Hi guys, I would like to ask how is possible to legally sell Una/Dolphin permanent licenses? Im thinking about sell some of my permanent never expiring licenses which are valid for both - Una and Dolphin but found its quite complicated. Looks that I cant sell licenses itself, I can sell only whole Una account with all licenses in it as I found that info on old forum. Does somebody have more info about that? I asked Una staff but did not get any response in that matter so hopefully somebody in community can gimme a hand and explain it. Thanks
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Sorry, it's not allowed to sell Dolphin/UNA licenses, due to the fact that there were a lot free licenses was generated in the past.
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Hi Alex. OK but what thats mean in fact. So if I for example build Una site with my license, does it mean that I cant ever sell that community site? Or can sell but only If I delete all licenses for Una and all plugins ? If thats so, it dramatically change everything, because I bought licenses especially for purpose to bulid community sites with dolphin/una and than sell it as complex community website. If I tell potentional buyer, I will sell you site for, say 1.500 USD, but delete all licenses so you will have to buy them all again for 3.000 USD, nobody will buy it and all my time investment, plugins investment and dolphin/una license investment will be same as if I put all money I paid to rubbish bin. I remember time when Andrew encouraged users to buy licenses as its, he said great investment as price raise every year so I took it that way.. I understand that for you as for developers its not favourable if user sell its license and/or complete website as you of course more welcome if new buyer buy it new from you but what can people like me, who took it as investment and purpose to build community site and then sell it can do now? I dont think its kinda fair. Basicly all my investment was wasting of money or do I understand it in wrong way?
Hi Perciflex - we don't allow the reselling of UNA licenses for a very good reason - it would be an incongruous business proposition and bad for everyone in the UNA Community. We very rarely sell UNA Permanent Licenses any more and if we do, we sell them for about $3000. The Boonex Dolphin licenses that we agreed to convert into UNA Permanent licences, were offered as goodwill to long term clients, but it is ultimately bad business for UNA, and ultimately doesn't serve anyone in the UNA community. In truth, for a viable web site, paying a software cost of about $600 per year (the cost for an UNA Pro subscription) is actually really cheap , and should represent only a very small percentage of your business turnover if that business is to be viable.
Very few software providers offer permanent lifetime licenses any more because it doesn't work, essentially it is creating a Ponzi scheme and a development debt that gets bigger with each license sold. We get paid once up front, but our development costs are ongoing. Personally I have spent 10's of '000s of $$$ on licenses from Microsoft, Adobe and others, in the last 20 years, none of which have any value any more, but as I gained value at the time, I feel that it's a fair deal. I now pay $75 per month for Adobe software, which might sound expensive, but it provides great value and their software is continually improving, so it's a price that I am happy to pay. UNA is the same, we are constantly improving our software, updating and adding new capabilities, we MUST do this, or else everyones sites will quickly fall into obsolescence. People want continuous evolution, and continuous evolution has a price.
If we allowed people to resell their license, that would encourage a marketplace for undercutting UNA Pro subscriptions and ultimately send us broke, which would suck for everyone who relies on UNA to power their website.
So for anyone who does have a permanent license, they should be stoked, it's the deal of the century, we hope that people utilise it and gain the value, but we cannot and will not be able to facilitate the reselling of those licenses.
I hope this gives you some clarity on the situation.