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To write in an impassionate way isn't the definition of rant. https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/rant And I am not impassionate, I am frustrated that I even have to point out something that should be glaringly obvious. Glaringly obvious isn't depending on posts or time spent in forums btw. It's great, no question. I paid for a license because it is. It isn't, however, willing-to-pay-for-subscription-on-top-of-license-great. Once again: What makes or breaks a subscription model is a continuous added-value proposition that works for the subscriber. People sign up for streaming services, Office365, newspapers, pool memberships because they get a clear, continuous benefit from it. Every day, every week, every month they pay they get something they want in exchange for that money. No matter how hard you try to ignore this: unRAID's new licensing model doesn't even have a defined value proposition. And to make things worse, they don't just switch to subscription (which would be difficult to sell already), they ask you to buy a full license first. That's a business licensing model ported into the end-user space, where such models rarely work--even if they offer a clearly defined, high-demand benefit in return for the money. If they would have switched to a "19.99 a year"-software-as-a-service model, I think they would probably struggle as well to convince new users, but it would at least make sense, especially if they added some online service to the package (like MS does with Office 365). Asking users to pay 40-90 dollars for a license and then asking them to pay for a subscription on top in order to get bug-fixing and security for the software you already bought is basically asking them to look elsewhere. If you don't understand that, you apparently don't understand how the NAS-market looks like, at least for home users. People assign a budget to these things. They decided against a Synology (etc) ready-to-deploy system because they expect additional benefit in return for their investment of time and money. And now they are asked to accept a constantly growing budget for something that the vast majority of software and hardware companies factor into the price and provide for free. And not only that. Those new users are also asked to pay continuously--when the vast majority of users they encounter in the forums have perpetual licenses and get the very same updates and features for free. Do you really believe those prospective new users are going to miss the fact that they are not only asked to pay for both a license and a subscription (which is unusual and bad in itself) but that in this system, their subscription money subsidizes the service provided to a majority of existing users who pay nothing? Do you really think they miss the fact that they are effectively asked to become suckers? No aspect of the software is going to gloss over the fact that this proposition is ridiculously bad and unfair to those new users. No level of denial will make the fact go away that prospective new users won't overlook that it is. And if they are smart, they will understand immediately that this model will likely fail--casting a big doubt on the future of the system they are asked to subsidize. As an existing user, the fact that this was decided and publicly announced is making me question the decision-making infrastructure at LT. Because either nobody realized the above, or everybody lives in denial. Neither option would be great. And no, I am not ignoring LT's perspective. Again, as stated multiple times before: I believe they should have explained the situation to existing users, asked them to accept a voluntary switch to a pay-by-version model and installed the same model for new users. I would have accepted that and would have paid a (reasonable) upgrade fee for each mainline version. Because that would be making sense from a budget POV, it would be fair to the developers, to existing and new users, and it would ensure that the company and the software stay in business, which is the one thing everyone involved is interested in. So instead of calling my posts a rant or focusing on the irrelevant part of how much time I spent in the forums, may I suggest you provide an argumentation why what I pointed out above isn't true or relevant? I doubt you can.

"They"...aha! And of course "they" are all the same, those cheap peasants. I bet that nearly everyone who voiced critical opinions about the changes here has decided against a whole bouquet of free alternatives and paid money for an unRAID license. So yeah, not exactly convincing your diagnose. Frankly, it looks a bit fanboyish and defensive. You would look a lot better if you actually came up with convincing arguments why this new model is fair to the user and why you expect it to be a success. As pointed out before, I don't see how someone can regard a model as fair that combines an initial license fee much higher than in regular subscription models with reoccurring charges for what is essentially bug fixing--without any clear commitment on the company's side. If you see things differently, it would help to point out why. So no, people over her who are critical don't want "everything for free." They simply point out that the new licensing model doesn't look like a fair deal. It is rather silly and self-defeating to claim that people are cheap or should go elsewhere "if they don't like it." Because if they do and if the new model doesn't attract any new customers, the company will eventually run out of cash and the system will meet its end alongside the business. As I pointed out in one of my earlier comments, I was planning to buy a secondary license in the nearer future, but won't in the new system, because I am not getting a fair deal. And I am already sold on unRAID. The new model will be much harder to sell to people who are just building their first NAS and who compare the competing options. It's a lot of good systems for free out there--vs the paid system that you will have to pay forever for. I would actually prefer NOT to be grandfathered with my current license and to have a reasonable update fee for each main version switch for everyone--even though it would cost me more personally. Because in such a model, even the old-license users would get a fair deal and actual workable alternative options. Buying a new license would not becoming utterly unattractive, the company would be obligated to make the big version updates worth their price. I asked in an earlier post if anyone could name a company that runs such a licensing model--a combination of a fullish-price fee for starters followed by annual subscription fees--and thrives. Can you? And if not, I don't see what you derive your optimism from. 1) Nobody rants here. 2) Good for you that you experienced a HDD failure and survived it without data loss. I see that you consider that a major achievement of yours. From here, it looks a bit funny though that you based your elitist attitude on that. 3) You do understand LT needs a lot of those "new users" you seem to consider of lesser importance? Because you and me won't be paying for that subscription model. You think someone who considers buying a license later this year and reads your statements is more likely to shell money out in order to share a forum with you?

LT isn't doing that. If they would, I would actually be OK with it. What you describe is pay-by-version. So you buy a license when version X is out, you get a license for that version only and will ideally end up with a final built that is more or less bug-free. That's how software was sold when it still came on CDs or DVDs. That model enables you to really chose freely if you want to pay the upgrade to version Y for new features or stay with what you've got. That's a balanced model that addresses both the company's need for continuous revenue and the user's right to know what he is actually buying and his need to get a fair deal. I believe most users would opt to pay the update fee in such a model, especially if it comes with its own value proposition (as in: new features). Those who don't, however, would not feel like they paid what clearly is a full license fee and are still left with buggy or incomplete software. What LT is planning (according to what they wrote), however, is a payment model solely based on time. Meaning: If you buy version 7.xx, there is no guarantee that once your 12 months are up, you will end up with a completely stable version. Actually, in this model, chances are that you end up with a version that has some unfixed issue somewhere. In this model, you would likely have to pay at least one extension to be able to get the stable, final built of the very version X you already paid full price for. And then you might have to refrain from updating to version Y in the middle of your subscription period because otherwise, you run into the very same problem with version Y. Which means the system is very much in favor of the company's needs to gather more revenue and to entice the user to sign up for reoccurring fees, but the user pays the price for that in more than one way. That's far from written in stone. If this new licensing model fails to create enough revenue (and my gut tells me it will, because Starter is remarkably unattractive and the higher tiers will be too expensive for many users once the annual fees are factored in), the company might have to downsize or it might even fail completely. Which would affect all users, no matter what license they hold. Good for them. But then: That's how most profitable companies in the Linux world make their money. And another reason why trying to procure the additional cash from the private user base is a dangerous gamble for LT. TrueNAS is a mighty alternative not only because it is free, but because they make enough money to develop it further. That's all true, but it does not change the fact that the licensing model needs to make sense not only for the company, but also for the customer. It needs to strike a balance. The product needs to stay competitive in its environment. If it doesn't, if it does not offer a value that matches the fees they charge, the whole thing degrades into a forced sympathy-handout scheme. And here is the thing: LT is not alone in feeling the squeeze. Many users do as well. Inflation has eaten up salaries, rental fees and energy prices went up by a lot, especially in Europe, existing subscriptions went up across the board. People have less money in their pockets and while we all understand that LT needs to pay their bills, so do we. It isn't like unRAID was a budget offering so far. It simply wasn't. $59-$129 for a license is a decent price for what you get, but it's far from a bargain. If UnRAID would have switched to a pay-per-main-version model, it would have struck a good balance and also would have given the impression that there is an carefully planned long-term shift to cover the needs of the company. The current change, including the announcement, feels a lot more like a hasty move due to financial difficulties, where the company's financial needs took center stage and the user's interests weren't considered as much. Don't overlook that the company isn't really obligating itself to do anything in return for the update fee. There is no promise regarding the nature of the extended support you pay for every 12 months, no obligation to publish x updates or add this or that feature. It's a cat-in-a-bag-type of purchase--aside from the underlying "we will (maybe) stay in business if you pay"-promise.

1) You don't think a full OS offers a little more value than a simple local storage solution? 2) Next to nobody buys a full-price retail license. In Europe, completely legal licenses can be had for around 20-30 bucks. And most people get their licenses with their new computer, where a similar price is factored into the PCs sales price (even in America). 3) So for realistically 20-30 bucks, you get a full operating system with a wide range of capabilities and at least 10 years of free updates. Generally speaking, not a fair comparison. Limetech is MUCH smaller than MS, which means they have a completely different calculation. That pricing structure is ridiculously bad for any home user. For that reason, I think I have rarely seeing any non-business user running a legitimate copy of PS. Businesses do, but only because there isn't really any competition (no, GIMP isn't) and because all relevant professionals are trained on that system. Not the case with unRAID, where free alternatives like OMV and FreeNAS exist. Your pricing structure can be expensive when you hold a defacto monopoly, when people don't really have a choice, and when they are making money with your software. None of those things are true for unRAID. Agreed. And there are many ways to address this. By offering additional services, by running a subscription channel on a video platform with great training content, by offering secure internet routing options, preconfigured software extension options for new users, a paid management app for iOS and Android, by offering really nice merchandise options, by partnering with hardware companies and offering branded products (I would love to see a smartly-designed unRaid-branded case from LianLi or similar--nice NAS cases are surprisingly rare), etc, etc. There were also gaps in their current licensing model that could have been exploited--like selling drive upgrade packages for the Basic version (be able upgrade from 6 to 8 drives max for extra $20 would work for many). In short: By using the fact that this is a system developed by a company and not by a wide ranger of private users and thus building an ecosystem around the core. All of those can bring additional revenue and users would feel good about paying those additional bucks, because they are offered real value and cool features in return. I would pay for several of the above if it were offered by LT. My point entirely. The value proposition needs to make sense. And frankly, in the new model, it does not. You think the Starter tier is an attractive option, with just 4 instead of 6 drives and higher costs in the absence of even the slightest new feature that would add value? Unleashed is not as bad, but do you really think it qualifies for "yeah, that's a good deal"? I don't see that. And the Lifetime tier will be beyond anything most home NAS users are willing to pay. The timing is also bad. This is happening in an environment where users encounter significant price rises in many existing subscriptions, making them think about canceling this or that. And making the proposition of yet another subscription extremely unattractive.

First: That's part of the problem, because everyone is left to speculate. I am aware that their hand was forced here, but still... Second: It kind of has if you read between the lines. Quote: "Starter - supports up to 4 devices. This will be offered at a lower price than today's Basic key. Unleashed - supports unlimited number of devices. This will be offered at about the same price as today's Plus key." Unleashed will be ~$89 and it will give you the same features as todays Pro, which costs an extra $40, but it will force you to sign up for updates. If their calculation is designed to produce additional revenue, the annual fee cannot be much lower than ~20 bucks. Which basically means you are paying more than in the old system after three years--and you keep on paying (that's the real problem). For smaller settings that would currently use basic, the value proposition will be even worse. Because you get a painful reduction in features--from 6 to 4 drives--which breaks the deal already for many. Keep in mind that the cache drive counts, so your limit is actually 3 HDDs in a tier where people often are on a budget and thus more likely to buy smaller capacity-drives. Honestly, lowering the max HDD count to 4 in that tier is one of the worst decisions, since it really ruins the deal for smaller home NAS settings and you don't have a reasonable upgrade option from there, given that they removed the mid-tier (which is an even more catastrophic decision). Imagine you build a home NAS with a single drive and a parity plus a cache. Now you are left with just one additional drive to add, which is a crippling limitation. So for smaller, home-setting NAS systems, Unraid becomes a hard sell. And it will be even worse for the SBC-plus-drive setting. I honestly cannot think which target group they had in mind for the Starter license. And I don't see a significant-enough reduction in price in return, at least judging by the words "at a lower price" (not "at a significantly lower price"). I interpret that at a reduction by maybe 10, more likely 20 bucks. So that's a $39 price, because I don't think they will go as low as $29. Which is basically just the equivalent of the loss of value due to the HDD limitation. So you wouldn't even get much of a discount initially--and you pay on top after already one year. Even if they go as low as $29 for the initial license, that's not sweetening the deal in any meaningful way. As for the last tier, the Pro or probably Lifetime version: That one has to be SIGNIFICANTLY more expensive to make sense and to make the Unleashed license worthwhile at least for those who calculate their license purchases by a 4-5 year lifespan of the system. It would have to cost more than Unleashed plus 4 years of updates, or Unleashed has no reason to exist. So $170+, probably more towards $200. Now let's assume I am a user with an average-size NAS of 4-6 drives plus a cache drive. Which of those tiers would you recommend because "it's worth it"? I don't see any attractive option. I really believe they do make a terrible mistake here. And it is very sad to see.

I would. But that's not the point. Yes, but at that point, reversing course will likely have become impossible. That's how that usually plays out with companies which chase money down the drain: their cash flow might increase temporarily at the beginning, but after a short while, it drops significantly and their financial troubles worsen, leading to the inevitable collapse. So given that this thread was asking for feedback, not praise, and given that we all want LT to stay in business for many years to come, I think it is actually a good idea to not just vote with the wallet but to warn them before about the mistake they are making in my view.

Maybe look around a little? People complain about MS not supporting Windows 10 long enough (actual support timeframe is 10 years). Long support pledges have become a big part of the value proposition of Android phones and many other devices, with most manufacturers going beyond what is the usual expected service life of the average phone. The update policy has become an important point in reviews of many technical devices. And that isn't just a random trend. It is the result of the realization that malware has become much more sophisticated, and those who write it have become much better in exploiting new vulnerabilities. Would you be able to refer to any other software product, let alone an OS, that asks for a larger license fee and then drops support after just 12 months unless you sign up for a subscription? I can't think of one. If you can't as well, then how isn't it obvious that this is a problem?

In an ideal world maybe. In the real world, people's internal networks often sit behind routers provided by the access provider. Those routers usually see updates either rarely or never. Unless you run a hardware firewall between that access point and your internal network, you should not rely on that router and thus everything in that internal network should be as secure as possible. Even if that ISP router issue wouldn't exist, you should never rely on one secure component to cover an unsecure other component. If you rely on what you wrote above, your security concept could already fall apart because you have a visitor who accesses the network at your apartment with an infected device. Boom, the attackers just flew right over your allegedly impenetrable defensive trench network and one known, unpatched vulnerability in your unRaid system will allow them to wreak havoc. I do not pay 39+ bucks for a system where security updates are replaced by wishful thinking after 12 months only. This is a real problem, both in terms of safety and in terms of value proposition. A licensing model that asks you to pay a larger fee for the initial purchase should at least give you a reliable, secure system with the version you bought. Stopping upgrades after one year unless you pay a fee would be acceptable if it were a subscription to begin with--in which case you would have the same, relatively low, annual fee. But the fairly high initial costs render the 12-month-timeout unfair and the system unnecessary unattractive. Not only that. The relatively aggressive 12-month-timeout for support also indicates a relatively urgent need for additional cashflow on the side of the company. Which will spook users that want to set up a system that should reliably continue to operate for the medium to long-term. People don't set up servers of any kind for just a year. They plan for 4-5 years or more. They will calculate the costs accordingly and they don't like to get the impression that the company backing that system may suddenly collapse, turning their investment into a loss and forcing them to migrate to another system. Not trying to rain on LT's parade here. It is actually one of the most likeable companies out there. But that doesn't mean their value proposition doesn't have to make sense.

Somehow I don't remember MS to end support for XP after just one year unless users shelled out another 10 or 20 bucks. They supported it for a decade and only then asked people to upgrade. I would be totally fine with LT selling licenses by version, btw. That would give you a stable system at the end and you would really have a realistic option to stay on that--or to upgrade to a new version by paying a fee (which would also entitle you to get updates until EOL is reached).

Sure you can, but is it fair of a company to expect you to? And is such a policy something that will convince prospective customers when the competition consists of mostly complete free and continuously updated systems? What exactly is the value proposition here? You pay 29 or 39 bucks for a software that will not be updated anymore after just one year (unless you pay 10 or 20 bucks on top), leave you potentially with an unstable version and force you to play around with downgrade options that might also break in the future because of version conflicts with the apps you run on them? I was actually considering to buy a second license for a secondary, SBC-based backup NAS. This change put me off. I ran OMV before, it's a little less comfortable, but it will be updated continuously and I don't have to worry about unpatched vulnerabilities. "Like outlined above: Unraid was never be designed to be exposed to the internet directly." I refer to my first answer on that. In addition, ANY reliable backup strategy for data will realistically require some online component. Having an up-to-date off-site backup is good practice. And for the most important data, a cloud-based backup is also something you want to have. Any serious user of a for-pay NAS would expect that the system was at least developed with these necessities in mind.

Come on, that's maybe how the system was designed initially, years ago. These days, even LT themselves have included online components like unRAID Connect and many apps and containers will rely on internet access as well. So saying that this is designed to run purely on a subnet and without any internet connection is frankly not truthful.

I think you might have missed the part where I wrote that I moved to Unraid because I have no time budget to browse through forums and try out suggested solutions. I moved in anticipation that a for-pay system would put stability first and new experimental features second. I am not running a complex and complicated system, just basic storage and a few docker containers. No VMs, no transcoding, no fancy stuff. The system was running stable after I set it up, and it ran that way for a while. If a configuration is running stable and a system update breaks it, forcing me to go on a bugfixing hunt (which is almost always time-consuming), that basically ruins the deal for me. At the absolute minimum, I would expect a clear warning prior to the upgrade that new functions are introduced and that they break stuff / require maintenance work. Ideally, I would expect a separate, optional security-update-only path and maybe an update profile that you can select which will delay all updates until they have been found to be stable on all tested systems. That would allow me to avoid a situation where I have to invest time I do not have to fix something that was broken by a change in code I did not introduce. For me, the most important thing in servers is stability and reliability. New features are nice, but only if they do not impact those two things negatively. The new pricing model just adds more issues to that. From the scarce details we were provided, there is another big problem I see: the non-existent synchronization in terms of versioning and licensing. If I understood it right, a user that pays for a license of let's say version 7.xx gets updates during the first year. The problem I see is if there are bugs in one of the versions he updates to towards the end of the year that will only be fixed after the year has expired. I mean, generally speaking, the idea that "you don't have to pay the subscription, you can just run your current version forever" is already unviable when one cares about security. But the idea that you could end up with a broken system that you need to pay to fix is making things worse. It would be much better to have a model where you get support until EOL for the version you buy, so basically paying for a license when version 7 is out gives me all updates until version 8 comes out. That would give the user at least the choice to stay with a stable and final release or to upgrade for a new version and new features based on a subscription model. I might have missed that this is actually what they plan but from what I have read, they do not.

I'll be honest, this does not look good at all. I moved my NAS from OMV to Unraid a couple of years ago because I decided to opt for a paid license in return for more stability and reliability. Short story: I became a father and my time budget for NAS maintenance went from generous to barely existent. Initially, Unraid just worked exactly like I wanted: a reliable environment that did what it was supposed to with an investment of 10 minutes or less per week for keeping things upgraded and properly configured. Unraid licenses were never cheap, but at the time, they were worth the money. Over the last year or so, my system broke twice during upgrades, despite me doing everything by the book, just like before. It's barely functional now, Docker is a steaming mess, and even with Docker completely disabled, the NAS never shuts down cleanly and data access feels sluggish. I did not make any changes to the software I am running on Unraid, just did the upgrades. Ran the combability checker on every system upgrade and did follow all recommendations before upgrading. With OMV, you would have the occasional bug, but never something like that. I recommended Unraid to a friend who is now facing similar issues on his NAS. So my user experience isn't great to say the least. I am currently planning to do a complete reinstall in light of the multiple issues, since this is predictably less time-consuming than lengthy diagnostics and bug fixing. Judging by the forums, my friend and me aren't an isolated case. And now this announcement. When a company like LT switches to subscription in the middle of what can only be described as a bumpy ride in terms of stability and reliability, it looks a lot like a failing business chasing money down the drain. The way in which this was announced isn't helping either. In addition, making users who just bought a license for not much less than with the old pricing model already pay for updates after just a single year sounds excessive and unattractive from a consumer POV. If I pay a larger license fee, I would expect a longer period of support until support extension fees kick in. Paying only slightly less than full price initially and then being asked to shell out annual subscription fees on top simply sounds not fair to the end user. The combination of the stability issues with several recent upgrades and of the new pricing model makes Unraid basically unrecommendable. The calculation for a NAS is obviously one spanning over 4-5 years at least. In the absence of facts, my guts tell me that with the new pricing model, a starter user would have probably paid the equivalent of a pro-license when those 4-5 years have passed. And even though my current license will be grandfathered, the idea that LT may be in financial trouble (and yes: if it weren't, there would obviously be no need for additional fees put on the community) does make me consider other options for the primary NAS. As initially stated, I have next to no time-budget for maintaining this NAS and if I can not rely on Limetech staying in business and providing a stable base, it just isn't for me. I am not mad, btw. I get that this is a tough market, that everything gets more expensive, and that Limetech needs to make money to pay the bills. And as far as I am concerned, the initial years with Unraid were fine and worth the cost of the license I bought. But the doubts I had about the future of this system were amplified by the announcement of the new pricing structure--simply because my feeling is that it makes the system significantly less attractive for new users, thus probably hurting sales in the mid- to longer-term and putting the future of Unraid in doubt. From my point of view, it would have been a better idea to tap into the market of people like me, people who are short on time and who would likely pay for less hands-on maintenance. Like a platform that allows the user to set up a docker with several containers with a lot less configuration work. Basically a click, select, and run installer and configurator for common setup options. Or a service that provides a secure front-end for internet-facing services. Charging users more money--and forcing them to pay continuously for as long as they want to use the system with up-to-date patches (which--lets be honest here--isn't optional on anything connected to a network) while not providing them with any significant improvement in return is very unlikely to succeed.