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Ground control to Major Trial

virtualize.sh

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Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#11

Post by sgarland »

EDEdDNEdDYFaN wrote: post #4

Isn't this a failure by the company to recognize free trial abuse sooner? and to not close the loophole immediately seems like even more of a weak behavior. Calling them out but not taking decisive action beyond claiming that they are acting immorally ultimately accomplishes nothing. Businesses are not beholden to your ideas about what is nice and fair, but whatever the rules and constraints are to your system. if yo…

Agreed. I would hellban their entire company permanently, and devote time and effort to write tooling to catch future signup attempts. This is utterly despicable.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#12

Post by EDEdDNEdDYFaN »

plam503711 wrote: post #9
EDEdDNEdDYFaN wrote: post #4

Isn't this a failure by the company to recognize free trial abuse sooner? and to not close the loophole immediately seems like even more of a weak behavior. Calling them out but not taking decisive action beyond claiming that they are acting immorally ultimately accomplishes nothing. Businesses are not beholden to your ideas about what is nice and fair, but whatever the rules and constraints are to your system. if yo…

You're absolutely right that businesses act within whatever constraints exist — and yes, we were a bit naive. We assumed that if someone had a fully functional, free, open source version available (well-documented and easy to install), nobody sane would go out of their way to abuse the trial system instead. To be clear, it’s not just trial abuse — it’s actively ignoring the better, freer option in favor of repeatedly…

To be fair to them - they've been doing it for 10 years without a problem!

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#13

Post by duxup »

EDEdDNEdDYFaN wrote: post #4

Isn't this a failure by the company to recognize free trial abuse sooner? and to not close the loophole immediately seems like even more of a weak behavior. Calling them out but not taking decisive action beyond claiming that they are acting immorally ultimately accomplishes nothing. Businesses are not beholden to your ideas about what is nice and fair, but whatever the rules and constraints are to your system. if yo…

Based on what I read, it sounds like they believe in their model and aren’t looking to come down on everyone because of one bad actor.

I can understand that.

Obstacles to free trials and such often are more hassle than their worth and a determined person can get around them anyway.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#14

Post by nickfromseattle »

Meneth wrote: post #7

Around 130$ million yearly revenue? Matches RocketLab. https://www.nzherald.co.nz/business/companies/rocket-lab-rev...

Rocket Lab did ~$123m/quarter in Q1 and ~$400m in 2024 [0], while this article claims, "Around $130 million in annual revenue."

I don't think it's Rocket Lab.

[0] https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/RKLB/rocket-lab-us...

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#17

Post by kova12 »

I used to work in IT in a large corporation back in the days. Amount of work necessary to procure software was so staggering, that any alternative "creative solution" would be much more preferable. And the worst thing is that the cheap software was the one that suffered most. The gazillion-dollar CISCO upgrade was no problem, it's already gazillion dollars. But to get $10 email shareware license one would spend many work-hours of many people, so who's gonna do it.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#18

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

> But at some point, this goes beyond saving a few bucks: it becomes performance art.

Love it. I appreciate the humor and good example behind that.

It's entirely likely the company is spending more money on staff time, than on the product.

I also cannot even imagine running mission-critical stuff on free trials (I have heard of it, before. I think Adobe was successfully sued, once, because someone created an image in their free trial, and then, couldn't open it, after the trial expired).

If I were one of that company's customers, I'd be fairly concerned.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#20

Post by rocketvole »

matt-p wrote: post #5

I think the most depressing thing is how unsurprising this is. This is why free trials require credit cards upfront, as they're more difficult to fake, not because you're about to be stealth billed. It's thanks to people like this.

it's practically trivial to bypass this if you really want to. CapitalOne in the US allows you to have virtual cards that can be verified but you can delete and block at any time for free if you have a credit card from them. I'm sure the practice discourages casuals from gaming trials, but it just feels like it's making life miserable for paying customers but doing almost nothing to stop bad actors
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