SmartCode Solutions Web Forum

Sure. here is link to 2.3 build.
http://www.s-code.com/download/vnc_manager_ent_2.3.382.exe

I'm kinda old and forgetful; maybe some of the other people who've been with VNC Manager since the 1.x days can help me along.  If I'm way off base here, I apologize in advance.

It seems to me that way back when VNC Manager was in it's 1.x days, before there was a standard and enterprise, we purchased it and the upgrade policy was free upgrades forever.  As a non-profit, that excited us because there aren't many vendors that offer unlimited free upgrades for their product.  Then came along the split between standard and enterprise.  Those of us on the 1.x could continue to use standard for free or we could upgrade to enterprise for a reduced cost.  We used 2.x standard until we were able to upgrade to enterprise.  As far as I knew, there was still free upgrades forever.  This is trusting to my memory because I couldn't find any of the old old versions to check and I don't have cached copies of the old yurysweb.com site to check on that.  I went through the Yahoo group and didn't find a particular mention of licensing and upgrades.  Can anybody else out there back me up?

I'm pretty sure that was the upgrade policy, and my coworker is too.  I can respect that free upgrades for life may not be a desirable way to do business and that you may want to change it.  I see the new section on the web site about the new subscription service, and that seems like a good way to perpetuate a more steady stream of income.  However, it seems to me that those of us who bought it way back when have an expectation that the licensing/upgrade policy we purchased under was a perpetual binding agreement.  It seems like there should be a grandfather clause to take care of those who purchased early on.  At the very least, shouldn't we have had some warning that the licenses we'd purchased were going to stop working when you released the final version of 2.5?  I was on the site and forums quite a bit since 2.5beta was first mentioned and don't remember ever seeing mention that current users would be unable to use 2.5 when it became the final version, and I know the subscription service is completely knew.

Some of you might be thinking, "what a cheapskate."  What if your automobile manufacturer decided they were losing too much money on warranty repairs.  Rather than changing from that point forward, they said to everyone driving one of their cars that their warranty was null and void.  How pissed would you be?  Sears tried to do that with their Craftsman hand tools, that have the lifetime warranty.  Didn't pan out.

That's my bitch.  Yury, I don't think you're wrong for wanting to move to this subscription plan with time-limited upgrade rights, but you should honor the agreements you made with the guys who paved the way for you to get here by buying your product back when it was just a side-project for you.  Thanks for listening.

Hello,
you have a point here and I hope I can explain what was going on.
I'm actually don't remember myself if we promised life-time upgrades in 1.x or not. Probably not, but I'm not 100% sure. But anyway, when we released v2.0, we never promised any life-time updates, it was stated from the very beginning that the license purchase includes one year of free upgrades. And when 2.0 came out we upgraded all 1.x to Standard Edition for free. I'm sure you do remember that. And since you got upgraded to 2.0 you are kind of agree with a new licensing term, which don't promise any life-time upgrades. I think it's fair; at least we had no intention to rip off our users.

I'm totally agreed with you that we should make a better job informing our users that 2.5 will start checking for license expiration. I hope this will never happens in future. Meanwhile we are going to update VNC Manager installer, so it will check for expired license during installation stage. And we are going to implement Customer area on our site there one could check manage licenses and clearly see when license will expire.

I appreciate your response.  Spoken like a true gentleman.  I'm not sure either, and I couldn't find anything to say either way.  I do remember the 2.x upgrade.  I thought it was just the regular inclusive upgrade, but if not, it was a nice freebie.  That is reasonable and fair, in that light, that we were given a free upgrade to 2.0 with a year of upgrades to boot. I didn't feel ripped off because it is unusual to see free lifetime updates, just surprised and a little disappointed.  But given what we paid versus the benefit we've received, not to mention the prompt responses we've gotten to every communique, it's been well worth the money.

It's good that the upgrade policy is more clearly stated on the web site, now.  And the license checking will be a very nice addition.  We'll probably stick with the version we have, for now.  Given the rapid rate of improvements, I imagine we'll pick up an upgrade when 3.0 rolls around.

Best of luck!

I am an "Unlimited registered version" holder of version 1.4.86.0 and did not take advantage of the free 2.0 upgrade, is there a way for me to still get access to the 2.0 upgrade prior to purchasing the newest version upgrades?