for your support.

I assume that the $120 was to upgrade from a 500 user license to a 5000 user license (typo?). Please note that with the GPL model there is no such upgrade need - the GPL model has unlimited users built-in and also unlimited websites.

I approve of the switch to a GPL model and understand this is great value for money but my client is unlikely to appreciate this having just paid about AU$120 in November to upgrade from 500 to 5000 users (including an upgrade to three years maintainance). It seems a bit much to go back and ask them for more money for "CBSubs" again. They don't care about a new licensing model or new features.

Yup, in the long run clients typically don't care about benefits only upfront costs.
There is a continuous need to educate and explain the benefits.
There are a few view points I can share with you if you want - just open contact ticket (as Beat asked) and we can help you with this and also with commercial aspect hopefully.

And let's face it, the reason for the licensing model change has more to do with the new Joomla Extensions Directory GPL requirement than a Joomlapolis initiative. It's not our fault this change is being forced on you and you shouldn't be using this as an excuse to call it a different product and charge an upgrade fee.

Neil

Nope - that's not the case.
It was 100% our decision made based on hard facts having real data from GPL and non-GPL business models. Actually I will be writing a future blog sharing these facts with everyone.

Not wanting to enter a debate here regarding JED policy link you posted and I will not respond further to any similar followup comments about this. Just a note that CBSubs is not a Joomla extension. It cannot be installed using the Joomla installer. It works over Community Builder which works on more than one CMS (not only Joomla).

Back to issue at hand, please open contact ticket so we can really help you with your specific issue.

As Beat said, we really want this to work for everyone.