New license model will be expensive

Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:22 pm
roussell offline
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Re: New license model will be expensive

You also stand the risk of the plugin (add-ons) making the system as a whole unreasonable. As a real-world example, I own, but do not use Homeseer Pro. I paid several hundred dollars for a license, then HS abandoned Insteon development leaving it up to a plugin developer. His plugin is only $60, but it doesn’t cover every Insteon device; if I want to use my Insteon Thermostats and EZflora irrigation, that’s two more plugins at $30 each (last time I checked) from two other developers. Then there’s the Onkyo, and Pioneer receivers I have - yep more plugins. Then Roku, Arduino, MQTT, Sonos, etc... and before you know it I’ve spent considerably more on plugins than I did the core SW purchase, with only best-effort, when available, sporadic support.

That’s why my Homeseer Pro license sits on a shelf, and will never be renewed. It lost its value; not by a direct failure on its part, but because of its reliance on the monetized plugin ecosystem it created.

I’m all for supporting the developers, however, and perhaps the plugins should have a quick and easy link to PayPal, patrion, or similar to make donations easier.

Terry


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Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:26 pm
FlyingDiver offline
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Re: New license model will be expensive

roussell wrote:
I’m all for supporting the developers, however, and perhaps the plugins should have a quick and easy link to PayPal, patrion, or similar to make donations easier.


The plugin developer can add a Paypal link to the plugin store. I've gotten a few donations. Probably easy to add another one as a Menu or config panel option.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 3:59 pm
shrxman offline
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Joined: Apr 22, 2015

Re: New license model will be expensive

I always love reading posts out here about Indigo, the contributing community, and the amazing support we all enjoy for all of it. ;-)

I wonder if we should consider a contributor of the year award. It would be hard, especially considering that we have folks out here who contribute their ideas, shellscripts, discoveries about third party products and APIs, as well as the aforementioned plugin gurus. Not to mention the "daily comic" that is the banter between durosity, Fying Diver, Roussell, Karl, and the rest of the gang, all teaming up against poor Matt and Jay. It it were just banter, that would still be good, but I find myself researching new tech ideas that stem from these chats almost daily. It would be such a tough call to have to pick just one. Lol

On another note, I think that's another key difference between the Indigo platform and the others out there. Community. Every time I contact a dev to figure out how I've broken, or misused their plugin, I always get such a strong sense that they enjoy what they are doing, and are sincerely eager to help me get up and running.

Of course I try to respect everyone's time and all, and am always very appreciative, but we have ALL helped to build this ecosystem to our liking, and we have all done very well by it IMHO. I need to remind myself to look for that 'donate now' button when I leverage the talents of you devs directly, as I think a little more appreciation from us all may continue to foster what Matt and Jay started so long ago now. I definitely appreciate every one of you all, and can't wait to see what next year may bring. Probably a big old Indigo bash at Matt's house to honor all of us, no doubt :-)

Hmmm. Here it is, not even November yet, and I'm getting all choked up about giving thanks!

Thanks again all, for all that you do to make Home Automation possible, fun, and always improving!

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Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 4:21 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: New license model will be expensive

shrxman wrote:
On another note, I think that's another key difference between the Indigo platform and the others out there. Community. Every time I contact a dev to figure out how I've broken, or misused their plugin, I always get such a strong sense that they enjoy what they are doing, and are sincerely eager to help me get up and running.

Of course I try to respect everyone's time and all, and am always very appreciative, but we have ALL helped to build this ecosystem to our liking, and we have all done very well by it IMHO.


This is, without a doubt, the biggest factor that makes Indigo such a great product IMO. We clearly put a lot of effort to make it stable/reliable, feature-rich both from a customer and developer perspective, etc. But without the great forum here and the contributions from all of you (user, scripter, control page designer, developer, etc.) Indigo most likely would no longer exist. Or if it did, it would be a much different (and smaller/less capable) product.

So thanks to all of you for allowing us to continue to work on a product ecosystem that we dearly love.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 4:34 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: New license model will be expensive

roussell wrote:
You also stand the risk of the plugin (add-ons) making the system as a whole unreasonable. As a real-world example, I own, but do not use Homeseer Pro. I paid several hundred dollars for a license, then HS abandoned Insteon development leaving it up to a plugin developer. His plugin is only $60, but it doesn’t cover every Insteon device; if I want to use my Insteon Thermostats and EZflora irrigation, that’s two more plugins at $30 each (last time I checked) from two other developers. Then there’s the Onkyo, and Pioneer receivers I have - yep more plugins. Then Roku, Arduino, MQTT, Sonos, etc... and before you know it I’ve spent considerably more on plugins than I did the core SW purchase, with only best-effort, when available, sporadic support.


That is definitely something we are not going to do.

roussell wrote:
I’m all for supporting the developers, however, and perhaps the plugins should have a quick and easy link to PayPal, patrion, or similar to make donations easier.


Developers can configure their dev account to accept donations via PayPal - look for the Like this plugin? Show your appreciation! link on the plugin's detail page next to the developer name (if it's not there, then they haven't configured a PayPal.me account in their developer account). We're open to adding Patreon or any other ways to send money.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 5:44 pm
chase offline
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Joined: Oct 27, 2013

Re: New license model will be expensive

I just renewed my catch up subscription at the end of the catch up window and then the next subscription billed through on schedule 2 days later (I did not see a compelling reason to go from 7.1 to 7.2). So $120 in fees gets me to Oct 1019.

I think this is a little rich when I compare to my only other software subscription, Office 365. $100/year gets me Office 365 and unlimited One Drive for 5 users on MacOS, iOS, Windows and android (as many instances as needed).

I find the indigo subscription is not as good of a value. :(

Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:15 pm
FlyingDiver offline
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Re: New license model will be expensive

chase wrote:
I find the indigo subscription is not as good of a value. :(


If you were to switch to something else comparable, what would it be and how much would it cost?

The closest Windows product I know of is CQC. But it has seven different pricing tiers based on the number of clients and the number of drivers. The range is $199 for 1 client and 10 drivers (and limited functionality), $849 for six clients and 30 drivers (all functionality), up to $2999 for 34 clients and 160 drivers. Plus $95/yr for maintenance.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
my plugins: http://forums.indigodomo.com/viewforum.php?f=177

Posted on
Tue Oct 30, 2018 10:45 pm
RogueProeliator offline
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Re: New license model will be expensive

Probably a big old Indigo bash at Matt's house to honor all of us, no doubt :-)

Wait, how did we gloss over this... party at Matt's! I'm in! I'll stop by when I go to Denton in March...

Posted on
Wed Oct 31, 2018 1:12 am
durosity offline
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Re: New license model will be expensive

RogueProeliator wrote:
Probably a big old Indigo bash at Matt's house to honor all of us, no doubt :-)

Wait, how did we gloss over this... party at Matt's! I'm in! I'll stop by when I go to Denton in March...


Oh.. we already had the party.. except it was on the jet.. it was amazing.. honestly the best time I’ve ever had in my life!


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