Pre-Sales question.

Hey Igor,

Because it is networking software (as are almsot all of the components we provide), it <i>must</i> be maintained, or the user is going to get burned by security problems. Not necessarily in our components, which are historically extremely secure (Webmin compares favorably to OpenSSH on number and severity of security issues over the same time period, if that puts it into perspective). We can't maintain all of this software for free, and in fact it is by far our biggest expense on developer time. That said, we do not currently have the license server configured to disable servers at the end of the license period, but a warning does appear that the system is not covered.

I'll briefly explain our philosophy on this:

Our renewals are quite affordable, being priced at about 35% of initial purchase price. This price covers all upgrades (not just minor versions--every new feature is available to every licensed user, regardless of how long ago you paid the full purchase price), so if you upgrade more than every three years (which you simply have to for networking software--otherwise you'll be operating with many security holes) you'll come out ahead.

Virtualmin Professional is not comparable to Virtualmin GPL, in that it actually contains many additional components (a custom Apache, scponly, automatic installation of dozens of scripts, etc.). We're taking on responsibility for all of these components when we sell you a license...and so we have to plan to pay for maintaining them in developer time.

In short, a license is required to run Virtualmin Professional and it must be renewed every year because it's good for your sanity and our reputation to have security updates in place on every active Virtualmin Professional system.

If the license renewal fees are onerous in your situation, Virtualmin GPL is available at no cost and provides a large number of the same features. Further, if you are a non-profit or educational facility, we do offer significant discounts on Virtualmin Professional to make that burden less burdensome. We're trying very hard to make Virtualmin Professional available to the widest variety of users while still making enough profit to be able to afford to do the maintenance and enhancement work that is expected of a high quality commercial product.

I hope this helps with your plans.