[BlueOnyx:18268] Re: NewLinQ and Shop outage

[Michael Stauber]

Hi Michael,

> I understand these things happen. However I would like to suggest a change
> to the way that your software works.

Yeah, it is (and always was) obvious to us that we needed a "Plan B" for
NewLinQ outages. As we were juggling too many pins at the same time we
did it in the wrong order: Made rentals available and pushed "Plan B" a
bit downwards in the queue of our to-do list.

In the (very close) future we will get this sorted in several ways:

a) The NewLinQ license verifications will get cached. That way a short
unavailability of NewLinQ won't cause any issues.

b) The actual "Plan B" will be put into effect as standby option. In
case of a real NewLinQ outage the DNS will be (manually) switched to a
separate box which will positively waive off all license requests of
software that's already installed.

For the longer run:

c) NewLinQ will get "more legs" to stand on. If one part trips, the rest
takes over all duties.

The other aspects that got mentioned and that Chris already commented on:

We're not going back to distributing PKGs as direct downloads. We are
fully aware and totally appreciate that 99.8% of our clients are as
honest and as hard working as we are. But we have seen some forms of
abuse of our trust and it's only gotten worse recently.

I never thought it would be done in such a blatant fashion as we've
recently seen. But it happened. And then I realized: We actually didn't
have any good means in our toolbox to cope with that. At least not for
older PKGs of certain vintage.

That has changed in the last week. I set something up that's neither
entirely civil nor courteous and it is reserved to only be used if all
attempts at diplomacy, encouragement and appeals to the client fail
entirely. Let me put it this way: In the future and when we see a really
blatant license violation and the client is totally unreasonable about it?

It'll not do him much good in the long run.

/me pats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Bertha_%28howitzer%29

-- 
With best regards

Michael Stauber