Thinking of Purchasing ILance?

[Peter]

I have noticed a few employees (including myself!) spending resources and composing on-going emails to new customers about ILance purchasing information. (I know, we should have templates -- but that allows us to be more personal with each and every customer) ;)

Anyways, with that in mind, new customers will be pointed to this thread to learn more about what is required, how to obtain a licensed copy of ILance software and how the payment process works using multiple methods.

I've put together some resources from a bunch emails gathered from the past and present:

Standard Requirements before purchasing

Full Customer profile details will be required (billing address, person who will own the license (full name, etc))
Customer must have a business or personal phone number so ILance can randomly follow-up with our customers via email and/or phone. Customers that do not have a contact address or phone number will be denied period. You become a license holder, and do not own the ILance software. To learn more about owning the ILance software without any restrictions, this can be provided at a much higher cost of ownership than any going rates on the ILance website. Contact our sales team (https://www.ilance.com/contact) if this is something that interests your company
Customers must review 'software requirements' prior to purchasing as open source provides no refunds after purchase.
Customer must adhere to our Software End User License Agreement (eula) before payment can be accepted. That link can be found here: EULA (http://www.ilance.com/eula)Open Source vs Zend/Encoded/Encrypted Jargon Revealed

Open Source: The release of any ILance software that is provided to our customers in open-source format. Open source format (in terms of PHP and the technology ILance was built from) does not require any "Compilation of the Source Codes" to have an operational software. Open source refers to the availability within the 'application page' that can define a customer being able to edit, alter, delete or duplicate programming codes within the software (for ILance software). Any server with PHP will run ILance open source or Zend below:
Zend/Encoded: The release of any ILance software that is provided to our customers in "non-open-source format". A Zend/Encoded version of ILance software means that ILance has "Encoded" the entire application (but not design templates) so the programming source codes could not be editted, altered, deleted or duplicated. The Zend/Encoded version still operates 100% as the open source version without any future customization to the base framework (ie: PHP source files)
Encrypted: The term "encrypted" refers to what ILance can do for the ILance software owner while ILance software is running in a production environment. For example, ILance software has the ability to "Encrypt" (basically garble data characters unreadable to humans) HTML source code while running for the end user. By using an encrypting function (which is also optional), the software allows the the visitor of the marketplace to see encrypted information instead of HTML information which in turn protects the safety of the marketplace, community, and administrators investment.Purchase via Paypal Requirements

Customer must be a verified paypal buyer (this ensures paypal has the customers information and has proven to be a loyal customer over time)
Estimated Software Delivery after purchase: 12 to 24 HoursPurchase via 2Checkout (International Customers)

Updated: ILance has currently suspended accepting payments from customers via 2Checkout until further notice. Please refer to "Wire Transfer" or "Major Credit Card" below. However, ILance software fully supports deposit payments via 2Checkout within the software application.Purchase with a Check or Money Order

Updated: ILance is currently not accepting personal/business checks and/or Money Orders until further notice.Purchase via Major Credit Card

Customers that choose to pay with their Major Credit Card such as Visa, MC, Disc, Amex, etc can do so by contacting ILance sales department and a sales agent will contact you within 24 hours to accept payment
Estimated Software Delivery: 12 to 24 HoursPurchase via Bank Wire Transfer

Customers that choose to pay via Wire Transfer (Bank to Bank) can do so by contacting an ILance sales agent. A sales representitive will contact you within 24 hours providing you with all the required bank deposit information you require.
Estimated Software Delivery Time: 5-7 DaysAfter the "Purchasing Process"

Updated: Customers support period (12 months) begins the exact date and time of payment clearance. Support includes Licensed Forum Access, Support Login Trouble Ticket resources, Software Patches, Software Modifications and Bug Tracking Resources
After the 12 months support period, customers may choose to "renew" their support period for another 12 months for a Support Renewal Fee of $99
Customers that require support will only be answered via Support trouble ticket area available from our members area ILance is not liable for "accepting" and "replying" to customers emails that contain user passwords, urls, links and other private data. Email is a great source of communication for general discussion and should be treated as thatI choose to Host on ILance's Private Hosting Network

Customers fully adhere to the ILance AUP (usage policy) preventing any spam operations, harmful acts, etc.
Customers fully understand any action that defeats our usage policy may have their server unplugged from our network
When ILance provides your business with a private hosting account for ILance deployment, the customer is responsible for Backing up all data. ILance provides an advanced Hosting control panel solution that provides more than enough tools to start your business, run your business, grow your business and protect your business. It is your responsibility to backup your business and/or personal data using tools provided by ILance (or tools you already have in place).This list will be updated regularly so please ensure you check back from time to time if you are considering to purchase any of ILance products.

Questions? Let us know in this thread or personal email.

Regards,

Peter Salzmann
ILance Product Manager

[john]

I have one issue that could be huge or might not be. The one reason I am thinking of buying the opensource code if for the fact that if somthing happens to your company and if you go out of business than I need to know that my code works and that we have complete control over it. While I understand your need for protection I think it is very crucial to understand our need to protect our interests also. Please let me know the solution for your company going out of business and how that effects our authentication.

[Peter]

John,

Good question and thanks for your interest in ILance. :)

The license key system uses technology provided by www.phpaudit.com (http://www.phpaudit.com). With this technology, ILance is able to launch a key server that stands on the internet waiting to accept any 'key requests' from a valid customer's marketplace. This 'check-up' will simply ensure your marketplace is licensed to the domain originally purchased and includes the server's IP address and license key -- nothing more.

In the unlikely event that ILance goes out of business, we would provide a mass update to licensed customers that would provide them with a no-license key check. ILance would never sell our product to a customer under these conditions of the key check enabled (at the same time going out of business) especially when we are providing a non-expiring (life-time) license key.

Further, the protection ILance serves via PHPaudit is for our internal use only. There is no absolute affect in terms of the deployment of your marketplace if the key server is unreachable or inaccessible. HOWEVER, if the key server is reachable, and a license key connects to ILance with invalid credentials (ip, server, license) that key will auto-suspend within the key server database, and render ILance software useless to that culprit. At that point it is up to ILance to ensure the key server is up and running to display these "suspended error messages" for on-going invalid licensee connections.

Hope this helps you a little in terms of your question.

-Peter

[john]

Peter thanks for the reply here, Can I ask about the possibility of escrow. Since we are buying the open version of the software would you be interested in putting the full code in escrow in the event something happen to your company then the code defaults to the registered people on the excrow list aka, the buyers of the source version?

I would even go so far as to say we could collectively pay for this as an option. There is a company called DSI owned by Iron Mountain and this is what they do

I am not trying to be picky, I just want to protect my investment.

Thanks
John

[Peter]

John,

Your comment is very unclear and I cannot provide a proper answer. You are talking about two different things within the same sentence, and it seems you confusing Escrow with Programming.

Although I could be misreading your direct question, there is no plans on forwarding the 'source code' to an 'escrow' account by any means.

The point to a non-expiring life-time license to launch ILance on your website is to provide a non-expiring life-time license key to our customers. This allows us to market our solution to customers interested in our software development, at the same time help us to improve the software, expand it's future and eliminate any competition. :)

If ILance sells the company, the customers and software would most likely go with it.
If ILance went bankrupt, your license remains to function without any license key server barriers. This wouldn't be fair to our customers period.
If ILance shut it's doors to any other reason, we certainly would not limit our customer base to a non-functioning license key. As I've mentioned in an earlier reply, ILance would send our customers a mass-update which would defeat the license key protection period.Was I able to answer your question? :) It also seems this forum will be a great source of ideas from existing cutomers interested in learning more about the terms of usage aspect of ILance. It seems this information above is not included in the present End user license agreement, so I'll get the team together to issue an update on that. For reference, the present EULA can be found here: http://www.ilance.com/eula , and can be expected to change from time to time.

-Peter

[john]

Okay, maybe I am paranoid. Thanks for answering my concerns and questions. I appreciate your help and will be joining the team this week as a user of the software.

Thanks

[Peter]

Sounds good John, we look forward to having you aboard. :)

-Peter

[karvis]

What data is sent from my Marketplace to ILance key server?

License Key (you received upon purchase)
Server / Domain Name serving ILance software
IP Address serving ILance software
Estimated string packet length: 2 bytes


I'm on a shared server containing several other sites. What if the ip of the server hosting my site changes? Let's say I would change the provider. This would lead us to an invalid ip for the domain and Ilance wouldn't work anymore!? What do I need to do? Just provide you with information about the change or will your lincense key server validate the changed ip automaticly?

Atte

[Peter]

Great question!

One of the things we made sure of is the flexibility of our license key system. Since our demo site (product showcase) is also on a shared server, we understand the many different scenerios of hosting let it be fully dedicated, private hosting (VPS), shared server hosting, etc.

As per how it all works is simple. ILance uses a concept such as "Stealth License Access" that will not limit your domain to a specific IP address (we can), but we (most of the time) provide a more flexible approach that will use either the main IP address (usually for dedicated server customers) or by hostname + IP via stealth mode.

We would tell the license key system that "Customer A" is running ILance on host name(s): mydomain1.com and mydomain1.net along with IP address xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx. If customer A decided to move servers, the domain names would still be valid for the license key system as the host names are still the same but since the IP *might* change, ILance would receive Invalid License access, work with the customer to learn about a server move or relocation and respectively add the customers new IP address into the system.

So to answer your question :), the customer would most likely contact ILance, inform us of the new IP address and this process takes no longer than a few minutes to setup. This information can be submitted via Trouble Ticket area.

Peter