> I've written 4 or 5 times to renew my trustware license since the site
> changed but have gotten no response. Is the download from the IBObjects
> site now the same as the trustware version or what?

Don, lots has been being done with IBO behind the scenes. Mostly to do with
my business development plan. I'm trying to automate this so I can provide a
much better service to my customers and resellers and well as allow myself
to focus more purely on the technical and developmental aspects of IBO.

IBO has proven successful beyond my expectations and it's about time I gave
it a more professional business foundation to grow to the next level on. I
especially would like to get more involved with Firebird's future too. I've
got to get out of the bog I'm in to do that. Handling trustware requests in
the way I do is rather time consuming, poor security and nearly useless data
comes out of what I do. I am a business and Trustware does have the
intention of being profitable as well as charitable. So far its been mostly
all charitable. It's time I built things so I'm more likely to get my share
of the deal.

What's done so far:
New subscription management system for paying commercial customers with
ecommerce built-in. File download for subscription customers. New sign-ups
and automated source access is now completed. Also, customer tracking and
upgrades for eligible customers only.

Consolidation, data entry and cleanup of all past customer purchases into a
database. (These were formerly in the various different formats of the
merchant system. Now I have my own.) I also went through the hundreds of
address and other data change requests to customer profiles. There are MANY
IBO customers in the 8 years I've been in business and it's a bit of a hodge
podge of data to clean up.

My focus right now:

Get my next release completed. This implies fixing many bugs which have
piled up over the past 3-4 months and some older ones that carried over.
This should make the IBO 4..x version virtually perfect. Certainly better
than the "good enough" level, but I really like to be sure my product is top
notch.

I am also providing a real installation routine for IBO to automate it
(probably for fresh installs only). I've paid a contractor to develop one
and it is all finished except for getting it up to date with the latest IBO
source changes. This should make it much easier for people to use IBO and
especially will help those who evaluate, once I get it figured out too. The
eval is more tricky cause it has pre-compiled DCU's instead of all sources.

Then, notify all subscribers, and send them an email so that they can gain
access to this new release. There is no point in sending this out until the
new release is ready for download. There will also be a notice sent to all
customers who's subscription has expired and a stream-lined way for them to
purchase the upgrade and get the new release. They will be given the sign-on
credentials to access their account history and be able to upgrade based on
past purchases.

I'm trying to get this done prior to Oct 31st!

(Note: I'm making it much cheaper to purchase an upgrade as well. The price
will be the same but instead of a 6 month extension I'm making it 12 months.
I am then going to actually manage subscriptions and help people stay up to
date. As it is right now, hardly anyone has stayed up to date because I have
allowed people continual access to sources past expiration. People can be
trusted but they need to be informed and reminded. This way I think it will
be a win-win. You get a better deal and I should reap more income.)

After this, I will then work on the Trustware source access system. New
trustware requests are being allowed to pile up because I simply want to
push forward and get to this point so it will be more automated and generate
meaningful data I can use. The way they are now is just too time consuming
to deal with and it eats up my precious time out of the day. If someone
presents a compelling reason they cannot use the evaluation version I will
manually process it.

Ok, with all this said, pretend I have a do not disturb sign on my door for
the next week. <g>

Thanks!

Jason Wharton