Announcing New Unraid OS License Keys

[Sledgehamma]

Sounds super fair to me. Thanks you! 

[Fallwater]

23 minutes ago, trurl said:

Don't know where you got that idea. I've swapped hardware many times and never had to reactivate anything since I kept the same flash drive.

Sorry, I mean when I need a new USB stick. 

[_0m0t3ur]

as evidenced by the empassioned speculation, unraiders are a special group who love the unraid os and the community surrounding it.  unraiders make a good investment of their talents and interests here.  i know i have received much of that benefit.  so, i appreciate this forum post and related blog and video, which brings us together.  thank you @limetech @SpencerJ

 

will this in any way impact someone who bought a pro license in a recent sale and received a redemption code, but they have not used the code yet?

 

(to my mind, unraider includes all of us: limetech staff, volunteers and users alike.)

Edited February 19 by _0m0t3ur
clarification.

[SpencerJ]

2 minutes ago, _0m0t3ur said:

will this in any way impact someone who bought a pro license in a recent sale and received a redemption code, but they have not used the code yet?

No.

Thanks for the kinds words.

[B1scu1T]

I just listened to the Podcast.

Started the day with news that was driving me away, I now feel confident enough to buy an additional licence. Thanks guys.

[0xMDIV]

I think you gonna loose a lot new customers to alternatives like proxmox and so on.
Its the same as always when people hear they need to pay for a server system for updates they can just use some other virtualization which is free to use

[jfoxwoosh]

I think this is fair. I love UnRaid, and I want limetech to stay around. You buy a license to a version of the software and got to keep using it with no subscription fee.

If you want newer version/feature, then you pay a bit extra for the upgrade. As long as this "extra" is not outrageously expensive.

Edited February 19 by jfoxwu

[ijuarez]

 I am grandfatter ( 🤣) but some folks forget that some users are still on version 5 because it works.

[limetech]

9 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

Why'd y'all wait until you were called out for hiding it in the code? Seems like a lot of people were ringing the warning bells when Unraid connect was announced and were called paranoid conspiracy theorists. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, that's a damn duck in my book.

 

Not all quacks are ducks... but the recent docker vulnerability kinda forced our hand to get 6.12.8 released ASAP.

[suedenimes]

I had a question. Came to this thread to ask it.  

 

Question answered in OP

 

Top work fellas

[EDACerton]

I appreciate the response regarding the licensing situation.

 

The other concern that I would like some explanation for is the privacy issue related to the new update mechanism. I was finally able to coax some debug logs out of my browser, and I discovered that there's a lot of information being sent with every click of the "Update OS" button:

• apiVersion
• caseModel
• connectPluginVersion
• description
• expireTime
• flashProduct
• flashVendor
• guid
• inIframe
• keyfile
• lanIp
• name
• osVersion
• osVersionBranch
• registered
• regGuid
• regExp
• regTy
• regUpdatesExpired
• site
• state
• wanFQDN

Some of these make sense as part of a license check (guid, keyfile, flash information). Some, though, seem to be quite extraneous: caseModel (does Limetech really need what kind of case my server is in?), LAN IP, hostname, description... none of these are needed to validate a license.

 

The privacy policy (https://unraid.net/policies) says nothing about collecting this kind of information:

• What is the primary purpose for collecting all of this information?
• Is the information used for other purposes? If so, what?
• Is this information stored? If so:
  • Is it stored in identifiable form?
  • How long is it retained?

[_0m0t3ur]

if one has been on the fence about getting into unraid, it seems like now might be a good time to go pro.

[klogg]

15 minutes ago, SpencerJ said:

 

Thank you. A lot of time, thought and money went into the decision. 

It’s obvious that this was treated with care and respect for the existing users and the business. 
 

Anyone feeling otherwise should remember how Reddit handled their changes. Or Dropbox. Or skiff. Or or or. 
 

There are a lot of feelings going around, and people care a lot because unraid is a big part of all our lives. Time will demonstrate that this was well handled. 

[dopeytree]

Dev costs are crazy in the US (110k+), more cost effective in europe (60k) & then even india (quality unknown).

 

Is it worth getting some official unraid merch on the go for the community.

 

Sign up with a drop shipper etc

Stickers, t-shirts etc. At the mo it's all unofficial but really a percentage should go to unraid. 

$10 from each t-shirt to unraid. 

Edited February 19 by dopeytree

[RiffSphere]

I don't get the step down to 4 devices for the starter edition. In my opinion, 99% of unraid boxes need 2 things:

 

- A cache pool. Without it, apps (like plex browsing) feel slow, and many people wont max out their network speed when writing files. And I already hate there isn't a harder push to make this a parity protected pool, as it's not protected by the array: If the disk fails, all your apps crash, and your recent data is gone (seeing backup will probably align with mover). This uses 2 out of the 4 disks starter offers.

 

- The array, the unique thing unraid has over any other system I've seen: realtime parity protection with almost instant expandability with any size (up to parity) disk. The starter limit of 4 will either lock people out from experiencing the full power of the array, or "force" an insecure cache setup. Even more so if they follow the "plug in your usb disk with unassigned devices and use krusader to move your data to the array" suggestion given to new users.

 

I really hope this number will get reviewed and changed, a clearer message/warning about single disk cache pools will be added, a smarter mover (so it can start moving files when low server/disk load instead of time based) will be added and a (smart, as close to real time as possible) appdata backup is implemented. It's the starters that need the most help keeping their data secure, since they are new. If you are going to "force" them in a bad security pool setup, you better account for that to prevent data loss.

[m00mba]

Appreciate all the information and I think people are overreacting without looking into the actual details here. 

 

I haven't seen so far any clarification on whether a key purchased right now is still on the old (and thus will be grandfathered) scheme? When does the cut-off actually happen for when a purchase is eligible for grandfathering with the current system? 

 

I ask as I was just about to purchase another Pro key but it is unclear.

 

Thank you.

[Rysz]

Can users with old licenses still use pre-6.12 versions, will the key remain valid for all those older versions as well? Meaning will users on older versions be forced to update at some point or will the old license always be valid for all versions no matter how old or new.

 

What about the new licenses under the new model, can a new license be used to activate pre-6.12 releases for those who would like to run such older versions e.g. for hardware compatibility or whatever reasons? I think it would be fair for it to be valid on all old versions and one year into the future if it's not extended.

 

Edited February 19 by Rysz

[VanGoghComplex]

23 minutes ago, Michael_P said:

Why'd y'all wait until you were called out for hiding it in the code? Seems like a lot of people were ringing the warning bells when Unraid connect was announced and were called paranoid conspiracy theorists. Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, that's a damn duck in my book.

Yep, sure was hidden. Right there in the files accessible to anyone running Unraid. I'm shocked it was found.

[Goldmaster]

Well, I was kind of worried by the rumours on reddit.

 

My kind of thinking is what's stopping say unraid having paid yearly support option aimed at businesses and have the standard 1 time fee. Take redhat or canonical. You can use fedora or Ubuntu for free, but if you're a business, you can pay for support options. Individual people won't want to pay monthly fees. But businesses who use unraid would pay due to time is money.

 

Unless I don't know if there is more to redhat and canonical business support. I know that proxmox has a paid support feature which is how they fund development.

[primeval_god]

8 minutes ago, RiffSphere said:

I don't get the step down to 4 devices for the starter edition. 

I agree that I would prefer the existing base tier, but if I had to speculate (and this is only wild speculation) the new base tier may be a response to the demand for a application host only version. For a while there have been a lot of people who want a cheaper tier without an "array" to use as a Docker/Application host without NAS functionality. 

Edited February 19 by primeval_god

[klogg]

6 minutes ago, dopeytree said:

Dev costs are crazy in the US (110k+), more cost effective in europe (60k) & then even india (quality unknown).

 

Is it worth getting some official unraid merch on the go for the community.

 

Sign up with a drop shipper etc

Stickers, t-shirts etc. At the mo it's all unofficial but really a percentage should go to unraid. 

$10 from each t-shirt to unraid. 

It doesn’t really matter, but I’m replying in case you are legitimately interested and on the off chance it helps you in the future. I ran a global team for a while and we hired around the world based on where our customers were and supporting various time zones- including a handful of European countries. The salary price in Europe can be lower, but there are a non-salary cost (taxes, benefits, pension contributions, various employment law obligations) that really eliminates the perceived savings. 
 

Spain is a notable exception, for some reason, but generally the full carry cost of a developer in Western Europe is pretty close to US developer based outside of California.
 

🤷‍♂️

[sullrosh]

If someone is on an older version will plugins/docker only show versions that are compatible with their current version or will they try to update to unsupported versions?  Can they install an older version that is compatible or are the most recent versions the only ones available.

[Sebastiansuisse]

46 minutes ago, limetech said:

 

We need more of these.

Well at least you are honest and straightforward about it.

Edited February 19 by Sebastiansuisse

[RiffSphere]

2 minutes ago, primeval_god said:

I agree that I would prefer the existing base tier, but if I had to speculate (and this is only wild speculation) the new base tier may be a response to the demand for a application host only version. For a while there have been a lot of people who want a cheaper tier without an "array" to use as a Docker/Application host without NAS functionality. 

I could see that, but disagree. They are generally not starters. They would generally want speed and more than 1data+1parity in the cache pool. At this point they still are forced to have an array wasting 25% of their allowed disks. They are also the opposite of a starter. If we gonna have changed licenses anyway, nothing stopping them to add "docker only" (removing array support) and "archive only" (removing docker/vm support), hidden behind "more options". The starter name does not match the audience, and is imo too limited to showcase the security and flexibility of the system to real starters.

 

PS: I'm not hating on the concept, we all like free things, but free for life is not sustainable, and I'm surprised they have done it for this long. But the model has to be right, something 6-12-unlimited disks does, but 4-unlimited does not. Most of my servers surpass 4 (raid1 cache, dual parity to never have to worry when adding disks, data disk and download cache) disks, it's hard to convince starters to use a higher end version from the start, it's easier to force them into an unsecure system with unprotected cache they'll destroy in no time with downloads and a single parity array. Until the negative publicity about yet another data loss incident.

[gzibell]

Just came to say Thank You!  This seems very fair and reasonable to me.  Kudos to the team that put this together.