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#1 Mon, 08/01/2005 - 09:48
DannyWeaver

Demo

Will there be a limited demo of virtualmin pro? Other control panel services normall have a one or two domain demo that admins can try out. I'd be interested in comparing virtualmin and virtualmin pro to see how much value I'd gain from using the pro version.

Mon, 08/08/2005 - 23:31
Joe
Joe's picture

Yes, there will be an online demo, as well as a downloadable demo that will be valid for 30 days.

Also worth noting on the demo front: Jamie developed a nice read-only demo mode that can be enabled on a per-domain basis. So, even if you only have one Virtualmin system, you can provide demo access to Virtualmin.

I haven't had a chance to figure out how we'll handle issuing the demo licenses...I will probably be able to extend the purchase mechanism to issue demo licenses. I'll talk it over with the developer who is doing the ecommerce work for the website.

BTW-Sorry for the slow reply. We're swamped getting everything ready to go!

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Tue, 08/09/2005 - 08:48
DannyWeaver

Hey, I understand. I've done app devel, I know how crunch time is.

Tue, 08/09/2005 - 08:55
DannyWeaver

One thing, Plesk uses a special license key that verifies with their server. Demo keys are valid for 30 days and you are locked out after that. Or you can purchase a license and just update that from within the control panel. Personally I don't like validating my license, but I understand for a commercial product. I'm sure there are other ways to enforce licensing, though I've never worked on anything to do with it.

From my experience on the end-user side, I can tell you automatic is nice. If I don't have to worry about it, I don't care. As long as there is no user intervention needed to validate, cough windows cough, it leaves the user satisfied in the knowlege that they're good to go.

Just my feelings on licensing.

Tue, 08/09/2005 - 22:22 (Reply to #4)
Joe
Joe's picture

I agree with you on keeping licensing hassle to a minimum. It's one of my biggest problems with a lot of commercial software--having to ask permission every time I move it to another machine, or reinstall, or whatever. I must assume they have good reasons to do it the way they do...we're going to give a try to being a little more trusting of our customers and assume the best, though we do have mechanisms in place to make life difficult for customers that consistently abuse that trust.

Here's how the license server works:

- You buy a product in the store

- When the card is approved, you'll be redirected to the software registrations page, which lists all of your active serial numbers

- Click on a serial number (probably the most recently purchased) and get the install.sh script. This can be saved on any server, no matter what supported OS you're installing on, and it will do whatever magic is required to bring the box up as a Virtualmin Professional system (including installing the license key)

Somewhere down the road, you may need to migrate to a new server:

- Copy install.sh to the new server, run it

- Backup all virtual servers using the Virtualmin Backup feature

- Copy them over to the new server and restore

- Take the old server out of service (no specific de-activation of the license is necessarily required--if you shut it down, reinstall a new OS, or uninstall virtualmin, it will stop contacting our licensing server for anything). Note that you can run the new server and the old server simultaneously for some period of time before the license server will flag the activity as potentially a license breach.

I'm sure there are other cases that I'm not covering, but the goal is to make sure folks don't feel like they're having to spend more time dealing with licensing issues than using the software.

We certainly welcome feedback on the system, when it is up and running.

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Fri, 02/24/2006 - 07:04
Ap0kalipSe

Is there a demo version of virtualmin pro around yet?

I'm currently looking at virtualmin and ispconfig, and would like to compare virtualmin pro too, to see what additional functionality there is over the GPL that i require. from what i can see on the demo video it just seems to look nicer, but i'm sure there's a lot more to it than that :)

Fri, 03/10/2006 - 03:39
Ap0kalipSe

yes/no? :(

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