Re:A $130M company faked trials instead of running our free OSS
by Propelloni on Friday May 16, 2025 @09:08AM
(#44005035)
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:A $130M company faked trials instead of running our free OSS
by russfink on Friday May 16, 2025 @08:57AM
(#44004921)
Yes. Your pain point is the level of support you are giving on good faith to these charlatans. Maybe add a clause to your license that you reserve the right to limit the amount of technical assistance on the free download. Outside of that, if I understand this matter correctly, most of your customers are honest and you’re willing to write off this one company in the interest of keeping your own corporate sanity.
Re:A $130M company faked trials instead of running our free OSS
by EDEdDNEdDYFaN on Friday May 16, 2025 @08:22AM
(#44004559)
To be fair to them - they've been doing it for 10 years without a problem!
To be clear, it’s not just trial abuse — it’s actively ignoring the better, freer option in favor of repeatedly faking evaluations just to get the “easy mode.”
We’ll definitely tighten things up going forward. But in nearly a decade of doing this, they're the only ones to push it to this scale. So yeah, they've earned a spot in our open source hall of shame