JAM83 I believe you misunderstand; this is the innovation forum for the new product line. WSV3 Professional V1.0 - V5.10 is a different product as I have clarified. Grandfathered license holders to that product will always have access to the product they paid for - WSV3 Professional - a direct-downloading local app which the EULA clearly specified was dependent on the continuance of government data sources and would eventually likely become dysfunctional with the passage of enough time. This would have happened in 2017 when Trump ordered all government links move from HTTP to HTTPS; I could have absolutely charged you for that upgrade and left you to the piece of software you purchased fully within my right, but instead I gave continued free sustaining operations update on that product for 5 whole years after 2018, out of zero obligation. I am now exercising my right to create a new, next-gen product after blessing grandfathered license holders with years more of updates than were ever promised, and even the generous 2021 data service, which I will explain below.
Grandfathered license holders holders were never promised data subscriptions because the software they purchased (pre-2018) had zero embedded data services.
I have to pay a monthly bill for data services.
Please do not say you are "getting screwed big time" when in fact I have shown tremendous generosity to the point that I am now suffering sizable losses in revenue due to the piracy which I opened myself up to by being too generous and offering the V5.0 2021 update (including a new data service even to grandfathered users) free of charge.
Please read the entire email I composed recently below which explains precisely what grandfathered WSV3 Professional users purchased and how they received more than what was promised. Also, this is the innovation forum for the next-gen product, and I really wanted to keep this thread focused on ideas for licensing and installation on the new product. But I will use it as an opportunity to clarify these important misunderstandings, because I absolutely have to move on and create a next-gen product where the software is a free download and you only pay for variable-cost private data services:
"Thank you for your response and you are always free to share your feedback of any kind on the forums or over email.
The first and most critical thing is to clarify what the pre-2018 purchased. Before I clarify this I want to specifically affirm your following statement of yours with my complete and total agreement as both a consumer and entrepreneur:
'When someone promises something to be free...they will always be upset when they have to start paying money for that same service.'
Pre-2018 grandfathered customers purchased a license to a client-side direct-government-downloading piece of software that had no embedded data service where I provide not only the software, but also pay recurring server bills to host the data that the product downloads. In college in 2015 I specifically had to work within the requirement that it be entirely dependent on government data because at that time I was absolutely risk-averse and couldn’t take on the responsibility of recurring server bills.
Pre-2018 grandfathered customers were promised that any updates to that product would be free. They were not promised that there would be a single such update, but only that any would be free.
As I am sure you will not dispute I over-delivered on that promise and have provided continued updates to the product almost 7 years later in August 2022.
Pre-2018 grandfathered users purchased a product understanding could or would become dysfunctional if the government servers change and that I wasn’t formally liable for fixing anything. The EULA had very strong, clear, and repetitive language about this to cover my ass. In 2021, and starting in 2021, and not before 2021, I created a new raster engine to finally restore satellite imagery, do a new, improved National Radar layer, and host a few other layers. These were all newly generated by a new private WSV3 server-side processing system we pay monthly bills for through Amazon Web Services. This was the first time ever that WSV3 ever actually depended on my paying a server bill. This was the addition of an embedded data service that did not exist previously and that the grandfathered users were never promised; in fact, back then, I didn’t even intend to ever sell subscriptions or data services, proving how impossible it would have been for me to have ever written anything promising such a thing to them.
So, in 2021, out of generosity and then-economic-viability, I published this update to include the grandfathered users without separating the software and the data by making those raster layers a separate data subscription (a separation and optional feed I later pursued in two areas). It was not out of obligation that I did this, and certainly in excess of what the grandfathered users were ever promised.
In 2023 it came to my awareness that massive and giant piracy had occurred when I was shown anyone can download a cracked copy immediately off the internet, and not only run the software, but rack up my server bill by freeloading off the 2021 generous embedded data feed.
This obviously is a life-critical business threat, so in order to respond, you see my posts from August talking about how we’d have to rewrite a whole new server-side data processing system for every last download, that we have to pay for, and your subscription would be validated with credit card to kill the piracy. (The $1/month idea). Then this evolved into a new product seeing how incredibly advanced my software development skills are and how absolutely terrible, admittedly, as you seem yourself to believe as well, some parts of the current software are.
Now you see why the there needs to be a next-generation WSV3 product (I disagree with calling it WSV4 as I am committed specifically to what I did in 2015) and why it needs to be absolutely dependent on my paying variable, recurring, monthly fees as a matter of basic business survival as any other way enables the piracy.
Since you already accepted grandfathered users were not promised eternal free data subscriptions or data subscriptions/services of any kind when you presumably found no injustice in the two optional add-on data services offered in 2020 and 2021, hopefully you can see why it does not amount to any violation of previous promise in the slightest to fix a date for a final-ever update to WSV3 Professional (V5.10) (the exact product grandfathered users purchased) provided for free, and to sunset the 2021-and-never-earlier-debuted data service after 2026 to finally stop piracy losses.
Please let me know that you agree with that or please explain where is the error in my reasoning.
Thank you for acknowledging that I don’t claim that WSV3 is equal to WSI MaxHD or the like in my daily communications. But, one of the other reasons I disagree with calling it WSV4, and why I also disagree with your view that there can’t be one common product used by professionals and individuals alike (with planned special versions for industrial/government and for broadcast), is because as of recently, for the first time in my life, I believe myself capable of creating all my myself a Win32 graphics application capable of delivering approximately the same level 3D polished, gorgeous, aesthetic beauty and advanced data-preloading/automation functionalities as do WSI and Baron’s industrial systems. Since I have that belief for the first time in my life as of the last two months, and given the other necessities above, are you proposing that my current obsessive recreation of the product into a truly professional grade rewrite also available to consumers isn’t the optimal choice?
I will setup an innovation forum soon; I hope you will continue to give me your invaluable end-user feedback. While I disagree that specific promises on development improvements verses general declarations of intent were made, I have done tremendous work maintaining the current data reliability in the product, not the least of which was my 2021 raster engine and satellite data streaming system, becoming the first PC weather program to do real-time GPU multispectral RGB satellite product rendering, or my 2021 SSE-based milliseconds-old NWS warning PUSH-based streaming. You pointed out some ongoing deficiencies in this area, certainly admittedly METAR, (though the entire V6 and now 2025 visions came out of my attempts last fall 2022 to create a whole new GIS engine precisely for the purpose of fixing the NWS Advisories layer, so I cannot admit deficiency on that), but I gave no guaranteed timeframe on the implementation of these, which I intend to replace with first-class modern high-performance 2024-expert-engineered solutions as part of the new product.
By the way, I still envision the primary product only being $25/month but also have way more value than it currently does. Like I said at least lightning should be built-in and far more embedded data services will be built-in as well. Right now, I don’t care about the prices, I only care about finding a sustainable model for the future and developing a world-class product in the next 14 months. I will look at costs and determine a fair structure once I have created the elements creating those costs. One piece of feedback from colleagues and superiors that I have received, which I have recently embraced, which I think you may agree with, is offering to broadcast/professional media users such as yourself a truly separate “WSV3 Broadcast” version that isn’t immediately available for download on the website, even if available to individuals for a high price upon manual contact or individually arranged. I also believe a distinction between dual-screen no-watermark rights is another differentiation with the broadcast version the folks at Intelliweather proposed to me; let me know your thoughts as I do absolutely intend to build you a special broadcast version with more traditional show-creation; I am building the new logic of all the data layer engines with implicit logical support for pre-loading. The pre-loading ability is a crucial ability not possible within the current WSV3 V5.9 program code infrastructure and is enabled by the next-gen product.
Thanks again and I hope you will respond with your typical valuable insights and real industry-space information. (I have to get back to development so I didn't proofread for grammar errors.)"
In summary, as a grandfathered pre-2018 user of WSV3 Professional, you are free to ignore this forum and the entire upcoming next-generation product line, and keep using the piece of software you purchased. Nobody is taking it away from you, however I will out of necessity sunset the 2021 data service after an announced date, likely 1/1/26, which is allowing pirated copies to have functional data, which was a temporary generosity even more great than the updates themselves.
Please let me know if any other one-time-purchase software customers were given a completely free subscription data service over 4 years after their purchase by the company that was not even obligated to make any product-only updates available to said users in the first place. My track record of extreme generosity and commitment to the grandfathered license holders is a testament to the importance I place on the business and on the relationship I have with my valued WSV3 users. I will not have a business anymore if we don't pursue the next-generation product, because I cannot pay for free data subscriptions for people who were never promised such a thing, and while the same enables massive piracy.
We are commencing a new product line. The executable is rewritten from scratch from early September 2023. If this new and different product doesn't suite you, you are free to ignore it. This is no different to you as a grandfathered WSV3 Professional V3.7-and-prior user than if another competing company were creating the same product.
Please use the existing space on the first-generation product forum I specifically made for this topic, and not this new innovation forum, to discuss this matter in further depth with me: https://wsv3.com/forum/viewforum.php?f=3&sid=6e19aaf7b91e1ae939cf109ed0435721
Please share with me on this forum your ideas, suggestions, and requests for the next-gen product if you have any. In particular, in this thread, I welcome commentary, criticism, and feedback on my ideas for the new licensing and installation model I detailed above. If you read through my vision above, you will find a massively streamlined user experience and satisfaction of years-long recurring user requests such as floating licensing, lower-price subscription tiers, short-term one-time-payment usage options, and support to run on VMs/Hypervisor, opening up Mac usage through Parallels. I welcome any other ideas or requests for efficient, streamlined installation and licensing.