What if you win the lottery or go out of business?

Hey Bob,

Financially we're doing well. We're committed to transforming wyDay from a profitable business to a multi-million dollar a year business.

However, if our assurances aren't enough for you, we also offer a version of LimeLM that you can run on your own servers. Quite a few people have chosen this option. LimeLM runs on both Linux & Windows servers.

[email=buy@wyday.com]Contact us if you want more info & pricing details[/email].

I have the same question, but I hope you can provide a better answer then 'buy the self-hosted version'. I think it is a valid question that you guys need to be able to answer also for the hosted version as you are offering it and all your customers business depend on the existence of your business.

So what would happen if you would go out of business? First, what happens if your servers are down. In what way does that affect the functionality for my customers? For example there is a check that is recommended to do every 90 days. What would happen with that? Obviously we would not be able to activate new users/customers (but for that we could implement a new licensing system) but are existing customers affected?

is there, I think there should be, any guarantee you give that if you go out of business for whatever reason, you do your best to inform your customers in time? I can understand that normally you don't want to do this but in your case customers need time to switch to another license mechanism or otherwise they can easily go out of business with you.

I like the service from what I read about it, but this dependency on your business worries me, especially if existing installations would be affected. So I would appreciate some more details.

Thanks,

Sjoerd

Hey Sjoerd,

So what would happen if you would go out of business?

If this happens we will provide our customers with a way to run LimeLM on their own servers (without charging them, obviously). If you want extra assurances we can put LimeLM and TurboActivate source code in a source code escrow. This is a neutral 3rd party that will turn over our code in the case that we go out of business.

First, what happens if your servers are down. In what way does that affect the functionality for my customers? For example there is a check that is recommended to do every 90 days. What would happen with that?

We care about providing the best service for both our customers and the customers of our customers. But if that seems disingenuous (it's not), then you should know our profits are directly tied to 2 things: our uptime & our site speed. If either falters our bottom line is directly effected. It's in our best interest to have nearly faultless uptime.

Now, to answer your question more directly: activation has a customizable (by you) grace period of N days. That is, a user has N days to activate your product. Also, when using TurboActivate functions in your app we recommend you allow some leeway for internet failures on your customers end. For instance, if IsGenuine() fails the first time we recommend you wait a few days before trying again. Only after several subsequent failures then we recommend notifying the user that in X days their license will be deactivated. If IsGenuine() is still failing after these X days then (and only then) do we recommend deactivating a license.

In short, don't make your applications brittle. A single failed call to the servers shouldn't deactivate their machine. There are lots of valid reason for a customer to be disconnected from the internet (when they are on airplanes, in hotels, etc). Plus, internet is flaky even in US metropolises. Compound this with the inescapable fact that even corporate networks are "imperfect", TurboActivate gives leeway for network failures.

This is a long way of saying, "we think about the brittleness of the Internet during every design decision".

I like the service from what I read about it, but this dependency on your business worries me, especially if existing installations would be affected. So I would appreciate some more details.

Does this alleviate your worries?

Wyatt wrote:> Does this alleviate your worries?Well, maybe not all of them 😉 But at least I do appreciate the effort you make in informing me. And the fact that your thinking on providing solutions to let your customers continue their business in such circumstances is goof to hear.

The escrow possibility is also a good possibility. Especially once our business would grow to a point that something happening with the licensing system would really be disastrous, it would be a cost-effective way of buying security.

I get the message about 'brittleness'. I guess this is also what helps in buying some time in the unhappy circumstance that there would be happening something unfortunate with your company or infrastructure.

Thanks