Policy change for Hosted customers?

[NeilC]

While logging a suppport ticket for an unrelated issue (708379), I mentioned that I still don't have access to any IP Board downloads in my Client Area.

The response I got was "...as a Hosting Customer, you're effectively "leasing" a forum and space to run it from us. You don't actually own a software license. So the downloads won't be available to you. We must perform all upgrades, and would be glad to do so how and when you wish. It's part of your Support, free, and only requires you to file a Support ticket requesting it."


Is this a recent policy change, and if so, what's the reason for it? I was able to download and upgrade to 3.1.1 (and 3.1.2?) myself, but since 3.1.3 I have no longer had access to the IP. Board category. I still have access to IP. Downloads, IP. Chat, IP. Subscriptions and IP. Converge - which seems somewhat inconsistent, as I have a copy of Downloads 2.3.0 ready and waiting to install, but I can't until I raise a ticket to upgrade me from Board 3.1.3 to 3.1.4.

On the odd occasion when I've asked Support to perform an upgrade for me, it's always gone fine, so I guess it's not the end of the world, but I did like the flexibility of being able to schedule my upgrades to the exact time that I wanted to do them, rather than having to raise a ticket and potentially end up in a queue of other support requests.

[LeadCrow]

While logging a suppport ticket for an unrelated issue (708379), I mentioned that I still don't have access to any IP Board downloads in my Client Area.

Normal. Youre not licenced to deploy it on a separate server not managed by IPS. This gets rid of a risk of leasers taking off with the files ('free copy! woohoo! and now I run into the sunset with mah loot!').

Is this a recent policy change, and if so, what's the reason for it?

I believe this has been the case since the beginning of the hosted service.
If you have a purchased licence, I believe you would have the same download access as regular customers, and could have one spare unused version deployed on your hosted community (this way you're spared the encoding and its negatives on performance and mod use). The same free update service still applies, I believe.

[bfarber]

Normal. Youre not licenced to deploy it on a separate server not managed by IPS. This gets rid of a risk of leasers taking off with the files ('free copy! woohoo! and now I run into the sunset with mah loot!').

This isn't actually possible, because our hosted communities use an encoded copy of IP.Board that is locked to our servers.


As to the original question - I'm unsure when this policy change was implemented. I think officially it's been in place for a while, but we've only recently begun changing configurations and infrastructure on our side to enforce it.