GPG Mail: What an "update" !!!
Without warning, you made people update for a GPGMail which was FREE and now claim for payment …
What a « great » mentality !
Expected
To keep my old version of GPGSuite which was TOTALLY FREE and OPENSOURCE !
macOS 10.13.6 17G65
GPG Suite 2018.4 2310 (bc31914)
GPG Mail 3.0 1330 (724e6997) 30 trial days remaining
GPG Keychain 1.4.5 1496 (25530e6)
GPG Services 1.11.5 1033 (86cb937)
MacGPG 2.2.10 921 (b487092)
GPG Suite Preferences 2.1.3 1057 (966febd)
Libmacgpg 0.8.6 885 (35a18be)
pinentry 0.9.7.1 9 (db18340)
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1 Posted by andy on 22 Sep, 2018 12:35 PM
Agreed. I blindly updated based on the update prompt (my mistake, I understand). When I have seen this happen in the past (free to paid, or paid upgrade), the update prompt has warned of this. In addition, it's very unclear what the payment will cover; 'service plan' to me suggests an ongoing subscription as opposed to a perpetual license.
It is sad that this 'forced purchase' approach has been taken.
I am not ruling out paying up for continued use of the product, but the tactics used make me unsure. Giving the benefit of the doubt I would suggest publishing a detailed explanation of the 'support plan', along with comprehensive down-grade instructions, and modifying the update behaviour, to be more explicit as to the paid nature.
2 Posted by Alexander on 22 Sep, 2018 01:22 PM
Agreed. If you are changing conditions of software use just let us know why.
I am software developer and understand all complexity and real costs of software development. But this unfair trick with conditions changing while upgrading without explicit and loud noticing that it will not be free software anymore, why this should be paid and what the conditions of subscription plan makes me disappointed.
I am starting to look for alternative solutions for cryptography, because my trust to people who allows such behaviour is low. Thanks for month of trial to make these searches not so urgent.
3 Posted by Jimmy on 23 Sep, 2018 10:09 AM
Outrageous!!!
Please downgrade now same way it was upgraded. I did not give my permission to replace free software with paid crap.
4 Posted by Tomas on 23 Sep, 2018 10:17 AM
What Jimmy said. You can't just simply introduce paywall to your software without any information provided beforehand. I want to downgrade to version 2.
5 Posted by Bubba Singh on 23 Sep, 2018 10:24 AM
Downgrading won't help. I tried earlier today. It appears that these amateur kids placed a "time bomb" in the GPGMail component of the suite, regardless of the version. It seems to kill itself on a certain calendar date.
Bear in mind that although the majority of the suite is OpenSource, the developers added 3 proprietary files to the unique GPGMail part. This apparently gives them copyright to the entire app. If somebody can figure out whether they're actually necessary or, code something with similar functionality, we may still all be able to encrypt our mails again (notwithstanding the still questionable security of PGP). Oh, AND open any previously-encrypted emails without succumbing to extortion (which itself raises certain questions of a legal nature).
6 Posted by Linus on 23 Sep, 2018 10:34 AM
This is unprofessional and unserious, there was no note or anything else, that the license model will change. And the "support plan" on the gpgtools.org don't mention what you are paying for – is it a onetime-payment, yearly, until the next update …
I am quite unsure if this is legal at all under German jurisdiction, as it should fall under "Unlauterer Wettbewerb".
7 Posted by Roman on 24 Sep, 2018 07:41 AM
I was also very surprised to see this. if you told us before that the new version needs a subscription i would not have updated. now i got 2 options. revert to the previous version or look for an alternative! on the other hand i understand that you need money to continue development since apple tends to change things in every version. but i don't need a "support plan". there should be 2 versions. one for free or a one time fee like $10 without support. and additionally your "Support Plan". but switching completely to your "Support Plan" is a no-go.
8 Posted by Neil on 24 Sep, 2018 07:51 AM
You might see the "support plan" as you supporting them to continue to develop the software, rather than them providing support services you!
9 Posted by Linus on 24 Sep, 2018 07:58 AM
The question is not if a developer support plan is reasonable, but how it is introduced and if the users have the choice to stop using the software …
10 Posted by Linus on 24 Sep, 2018 08:02 AM
By the way, there is no address or imprint on the web page (the cue is here "Ladungsfähige Adresse"). You should get some legal consulting badly.
11 Posted by Roman on 24 Sep, 2018 08:10 AM
12 Posted by Anton on 24 Sep, 2018 08:43 AM
What a great example of bad manner update. No warnings, no info, just nothing. This is horrible example of open source software.
13 Posted by Yorgos on 24 Sep, 2018 08:47 AM
Pretty disappointed with the way you handled the transition to the paid subscription. I did google and found the announcement but I personally feel this was not communicated effectively especially during the upgrade process. I will end up paying for the subscription cause I think your software deserves it but count me as disappointed in this one.
14 Posted by NotPhlatEarth on 24 Sep, 2018 11:57 AM
Bummer... I understand the developers, but they way it went is not so nice.
Scheisse, time to use some other mail client, I was hating it any way..
15 Posted by jake on 25 Sep, 2018 07:39 AM
Absolutely pathetic!!! This is going to make lot of people distrust FOSS products !!!
Support Staff 16 Posted by Steve on 21 Oct, 2018 07:53 PM
Dear all,
thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts and feelings.
Please excuse the late reply, we are deeply sorry for not responding earlier. The amount of feedback we received in regards to the GPG Suite 2018.4 release was overwhelming. We are doing our best to catch up as fast as we can.
We sincerely apologize that the introduction of the GPG Mail Support Plan wasn't communicated as clear as we had hoped. We can absolutely understand if that frustrates you.
All the open questions should now be answered on the following pages:
In order to make it abundantly clear for users who haven't updated to 2018.4 yet, we have added a red banner on top of our release notes:
For reference the original release notes
To sum up the most important points about GPG Mail 3 and the Support Plan:
We would really like to see you stay, but want to assure you that even if you don't like our offering there are many alternatives available. The encryption technology which is used in GPG Suite is not a proprietary one, so you are not reliant on our tools to decrypt your existing emails. There is no lock-in. In additon all of our source code is available publicly.
This KB-article explains how to uninstall GPGTools or GPG Mail only.
If you have further questions, please do open new discussion where we will try to answer any remaining open questions.
Best,
Steve
Steve closed this discussion on 21 Oct, 2018 07:53 PM.