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Ground control to Major Trial

virtualize.sh

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Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#101

Post by Propelloni »

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…

Ignoring an OSS option is not the crux of the issue, it only adds more stupid to the cake. They don't deserve a place on the OSS hall of shame, but on the list of shysters and fraudsters.

A company is exploiting your free-trial offer, defrauding your project of resources even if it is only a buck and a half. Why are you sending them money? Just shut them down. Unless you have some really unfortunate wording in your TOS, there is nothing they can do. On Monday, send an e-mail to all accounts associated with $COMPANY and tell them in clear terms that you are going to terminate their free-trials COB EOW. Leave a special contact number to negotiate fees, wait for your phone to ring.

Seriously, why are you putting up with this?

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#102

Post by bsza »

plam503711 wrote: post #26
florbnit wrote: post #10

> We’re not going to waste days chasing them. But at some point, this goes beyond saving a few bucks: it becomes performance art. Oh for the love of tech, do chase them. This absolutely has to be in void of the terms of your trial take them to court. If not, then at the very least name and shame the company, so some dumb manager orchestrating this silly theft will get fired and someone more mature can be rotated in.

I’m actually considering reaching out directly to the CEO and telling the full story. But honestly? There’s a good chance he’s fully aware — and totally fine with it. That’s part of what makes it so disappointing. We’re not rushing into legal action — it’s not worth the energy for now — but publicly calling out the behavior felt necessary. It also sends a message to others in the ecosystem about the kind of nonsense…

Sad to hear this and I hope (some semblance of) justice will be served, but just to play the devil’s advocate: if you refuse to name them, how can we know you’re telling the truth and not just pulling a publicity stunt?

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#103

Post by masklinn »

reconnecting wrote: post #30
bradleyankrom wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

^ creator of Tirreno

Thank you. I'm still not sure if this should be mentioned. On the one hand, I don't want to overly promote the tirreno, but on the other hand, when I see an issue such as trial abuse that could be easily resolved, I can't resist. My bad.

If you mention the product, even if it’s an absolutely perfect fit, you should definitely disclose the conflict of interest upfront.

This is not about overly promoting the product, it’s about making clear that you are promoting your product (or project, doesn’t even have to be a product).

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#105

Post by reconnecting »

DocTomoe wrote: post #65
arp242 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> freshly registered email accounts can be blocked almost in real time. How does it detect if an email account is freshly registered?

chances are: checks it against a database of addresses it has seen before (e.g. because they were used to register stuff elsewhere). No such entry, or entries all younger than n days -> 'freshly registered'. Sucks for people who don't use their addresses for just about anything.

It is not a healthy idea to prevent access to a trial solely because of a lack of reputation associated with an email. However, in this specific case, if there is a rotation of numbers at the end of the email, tirreno has rules that detect similar email patterns.

Additionally, I assume that registrations are coming from the same IP or network, which should make it simple to detect through platform.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#106

Post by axus »

o_m wrote: post #39

At my last job (a billion dollar company) someone had set up some kind of proxy where one free user account was used by ~100 employees. We wanted some more features they didn't offer so we looked at some of their competitors. I was in the meeting where we were going to decide to keep using what we had or use the better solution (in my opinion). Both were presented fairly except for the price. The plan was to continue…

How much money did they save over 5-10 years through this illegal or unethical behavior?

If "Rocket Company" averaged 30 machines per month, max $1600 per month let's say $600k / year before discount. Maybe kept 3 million dollars over 10 years. I imagine the only way Vates will get paid for their service is if control is taken from the operational groups doing the actual work and "abstracted" to a centralized IT group.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#107

Post by reconnecting »

masklinn wrote: post #103
reconnecting wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thank you. I'm still not sure if this should be mentioned. On the one hand, I don't want to overly promote the tirreno, but on the other hand, when I see an issue such as trial abuse that could be easily resolved, I can't resist. My bad.

If you mention the product, even if it’s an absolutely perfect fit, you should definitely disclose the conflict of interest upfront. This is not about overly promoting the product, it’s about making clear that you are promoting your product (or project, doesn’t even have to be a product).

Noted with thanks. Will do.

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#109

Post by matt-p »

rocketvole wrote: post #20
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

If you also ban virtual and pre-paid cards it cuts this to almost zero.

There is a difference, this rocket company is not really going to generate a new virtual card every time? You think their business bank account even supports that?

Re: Ground control to Major Trial

#110

Post by threeseed »

plam503711 wrote: post #26
florbnit wrote: post #10

> We’re not going to waste days chasing them. But at some point, this goes beyond saving a few bucks: it becomes performance art. Oh for the love of tech, do chase them. This absolutely has to be in void of the terms of your trial take them to court. If not, then at the very least name and shame the company, so some dumb manager orchestrating this silly theft will get fired and someone more mature can be rotated in.

I’m actually considering reaching out directly to the CEO and telling the full story. But honestly? There’s a good chance he’s fully aware — and totally fine with it. That’s part of what makes it so disappointing. We’re not rushing into legal action — it’s not worth the energy for now — but publicly calling out the behavior felt necessary. It also sends a message to others in the ecosystem about the kind of nonsense…

> There’s a good chance he’s fully aware — and totally fine with it

Why would you think that a CEO would involve himself in matters like this ?

Especially given that whichever aerospace company it is would be far more concerned with issues like tariffs, geopolitics, recession risks etc than whether or not a company is using an open source versus a community edition of some forgettable infrastructure component.

Also choosing to pursue legal action instead of simply blocking them from downloading more free trials seems childish and short sighted.

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