Zimbra 10.1.X - License problems since the release of 10.1

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L. Mark Stone
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Re: Zimbra 10.1.X - License problems since the release of 10.1

Post by L. Mark Stone »

rainer_d wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:46 pm Were there really that many people out there gaming the system, using keygens or whatever that it had such a material impact on Zimbra's bottom line that it justified risking basically all of what goodwill is left?

I know we activated the same license very often - but that is because we run an identical "twin" of our production system as a test-system and we frequently roll that back because updates don't work on the first try (recently more often than not...).
We also had to roll back production updates then and now.

Currently, it seems I cannot "revoke" an activated offline license in the portal.
Not sure if there is any real way to accurately assess how much system gaming has been going on. Certainly Zimbra seemingly felt that there was enough of it to justify moving to this new licensing model.

Interesting that the portal doesn't yet handle releases for offline activations. It would be helpful if you opened a Support Case for that - makes Disaster Recovery much slower if one has to wait for Support to do that on the back end with offline activation for sure.
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BradC
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Re: Zimbra 10.1.X - License problems since the release of 10.1

Post by BradC »

rainer_d wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:46 pm Were there really that many people out there gaming the system, using keygens or whatever that it had such a material impact on Zimbra's bottom line that it justified risking basically all of what goodwill is left?
I thought they might have done it for the real time use stats. The "ng" modules used to phone home daily, providing ZeXtras real time usage information on pretty much all Zimbra-NE installs. I figured Zimbra might have wanted a piece of that. Having real time stats makes it easier to illustrate the finances when they want to on-sell the company.

If it was done for "piracy" purposes then all it has done is impacted legitimate customers.
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Re: Zimbra 10.1.X - License problems since the release of 10.1

Post by rainer_d »

L. Mark Stone wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 10:33 pm
rainer_d wrote: Mon Feb 03, 2025 2:46 pm Were there really that many people out there gaming the system, using keygens or whatever that it had such a material impact on Zimbra's bottom line that it justified risking basically all of what goodwill is left?

I know we activated the same license very often - but that is because we run an identical "twin" of our production system as a test-system and we frequently roll that back because updates don't work on the first try (recently more often than not...).
We also had to roll back production updates then and now.

Currently, it seems I cannot "revoke" an activated offline license in the portal.
Not sure if there is any real way to accurately assess how much system gaming has been going on. Certainly Zimbra seemingly felt that there was enough of it to justify moving to this new licensing model.

Interesting that the portal doesn't yet handle releases for offline activations. It would be helpful if you opened a Support Case for that - makes Disaster Recovery much slower if one has to wait for Support to do that on the back end with offline activation for sure.
I've already opened a case.

Maybe I'm stupid but I can hardly get my mind wrapped around just how this whole thing is supposed to work - but maybe it's because I've now amassed quite the collection of keys in my portal of which none are "manageable".

I guess the whole licensing thing turned out much more difficult and with more edge-cases than Zimbra anticipated.
(Which can hardly be a surprise to anyone who has ever had to deal with any kind of licensing...)

If we go to the extra mile of not using M365, we'd at least have the luxury of the mail-system not constantly phoning home. That's why I want to use an offline-license.
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Re: Zimbra 10.1.X - License problems since the release of 10.1

Post by ohfwj »

Zimbra is currently having a terrible problem handling the new licensing system. I get the impression that the support department often doesn't know how something works.
The licensing system itself stops working at random times and no one knows why.
Restoring a disaster recovery environment with the new licensing system is problematic, you have to remove the old activation first, which is sometimes difficult.
Zimbra recently added in the support portal the possibility to deactivate the license itself, but it does not inform about it at all.

The number of problems we've reported lately that are ignored or unresolved is so high that I feel Zimbra is getting worse with each passing month instead of getting better.
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