Testing Licensing

Hey everyone -

I'm hoping to get feedback on the new licensing setup on jamroom.net here. With JR5 we've moved to a new setup where everything that is installed generates a license. This is done so if a module starts out free (for example) and then later is modified to have a price, you'll still have a valid license for the item from when it was free.

Every paid module or skin is licensed to run on 2 sites, and you can see what sites are running what licenses by going to your "Licenses" section here on the new jamroom.net (it is in the small drop down under your name in the upper right corner).

From within your license manager you can "release" licenses from existing sites (say you shut a site down and now want to use those license on a new domain), and you can see what URLs are currently using what licenses.

If you are already using a license on 2 sites, you can purchase it again in the marketplace and it will now work on up to 4 sites, and so on.

I'm hoping to get some feedback on how this works, and if anyone encounters any issues using it - i.e. I'd like for everyone to try and break it, etc.

I know of course that someone can always just download a paid module/skin and upload it to a new site and use it there - there's nothing that can be done to stop that (and I'm not worried about that) - it's that I want the ease of use for the Marketplace to be so high that it's the most convenient way to install and update software, and users are not going to want to bypass it as it's just too cool

Let me know if anyone sees any issues either with the Marketplace on your Jamroom site, or in the licenses section here on the new jamroom.net.

Thanks!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net
updated by @brian: 12/13/13 01:48:02PM

found something. I just did a fresh install and left out the jrFeed module becuase it caused some issues during install. after getting the system up and running and configuring it, I went to the MARKETPLACE -> NEW MODULES page and "RSS feed Reader" was there, with free install.

I clicked that install and got the confirm, now the spinner wont stop spinning.

The 3 URL's ajax went to are:
<a href="http://jr5core.iixxii.cc/admin_menu/menu" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://jr5core.iixxii.cc/admin_menu/menu</a>
<a href="http://jr5core.iixxii.cc/marketplace/license_item/module/jrFeed/__ajax=1" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://jr5core.iixxii.cc/marketplace/license_item/module/jrFeed/__ajax=1</a>
<a href="http://jr5core.iixxii.cc/marketplace/install_item/module/jrFeed/license=U3y3IeTYD118kHph/__ajax=1" target="_blank" rel="nofollow">http://jr5core.iixxii.cc/marketplace/install_item/module/jrFeed/license=U3y3IeTYD118kHph/__ajax=1</a>

all 3 show '200 OK'.

the response for the second one is:
{"success":"item licensed","license":"U3y3IeTYD118kHph"}

The response for the third one is HTML and the title is:
CRI | jr5core.iixxii.cc

followed by what looks to be an attempt to load a skinned page.

--edit--
side note: cant past html in here, that CRI above was acutally html title wrapping it. need a [code] option?
updated by @michael: 10/01/13 04:57:18PM

I went and purchased the jrNova skin. real slick setup. not sure why the cc info wanted my address though?

when that completed nova INFO tab was shown. nice. I went back to the marketplace and the "RSS feed reader" was not there any more, so i checked and it appears to be installed.

Went over to http://test.jamroom.net/networklicense/licenses and clicked the "Release License" for the "RSS feed reader" and came back to my install and tried to activate it. I could.

That surprised me. If i release the license then I can still keep the module active? and how do i un-release it if i want to keep using it on that site.

This set of actions has a weird effect in my license browser of having a "not installed" under the "installed url" colum. (see screenshot)
updated by @michael: 10/01/13 05:10:07PM

the screenshot that shows that image above in a lightbox is tiny.

The RSS Feed Reader is a free module, so you can install it on as many sites as you want. It STILL does create a license on the back end (for the reasons I outlined in my post), so that sounds like it is working as it should.

The "Not installed" section in the licenses is for licenses that are in your account, but are not linked up with any host (i.e. they have been released). You can think of this as your pool of items that can be installed freely on another host.

I'll check out embedding HTML - you'll need to put it in a code block, but looks like it may be getting stripped (probably need to run it through htmlentities()).

And I set the image size to xxxlarge from xlarge for the lightbox - that should look better.

Thanks!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Also - I'm seeing the exact same thing on the RSS Feed reader install - something is up with that item, so I'll check that out. I have not seen that on any other items, but let me know if you do.

Thanks!


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Is there anything to prevent this pattern:
* install jamroom site 1
* install jamroom site 2
* install jamroom site 3
* install jamroom site 4

Purchase 'module x' on site 1 and install.
* install 'module x' on site 2
* release module license for site 1 and site 2
* install 'module x' on site 3
* install 'module x' on site 4
etc....

yes - you can't release an item from a site until it has been removed from the site (if it is a paid item at the time of release).

There is of course nothing stopping someone from taking down a site or moving it, then installing, then moving it back into place.

If someone really wants to violate the licensing terms, they can do it - I'm not worried about it though as I believe the ease of use will ensure most customers just install and maintain their items through the marketplace.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Looks like it is an install issue for the Feed reader - something is keeping it from installing, and I am suspecting the setup of the default feeds in the DS on install. I'll see if I can figure it out in the morning.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net

Yep - it's the jrFeed/install.php that is messing it up. I comment out the code in the function and it installs now, so I'll try to figure out why that is happening.


--
Brian Johnson
Founder and Lead Developer - Jamroom
https://www.jamroom.net