Donation Lizenz Key

[GJ51]

I agree ... you both should just move on.

Donate

Love Subsonic? Support continued development and maintenance by giving a donation.

Donors get access to premium features like:
•Stream music to Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7*.
•Video streaming.
•Your personal server address: yourname.subsonic.org
•No ads in the web interface.

Plain and simple right on the Homepage of the website. You are not required to donate to Subsonic if you don't want to.

[elementz]

Gary, you are simply missing the point.
I think subsonic is a great application! Nonetheless, it should be made clear to users, under what pretenses they install the software.
Nothing more, nothing less.
The way things are now being advertised leaves a bitter taste, and all in all does the project no good.
I've sent the link to the subsonic site to a few friends in a skype conference, and everybody was of the impression that all features were freely accessible.
If he wants to keep to the Freemium model, it should be advertised as such.
Thats common sense, no?

[GJ51]

I do see your point, but I just don't think it's as big an issue as your suggesting. Everything is clearly spelled out on the Subsonic homepage. Even if I had been to lazy to read the page to understand the terms, I would still have considered Subsonic to be a more than fair bargain for all it does. I'm not familiar with all the details of how every software term is interpreted around the world, nor do I care. I always take the time to carefully understand what I'm getting into before I make a download. Even then, I got burned once by very deceptive and misleading website that was charging just to download trialware. Fortunately, the Attorney General in my State aggreed and I obtained a full refund. Now that is something to get upset about.

In this case, the argument is a bit overdone. Anyone who is upset about $15 for the premium features should just move on. For me, SS has been more than worth that, and I've made multiple donations as I wish to encourage the dev to continue refining SS. I'm also just happy to donate to express my appreciation for what he's already done. Call me a fanboy if you like, it just doesn't make sense to me to get all hung up on a pointless issue. This reminds me of the Sprint $10 data surchage fee everyone rants about. If you don't like the deal, take your $ elsewhere, that's what free market enterprise is all about. Telling someone else that they are doing it the wrong way seems pretty foolish to me.

YMMV

[alphawave7]

The vast majority of folks have no problem with Sindre's arrangement and many of us were donors well before these third party apps came on the scene. You are free to donate any amount or nothing...it is up to you and whatever principles govern your willingness to donate. A donation yields additional features as an inducement, but Subsonic is free to use and I see no reason for Sindre to change a thing..it is his baby, and I feel lucky he was generous enough to share his project. I searched for years for a Subsonic to come along and I think a donation model with additional features for a donation is a terrific concept and wished more developers did the same.

[sindre_mehus]

Hi all,

To be honest, the reason it's called a donation rather than a premium fee is purely historical (and because I'm lazy). Let me try to explain:

Back in the good old days Subsonic was donation-supported in the true sense of the word; there were no locked premium features and there was no lower limit for the donation amount.

Then, as time progressed, I first started adding premium features to motivate donors. Later I also removed the wildcard donation option as a lot of people abused it and paid only $0.01.

I guess I never prioritized to rename it from "donation" to "premium", but I've always tried to be open with respect to the licensing terms. It's pretty well documented on the web site and within the application itself. If anyone feels cheated I deeply apologize.

I actually have an entry called "Subsonic Premium" on my extremely long todo-list, so I am thinking about changing it. (It's quite a lot of work actually, including changing the wording in 23 different languages)

All in all, I fully understand that "purists" react to me using the word "donation", but I also think most people have no trouble understanding the terms of the license.

Cheers,
Sindre

[achoo5000]

People should remember also that this is a GPL open source project and nothing is stopping them from forking the source code and releasing their own version if they want it to be free.

[bemymonkey]

Hello Sindre,

While Subsonic itself really is and should be considered Donationware, the Android part of the program is clearly trialware.

I have no problem paying $10 for such fantastic streaming software for my Android device, but the wording isn't quite right for my tastes. Right now, it's a free app with a free server, but it won't work until you pony up the dough...

I also don't think it's a matter of anyone here feeling cheated, but rather confusion for prospective buyers. I had to read everything twice before I understood what I was downloading and that for pure Android streaming I'd have to pay for the premium version of Subsonic

[bytethdgroove]

still a moot point, subsonic is free.....subsonic being the software you install on your computer, its completely free to use.... now if you want ad free or mobile support, then u need to donate for advance features....
ITS NOT REALLY THAT HARD.... its free, ...subsonic does everything its suppose to in the free version. stop complaining and just pony up the dough already if you want advance support.

from the front page of subsonic.org:
Subsonic is a free, web-based media streamer, providing ubiquitous access to your music. Use it to share your music with friends, or to listen to your own music while at work. You can stream to multiple players simultaneously, for instance to one player in your kitchen and another in your living room....is this not working for you...can u not stream through the web?

if you want to use 3rd party apps, then thats beyond the free version limits... its spelled out everywhere! FREE web based media streamer....
no where does it say free mobile phone music streamer...

peace
byte

[3R3]

thx for the clear words bytethdgroove. reminds me of the big commercial linux distros who have a free and open source community or personal edition and a enterprise edition with advanced support and features that costs real money. and those are still completely GPLd in most if not all cases.

So yes, the wording is bad, or outdated as Sindre states above, but the model is actually well known. and especially people who throw the term GPL and open source and such around and complain about SS not being donationware should know these kind of business models, no?

And then again, if I had a phone and downloaded SS after a long search and trial phase through all the other streaming servers, I'd be probably pissed too if it doesnt work out right away. BUT I'd have only myself to blame for expecting out of the box, working product AND advanced features and support for free in a open source product. Because thats much to ask really. I like open source so I can fiddle about with it. If I want a plug-and-play thingy, I'd fork out some hundred bucks and buy some of these funny looking "media streaming htpcs" for sure

EDIT: did I just admit SS is cool with the "fiddling crowd"? Well, nothing a bit of fiddling can't fix...

[muiz]

still a moot point, subsonic is free.....subsonic being the software you install on your computer, its completely free to use.... now if you want ad free or mobile support, then u need to donate for advance features....
ITS NOT REALLY THAT HARD.... its free, ...subsonic does everything its suppose to in the free version. stop complaining and just pony up the dough already if you want advance support.

from the front page of subsonic.org:
Subsonic is a free, web-based media streamer, providing ubiquitous access to your music. Use it to share your music with friends, or to listen to your own music while at work. You can stream to multiple players simultaneously, for instance to one player in your kitchen and another in your living room....is this not working for you...can u not stream through the web?

if you want to use 3rd party apps, then thats beyond the free version limits... its spelled out everywhere! FREE web based media streamer....
no where does it say free mobile phone music streamer...

peace
byte

It does NOT

"
•Stream music to Android, iPhone and Windows Phone 7*.
•Video streaming.
•Your personal server address: yourname.subsonic.org
•No ads in the web interface.
"

[jaquense]

oof I am reticent to get in on this but....

come on guys trialware, donationware, freeware, shareware, underware who the hell cares. they fact is that you get a completely functional full featured service for absolutely nothing forever. Plus you have source code freely available.

to call it a trial is silly (by my standards) but if you want to call it that go ahead. Lets not argue about the "word" Sindre is using since it really is unimportant and irrelevant. what you get by "donating" or "buying" is clearly stated, unambiguous, and straight forward.

Lets not start a flame war over it, and get back to being part of one of the services for your buck on the internet!

[bobber]

I just wanted to share my opinion on the topic because I just began using Subsonic and it is really a combination of everything that should be correctly done regarding remote music library access : HTTPS support, Browser-playback, GPLv3 using ffmpeg to transcode, video transcoding support etc.

In my opinion it really shows the potential of the GPL licenses regarding software reuse to build a totally new purpose application.

That being said, I was a bit surprised about the donation scheme, although I totally understand the need/will to be remunerated for the ammount of work done, I didn't automatically understand the donations were mandatory to use the mobile phone apps or the underlaying API, it was just when the aforementionned apps popped the warning message that I had to go back to the website and read about the "donation" in order to continue using them.

So I share the same opinion as barrettj, elementz and the others: the premium API-access features should be clearly "advertised" as such on the main page of the website and maybe it shouldn't be called "donation".

Reading Sindre's post clarified the reason behind keeping the term "donation" so far, but I figured it could be changed just so that future users are quickly aware that you must pay a certain ammount to get the premium feature of using Smartphone apps or the API.

[supra92]

Was browsing around the SS forums on a slower day today and just came across this thread -- not sure how I missed it after all this time!

The funny thing is, I still don't think of the mobile apps as part of Subsonic Proper -- to me they are somehow still new novelties that were added as a bonus to work in tandem with Subsonic. It was just the server and browser client for the first X years after I started using SS in 2005, and to me the mobile apps remain discrete, auxiliary entities separate from the main product. Subsonic is still entirely free re: what Subsonic truly is: a media server with browser client (and so much more). The mobile apps were a later-period addition that are "add-on-niceties" to the core Subsonic (which, again, is and always has been free).

I vaguely get what elementz and others are saying, especially when I try to view this from the perspective of a person coming to SS new within the past year or so, and whose primary or initial expectation is playback on a mobile phone. However, I would feel more (any?) sympathy for them if they had had to pay $ for Subsonic, and then were told they had to pay extra for the apps. How anyone can be left with a bitter taste in their mouth to "only" get the most amazing media server/streamer and web interface out there for absolutely free is rather stymieing, irrespective of whether additional (and far-later-developed) add-ons require a Donation.

If a person installs Subsonic, is somehow inexplicably underwhelmed, and feels like the whole affair isn't worth it because the auxiliary android app isn't free... what exactly did that person lose? Nothing. They never paid a dime for an incredible media server that now lets them listen to their entire music collection from any web browser in the world. If SS doesn't suit them because the android app isn't free, then no harm no foul -- just forget about it and move on to some other better solution instead (that is, if one is out there )

Sindre's gracious post to this thread pointed out the historical nature of the Donation vs. Premium question. In a way it's both incredibly amazing and a mite sad how Subsonic's place in the world has changed over the years. In the beginning it was sheer amazement that this could even be done, that someone had created a media server this reliable and refined, and for *free* no less. Now it has grown, and become so popular, and society's technological expectations have shifted so drastically that there are now those who are somehow disappointed that the whole thing doesn't come with free clients for their mobile phones as well.

And yes, I understand a couple of you pointed out that you'd be happy to pay so long as it is described as a Premium sale, not a Donation. Perhaps 'premium pay feature' instead of 'feature available via donation' is technically a tad more accurate.... from a pure semantics standpoint, I guess yeah. But I couldn't possibly care less. I'm way too happy with Subsonic, and too grateful to Sindre for not just developing this but constantly improving/maintaining it for over 6 years.... to concern myself with something so small as a "donation vs. premium content" verbiage question. It's all very clear under the About->Donate section, and even the Subsonic homepage here (http://www.subsonic.org/pages/features.jsp) says "apps available" for android et al.... available being the operative term there.

Life's too short to feel shortchanged when someone offers you something amazing for free. I only wish I had the talent/time to offer something back that was equally useful -- but since I (and most of us) don't, grateful donations via PayPal and helping others in the forums as much as possible is the best route to go for expressing appreciation to Sindre and giving back to the community.

Peaceout,
Supra92

[Shezed]

Really i donated $20 and got my license(in junk mail) almost instanly i really wish to have my question answerd thougfgh if possible

PS to the one above yes i downloaded subsonic to stream to mobile and the android app i downloaded was free if it wasn't i wouldn't have downloaded it i donated for a job well done. i'm a dev mysylf so i might fix the stuff i feel are short. tho i don't have much time and only started using SS since 2 days ago i can tell it's quite a promising product

[jovanny]

Hello I want to know if when you made ​​the donation subsonic I can edit the name which I will have other benefits?