4 Very Important Questions about Dolphin

My dear community and boonex,

I have tested your software on my server and I am looking forward to purchase a license since my investors from bayer and my company are looking to establish a community. However, I would like to know if the watermarks/banners of your company will be removed, especially from the swf (flash) files such as the audio player. The links to your company will be removed as far as I understood from all pages. If under a circumstance I purchased the software and established a big community and for some reason the software cant connect to boonex server, will I still be able to use your software? Will this induce the re-appearance of boonex links and watermarks? Is the installation or the running of your software "boonex server dependant?". As a last question, is the permantent license permantent in a sense that I can use the software without monthly or anual fees and reinstall it on a different domain (having uninstalled it from the previous).

I would be very happy if I would get an answer because I became abit confused after I heared stories about boonex scams. Please help me clarify.

Thank you for your support and greetings from Switzerland.

IANAL.

There used to be a number of paid licenses.  But that's no longer the case and there are only two licenses left: Free and Paid.  Free can be used to stop Dolphin from requesting a license, but doesn't remove the banners.  Paid has no expiration and can be used with any version of Dolphin - past and present.  Licenses can be reset and used on a different site or domain.

It was the Fall of 1985.  Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev for the first time.  In the civilization of Kyrgyzstan (with a 70% score!), an intern at BoonEx General Software Developments (BGSD) was working on the license server while still taking sips from his morning tea.  Then disaster stuck.  From the ceiling, a car came crashing into the server!  Bam!  Boom!  The server was dead.  Across the world, Dolphin sites flaunted banners and failed to load certain pages.  It seems the close connection to BGSD servers was a double-edged sword.  Dolphin was patched to lessen the hold BGSD's servers had on the software.  Cars would continue to crash into servers at BGSD, but with the recent enhancements, Dolphin should be fine.

In short, no expiration for licenses and banners will vanish (for Paid licenses).  Dolphin shouldn't show banners in the event BoonEx servers die.  Licenses can be reset and used on a different domain or site.

Thank you so much for your reply, now my last complemental questions before I purchase the prime license.

1) Does removing Boonex footers mean that it will also remove the banners/footers from all flash modules such as the sound player?

2) Does it remove the source code comments or should I have to do this manually?

3) Are my users registration data safe or does boonex collect them in some form? I need to know so that I can write my terms and privacy policy according to that.

4) Worst case scenario: Assuming Boonex server is down for a year or the company ceases to exist. How, or better asked, will I be able to re-apply my valid license on the same domain when starting over from fresh or when transfering to a different domain or does this depend on boonex verifications from their server?


I hope I dont bother but these are my last 4 questions, please help me understand. I thank you in advance.

Sincerely,

Rudolf.

1) Yes

2) If you are referring to the licence notice in the source of each php file then you cannot legally remove that at all regardless of licence. This question almost sounds as if you intend to rebrand and sell this software as your own product. You could try and reach Andrew Boon and talk to him directly about this, but i do not believe it would be allowed.

3) It is safe. Boonex does not collect it.

4) No. If boonex servers are not up and running, the licence will not be able to register when entering it into the site.

I did mean "banners" as in the banner at the bottom of the site and under the Flash apps.  Deano is correct on all 4, as usual.

It shouldn't matter about not being able to (legally) remove BoonEx comments from the code.  Users can't see that stuff from their browsers.  Dolphin is under the CC-BY (Creative Commons Attribution) license, so Dolphin can be redistributed - but the banners and comments in the code need to remain intact as part of the attribution.  The Paid license removes the banners, but the comments in the code need to remain at all times.

Yes, if the license server is down, Dolphin can't accept a new license, because it can't check to see if it's valid.  So in case the Apocalypse happens and the BoonEx servers are raptured, don't expect to be able to add a now non-existing license and expect Dolphin to be able to check it against a now non-existing server.  But I'm sure some other solution would present itself in that case...

deano, your answers made me understant things alot better. However, I do not not intend to rebrand but, if any of the comments can be seens by users simply looking at their source code then thats another story but, I assume they are only in the php files then thats ok really. Thank Nathan for the great and fun to read answers, you cleared my mind.

Great community support, great software. I will definately buy it tommorow.

Thank you.

From experience, make sure you search the forums with the term "problems" or "bugs"

Do intense research in market before purchasing from vendors, be very careful there. 

My friend so you say by purchasing a extension in the market I could break my live site? Is there a way to test the software before actually purchasing it? I tried it but I only get the option to buy the license first. I do see a few people posting bugs for various mods, forexample ultimate points system.

I would love to extend my site after some time with those mods but yes, im really scared I would break my website. Maybe hiring a professional to optimize dolphin and create a custom extension would be more suitable, im not sure yet.

Modules?  No.  Mods (changes to files)?  It could happen.  Never install mods without keeping track of the changes, or else patches will become a nightmare.  Feel free to install Dolphin elsewhere and use that site for testing changes.  Dolphin doesn't need a license to work, and test changes shouldn't matter if the site's in free mode or not.  Where it asks for a license, there's a link under the box to skip it.  You can also generate a free license and enter that.  It'll remove the license request, but keep the banners intact.

The problem with mods is that people need to keep track of changes.  If you install a bunch of mods without making a note about them, other mods or patches can cause problems.  Never upload a file from a mod and overwrite an existing one, unless that file is specific to that mod.  Instead, add the changes to the actual file.

derartmedia isn't around anymore.  As far as I'm aware, there's no other real problem in the Market now.  Well, except ________ and maybe _________...