Lindy

The new terms only begin once you opt in to the new terms.  
There's a certain amount of hysteria that these changes are being applied retroactively.  
If you don't accept or want the new terms and want to coast along on v4, then don't accept the new terms.
It's understandable that clients with your worldview will skip renewals, perhaps because of experiences in other forum ecosystems.  It would make sense that you are cautious about continuing to invest in an active license if, for example,your forum developer doesn't release any new features after years of no activity. If you truly and authentically evaluate IPS on its own merits by looking at the Release Notes and the Company blog, however, you'll find a development and release cycle that is robust, monthly, and feature rich.  
The terms by IPS seem more stringent in light of other ecosystems.  I invite you to evaluate IPS on its own merits, instead of imposing the fears from other vendors.

I'll be honest when I saw this thread, I almost went for the popcorn, but this is actually a pretty big W for self-hosted licenses.
Removing the ability to select apps is actually smart. While it may greatly restrict your ability to budget on smaller orgs, it kind of pushes you into trying them and finding ways to monetize.
Both of my licenses were missing apps, so having access to them all while still paying less kind of blows my mind. This was not on my "what will IPS do next" bingo card. A step in the right direction and much appreciated by us self-hosted customers!

Honestly, the process was fantastic, and the discussions were numerous. While IPS does want the CIC product to be their primary product, they see the value in being the best self-hosted product on the market as well.
But as they've said for a while, the self-hosted market is changing.  Sites that are "just forums" are not likely to survive long going forward, which is a position I've held for years back when I added IP.Content/Pages as the article management system on my site.  As such, it doesn't make sense to keep the apps as individual products anymore and instead sell the suite as a whole.  It allows IPS to integrate the apps even tighter. 
In my view, site owners who run "just a forum" need to sit back and reflect on where the world is today and if such a site makes sense to continue self-host, or just migrate it to Reddit instead. If you are a "just forums" site owner, I would encourage you to look at this change as a chance to grow in new ways with the new apps that you didn't have access to before.  The only limit is your imagination.
IPS published several drafts of the upgrade language to us in the group and we all took turns making suggestions and modifying the language.  While IPS certainly set the guidelines, it was a very collaborative effort between IPS and those of us in the customer focus group. I think every person in the focus group submitted a modification suggestion to IPS and IPS was very receptive towards them. 
With regard to how the licensing changes work, especially regarding renewals, it's clear that in order to make sure the self-hosted product is a viable, ongoing product, people who use the software need to chip in. The pool of self-hosted customers has shrunk dramatically over the last years. Making the renewals and catch up fees mandatory was the only way to do that in a fair manner but IPS counters that with lower renewal fees for any site with 2 or more apps.
My relationship with IPS over the last 20-ish years has been strained from time to time, but I have to say that this has been a fantastic experience for me personally.

I’ll refrain from continuing this conversation. 👍

Sorry for the inconvenience; we have deployed a change on our end to hopefully alleviate this concern. 

Sorry for the inconvenience; we have deployed a change on our end to hopefully alleviate this concern. 

Sorry for the inconvenience; we have deployed a change on our end to hopefully alleviate this concern. 

Sorry for the inconvenience; we have deployed a change on our end to hopefully alleviate this concern. 

When you upload a file to AWS, it's using HTTP(S) to post the image via an API.  That is a one-time transfer from your server to AWS servers.  Once it is there, anytime the file is called, it's delivered directly from AWS via the bucket URL.  Meaning AWS is the one delivering the image instead of your server.
If you were to implement FTP, while it would not be difficult to upload the file...  downloading it would be much more difficult.  Modern browsers no longer allow the FTP protocol in the browser.  (For example with Chrome, it was removed in version 59.) 
This means IPS would have to each time it was requested, login to the FTP server and download it...  then deliver it to the user.  That would dramatically increase the work on the server, slow down the delivery of the site (because it has to be downloaded and then sent to the user), and increase bandwidth on both the web and FTP servers.  

We share your frustration and I assure you that although this is the first major outage event in years and we have a solid 99%+ record, we are taking this very seriously and have already taken both internal and vendor related steps to minimize the risk of this happening again. We have also made improvements to our status and communications system so you remain better informed throughout these unlikely events. 
I'm deeply sorry for the inconvenience this event has caused. Cloud clients with further concerns are welcome to send a support email and we will be happy to discuss. 
Thank you!

We share your frustration and I assure you that although this is the first major outage event in years and we have a solid 99%+ record, we are taking this very seriously and have already taken both internal and vendor related steps to minimize the risk of this happening again. We have also made improvements to our status and communications system so you remain better informed throughout these unlikely events. 
I'm deeply sorry for the inconvenience this event has caused. Cloud clients with further concerns are welcome to send a support email and we will be happy to discuss. 
Thank you!

We share your frustration and I assure you that although this is the first major outage event in years and we have a solid 99%+ record, we are taking this very seriously and have already taken both internal and vendor related steps to minimize the risk of this happening again. We have also made improvements to our status and communications system so you remain better informed throughout these unlikely events. 
I'm deeply sorry for the inconvenience this event has caused. Cloud clients with further concerns are welcome to send a support email and we will be happy to discuss. 
Thank you!

We share your frustration and I assure you that although this is the first major outage event in years and we have a solid 99%+ record, we are taking this very seriously and have already taken both internal and vendor related steps to minimize the risk of this happening again. We have also made improvements to our status and communications system so you remain better informed throughout these unlikely events. 
I'm deeply sorry for the inconvenience this event has caused. Cloud clients with further concerns are welcome to send a support email and we will be happy to discuss. 
Thank you!

We are ISO27001 compliant, however, the certification process is still pending. We will also have more publicly consumable reports available in coming months. In the interim, you may find us on the CSA STAR registry and you are of course welcome to contact us via email for more information and specific questions. 
Thank you!

We are ISO27001 compliant, however, the certification process is still pending. We will also have more publicly consumable reports available in coming months. In the interim, you may find us on the CSA STAR registry and you are of course welcome to contact us via email for more information and specific questions. 
Thank you!

We are ISO27001 compliant, however, the certification process is still pending. We will also have more publicly consumable reports available in coming months. In the interim, you may find us on the CSA STAR registry and you are of course welcome to contact us via email for more information and specific questions. 
Thank you!

Love this 😃

🍀 Welcome to this week's Invision Insight! 🍀
Thank you for checking out this weekly round up post. We would love to hear if you enjoy catching up here and how we can make these more useful for you. Feel free to say hello and let us know what are you working on this week. 
As for us, let’s get into what the Invision Team is up to.
 
Current Happenings
Our Live Topics feature is progressing nicely and nearing its debut in beta soon! Did you catch the live March Release Chat on Wednesday or notice the converted topic that now lives in this forum? That is the live topics feature in all its [version one] glory. 🙂 I’ll share that topic here and if you missed the live topic in action and want to join, follow and add the April Release Chat to your calendar.
 
On Deck
Our March release is set for next week so stay tuned for that. As you know, we recommend that you keep your community up to date each month to keep it running smoothly and so you can enjoy the latest updates. Let us know what you are looking forward to most this time. Are you a Downloads application user or are you getting into GraphQL? 
As a reminder, here is what is slated for the March release, version 4.7.8.
https://invisioncommunity.com/release-notes/
 
Peeking Ahead 
Commerce is getting its round of improvements along with some additions to Clubs and more for Gallery based on feedback we have received. These are coming your way in the next month...or two. They are currently undergoing intense review and testing ... or something similar 😉 Happy to fill you in with more details once those are made available.
 
Lastly, for those that like to see what we are up to line by line, here is the changelog for week.
 
Changelog
 
  Hope you enjoyed this week's Invision Insight round up. See you next time. 🙂 

Unfortunately, not every suggestion or request will reach the product, or at least within the timeframe requested. Data and privacy protection is something we take very seriously and as a provider to customers worldwide, we receive a significant amount of requests to assist customers in achieving local regulatory compliance. While we respect the DSK's position, Commerce was not designed or built to accommodate guest transactions with no corresponding account and incorporating the changes necessary to comply with this regulation would be a measurable effort with very little gain/ROI.
It's not something we have necessarily dismissed indefinitely, it is simply not on the radar in the foreseeable future for the reason cited above -- there's low demand and considerable development involved in making the platform do things that are counterintuitive to its chief goals, and thus, lacking the technical provisions for same. 

No. Why is it needed?  You’re buying a hosted solution. You’re not buying a server.  You don’t get database access with Gmail or a separate area to directly edit the files in a mail queue either. Think of this like Gmail or Salesforce, or a SaaS platform. 
You can upload images, you can create CSS, but you’re not uploading random PHP scripts. Again… this is not a hosting account.  You should not be “mass uploading” content.
No. Again, you don’t need to.  No hosted solution such as Gmail or Salesforce does that. You keep framing this to hosting when it’s a different solution. 

Think about just USING the service instead of trying to RUN it. Now if you need to install other scripts like Wordpress and you want to manage things like backups or play in the firewall or get your hands dirty… a hosted solution is not the right thing for you.  

Looking forward to seeing how Live Topics has turned out 🎉

I'm sorry, we are unable to distribute old and insecure versions of the software for download. Perhaps if you can share the issues you're experiencing, someone might be able to push you in the right direction.

I truly appreciate the fresh perspective and positive energy you brought to us, Jordan. I wish you the very best in your future endeavors and have no doubt that you will carry that ++ vibe wherever you go. 🙂 
You are certainly leaving a void, however, I'm hopeful you'll continue to check in, let us know how you are doing and sprinkle some of that magic Jordust™ that the community has come to love and appreciate. 
Best of luck! 🙏

Thank you for posting this - we will take a look!

I'm sorry for your frustration. I've gone ahead and done this for you as a courtesy one last time, but unfortunately, the IPS retail system and the Marketplace are two different entities - the funds are not commingled. Doing this compromises the accounting on both ends, so the best way to do this moving forward would be to withdrawal the credit from the Marketplace and submit it to the client area as a normal payment. 
I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding and cooperation.