+972 52-548-6969
Open letter to XHEO: That is not a good way to do business
About three months ago, I started looking around for licensing components for the NHibernate Profiler. I didn't care to write the feature myself, and I thought that for a small investment of money, I could get a ready made and useful component.
I looked around and finally ended up on XHEO's site. I heard about XHEO before, the feature set looked decent and the documentation was good. I downloaded the trail and gave it a go. Everything seemed good, so on the 26th Nov, I purchased the professional version. Shortly after that, I released the private beta of NH Prof.
Almost immediately I got comments from users saying that the software will not work on their machines. The common theme? All of them were running 64 bits platform. I narrowed the issue down to the licensing component. After I contacted support, I was told that yes, that is the case, and 64 bits is not supported. It is even mentioned in the documentation, so I really have no cause for complaint.
Now, mentioning such a limitation in a footnote hidden deep in the documentation is not what I would call being open about your limitations, but we will let it go.
They had a workaround which I wasn't really comfortable with, but it worked, so I just used that. It would cause problems down the road (it basically running in WOW64 mode, and I suspected it would cause issues relating to binding to 64 bits drivers with the Open Query Results features). The only real way of fixing this was to by purchasing Ultimate Edition With Source.
At that point, I also started getting more requests regarding licensing. That is when I encountered this beauty:
Yes, I need professional or better, but I have professional. I guess someone put an > instead of >=.
Anyway, I was already in favor of buying the version that would let me run on x64 natively, so I decided to go ahead with this. A major part of my decision to go ahead and buy the source version was that I kept getting errors like this one:
System.Windows.Markup.XamlParseException: Failed object initialization (ISupportInitialize.EndInit). The type initializer for '<Module>' threw an exception. Error at object 'HibernatingRhinos.NHibernate.Profiler.Client.MainWindow' in markup file 'HibernatingRhinos.NHibernate.Profiler.Client;component/mainwindow.xaml'. ---> System.TypeInitializationException: The type initializer for '<Module>' threw an exception. ---> System.AccessViolationException: Attempted to read or write protected memory. This is often an indication that other memory is corrupt.
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at Licensing.LicenseManager.AssertValidLicense()
at HibernatingRhinos.NHibernate.Profiler.Client.MainWindow.OnWindowInitialized(Object sender, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.RaiseInitialized(EventPrivateKey key, EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.OnInitialized(EventArgs e)
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.TryFireInitialized()
at System.Windows.FrameworkElement.EndInit()
at System.Windows.Markup.BamlRecordReader.ElementEndInit(Object
This is part of NH Prof's production error reporting, so I know why the software crashed and can fix this. If you follow closely, Licensing.LicenseManager.AssertValidLicense, will call into XHEO's licensing component, and in some cases, completely crash the system.
I figured that with the source version, I could fix that.
That was the point where I was told that if I wanted the source version, I also needed to deploy obfuscated assemblies. And that this would jump the price by almost 1,000$. I didn't mind deploying obfuscated assemblies that much, but I did mind the extra 1,000$. Nevertheless, I decided that it was probably worth it to not have to worry about licensing.
That is when the real problems started. According to the license agreement between me and XHEO (which was signed by both parties, this is not your standard EULA), I cannot use the source without obfuscating it. That make sense, from their perspective. Except... the obfuscator that they sell doesn't work.
Here are just a few of the errors that I got.
Complete system melt down:
Just simple errors:
Or producing software that cannot run.
I had spent quite some time with XHEO's support, trying to resolve the issue.
First, I have to say that in general I have found them to be completely unresponsive, often letting multiple business days go by without so much as acknowledging that a message was received, much less that they are working on it. This post is a copy of an email that I sent to them, and a good example of the kind of interaction that I had with them at that point.
After several days going back and forth with their support, they have been unable to make the software work on my machine, rendering my entire purchase useless.
That is when I dug into the signed contract that we had, and verified that I remembered correctly. There are two sections which are particularly important:
What this basically says, is that if they don't deliver a product that works, they should either provide one that works, or refund the money.
At that point, I was sick and tired of the whole thing and sent them an email, telling them that they have failed to provide me with a working copy, and that I would like to get a refund. As per our signed contract.
This is the reply that I got:
At that point, I have to remind you. I still wasn't able to get the software to run without errors.
I replied, and got no response. Replied again, several days letter, and got basically the same thing, replied to that again. Was ignored.
Finally, I sat down and wrote this email. I think you can tell how frustrated I am with the whole thing.
That got me talking with someone else. Who wasn't very helpful.
I cannot believe this.
To summarize:
- I am out a lot of money.
- I have a product that doesn't work and support that is extremely non responsive and not really helpful when it is responding.
- I have a company that thinks that "It works on my machine" means that it can ignore a crashing bug and total uselessness of their product for a paying customer.
- I have a company that is ignoring a signed contract and refuse to honor it.
- I have a huge amount of time invested into making this work, and not into actually producing good features for NH Prof.
- I have a delayed launch for my software.
I just can't understand how they think that behaving in this manner to their client.
After this experience, I would strongly recommend to all and sundry to avoid them.
Comments
I remove this products from my favorite/Delicious right now.
Thanks for the heads up. Bad XHEO! No cookies for you! I wander if they realise how damaging their treatment of you is likely to be?
It looks like this is not the product for my Compnay.
Hope your situasjons changes to the better, Ayende.
The shame...
This is good timing! I was just looking into their product and it looked good. This is the kind of information you really want (how a company deals with issues after you've paid the money).
Awesome timing. I've been looking for a licensing component as well. Sorry to hear about your situation, but thanks for making my choice easier.
Note to self - never sell Ayende anything, ever.
I have had nothing but problems with their products (mostly in the activation area but in all over really). At the moment I want to build my own to get around the current problems but I don't want to waste my time on it.
Harry,
I have some minimal requirement for service.
And I make sure to point out exceptional service as well
Thats awful Oren! I just sent them a nice email stating I would never do business with them and I think the rest of the this blog's readers should do the same.
That's going to be quite an expensive mistake on their behalf.
Sorry that was a bit of a poor joke on my part. Any business who would refuse a customer because they are worried about getting bad press should fix their dodgy product :)
And here you have it, because of them totally being stupid they've already lost about $3000,- worth of sales.
Personally I wouldn't let them go away with this, I dont know if there is a special organization where you live, that protects rights for consumers/small business, but I would make an effort to come in contact with them.
They are violating a signed contract between two businesses thats a pritty serious offense!
I once had the pleasure of working for a company that had a very simple rule. If the customer was not completely satisfied then they would get their money back without question. We also had a rule that you had to respond to all business related email by the next business day. Let me tell you I've never worked for a company whose customers were as happy with it as that companies. And it's how I intend to run my own company.
(Submitted too early)
Unfortunately not all companies are ran the same. Sorry that you're having to go through this hassle but thanks for letting the rest of us know that when we need to license our own software XHEO is not the company to use.
Roy,
That's the problem with pissing off your customers. You never know how much reach they have. And I suspect the responses here are just the tip of the iceberg in lost sales for XHEO.
My boss was just about to buy the license. The customer had approved the buying of this licensing tool to product our product.
Thanks a lot for your information. I'm sorry to see that lots of your efforts was lost on the product. Your time could have be used for NH Profiler and the result would had been more than the amount XHEO's got from you.
Anyway, I use Eazfuscator.NET for obfuscation. It's free and have a nice guy behind it.
Good luck with your legal actions. I've got my support.
Ironically, the latest post on their blog ( http://www.xheo.com/blog/) is about "Supporting Your Future" and the recently launched Support Request Form.
The support request form (according to the website) has limitations of its own:
"Please use Internet Explorer 7 or higher to submit your support request. Some customers have reported some issues with Firefox and Chrome. "
Bad Xheo!
Ayende, I feel your pain. We had a similar experience with CrypKey a few years back. Due to our being in a different timezone (9 hours difference) communication was difficult. Their licensing product (a background service) would suddenly cease working on existing customer's XP machines and nothing except reinstalling XP would solve it. And then after a while it would stop working again. After a while the CrypKey people just stopped responding to our mails. That's when we vouched never to work with them again. It seems XHEO won't be on our shopping list either.
However, while I don't condone their (non-)refunding policies I can understand their attitude on reproducing the problem. They can't reproduce the problem on their machines, even with your help, so what else can do they do ? (Besides giving you a refund of course).
I hope you find a solution ! I'm sure we'll hear about it :-)
I guess they figured you were just another random guy with a blog. It's too bad for them that you have many subscribers.
As a read this again, I'm just shocked. I can't believe that the president/founder (Paul Alexander) would send off such an email. I remember him when he was a friend of a community member. Back then his company was very small and it seemed his customer support was actually pretty good. At the time, though, I never had a need for his product. Recently, though, I've been working on a WPF/Prism app that I'm dying to ship. When I thought about licensing I started looking at his company's product again. Thankfully, though, I never did finish the sale for some reason. I guess it's back to square one again.
Did you pay by plastic? Perhaps it is not too late to request a chargeback (I believe it is six months). As someone that has to deal with chargebacks from time to time I promise you it will be a big hassle for them. And you might even get your money back! Good luck.
I don't think a chargeback is enough. Oren, you deserve compensation; the users of your product had problems, reflecting on your business. Also, you will now have to spend time and effort to use a different licensing framework, after you spent your time using this one.
I think you should talk to a lawyer. You deserve money back++.
May be you can do "something" (share for exemple) you the solution you are implementing :)
Someone know others service like XHEO ?
temporary remove this blog entry and talk to your lawyer first
http://www.infralution.com/licensing.html
Support is neat: they also had a 64bit issue a whiel back and fixed/released patch in a matter of hours!
Egh, I feel your pain. There are too many companies out there with awful support (I know the place I work for isn't much better.) People without enough customer service experience don't quite grasp that it's their job to figure out why things aren't working, not yours..
They probably think you've cracked their application and want to get a refund to get yourself free licensing! ;)
Hope you get your money back.
Wow, and now 7000+ (fairly?) clued up .NET developers know about it. I dunno if it'll kill XHEO, but it's gotta hurt. Not to mention the google juice!
Oddly enough, I'd guess if they had of asked for your code up front - or a non-working sample - it would have gone away. Hell, share a VM, they install their SW, make it work, you remote in (at the same time as them) get your source and make it fail.
I guess being civil these days doesn't work. If you used a CC, go for the chargeback....
they tried to DMCA google for linking to cracks for DeployLX, to....
www.chillingeffects.org/.../notice.cgi
'wonder how THAT went. Not well I suspect.
So my rule of thumb "pretty site = serious business" fails pitifully on these guys...
Looking forward to your awsome NH Prof (and a Ayende Licensing Component?)
I second the idea of doing a chargeback if that's a possibility for you.
Just playing Devil's Avo here, but according to XHEO, everything you've sent them has worked fine. That is what they are hanging their hat on, the fact that you can't provide them anything that is "broken".
The thing is, I know from experience that due to buyer's remorse, people will do pretty much anything to back out of signed contracts. It's appears that you aren't doing this, but really, how are they to know? If they are telling the truth about running the samples you provided them successfully, then to them it might appear that you are just trying to get out of the contract.
As for the actions you wish to take, really a complaint with the BBB is about as useful as pissing in the wind. Every company that does sales (especially software) has already been reported up the yin-yang. Customers rarely check with the BBB anymore due to so much static out there.
Andrew,
A lot of those issues were reproducible at XHEO. It is only at some point that they declared success and decided that it works on their machines, therefor it is good.
Ahh, well I didn't pick that up from the emails posted. As I said, I was just playing Devil's Advocate with that post.
I had a similar case years ago where a 3rd party developer insisted that the examples of their product breaking worked just fine for them. It took 3 weeks (and some serious escalations to the companies executives) to get everyone on a conference call. Magically, they suddenly discovered that they could reproduce the bug every time once we got on the call.
So I definitely feel your pain.
Andrew,
The full email conversation is over 50 emails over the course of a month, I wasn't going to put them all here
I selected the few that were pertinent to the post.
@All
Just head on over to www.xheo.com/Blog/post/Supporting-Your-Future.aspx and post a comment - with enough comments they may actually step up, or they might simply moderate them out of existence.
Either way, we get to see how well they manage a PR nightmare and hopefully the pressure may just help Oren get his money back.
I evaluated this product and it did work for me but I found it not so easy to use. At the time, it did not support 64-bit so I excluded it for that reason. I ended up going with the Dotfuscator product which is also quite expensive. They do have a program for small companies that you can get in to that will save you money.
You can send me an email and I'll answer any questions about the program if you are interested. I also went through an evaluation of several licensing vendors. Somewhat painful so I know where you are coming from on this stuff.
I went with Infralution, but it was mostly because I couldn't afford to drop more than a couple hundred dollars on a solution. It has actually worked well, and their support is very responsive.
http://www.infralution.com/licensing.html
Ayende were you using Microsoft.Practices.Composite in NH prof. ?
IMHO thats why everyone should use a warez/cracked version for evaluating a product before purchase.
No, I am not.
Glad I found this while I'm looking for something similar for SequenceViz Pro and I also found this www.vbdotnetforums.com/.../...icensing-system.html which is not much different to your experience. Unfortunately the other product mentioned in that review is out of my range.
I wonder why can't someone build a decent product ( <100$) to target the microISVs market (with fewer activation schemes) and hopefully make loads of money.
So their products are certified :)
www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/000818.html
We have had almost the same issues at our company. I can't stand XHEO!
Busy evaluating license options at the moment. Based on this we will take XHEO off the list
duly noted. my colleagues will be warned
I had a similarly unsatisfactory experience with XHEO some years ago. They had a similar set of licenses before. I purchased an "Unlimited with source license" + 3 developer "addon" seats. After the money was sent, it somehow came up in an email from them that those extra developer seats were NOT allowed to access the source code, even though the addon seats were listed as applying to any other license.
I communicated with Paul as well, and the communications were extremely curt. I decided I'd had enough and did what they said, ensuring only I could touch/see the source despite the difficulty that entailed.
When I later learned how trivial it was to bypass their obfuscation (thus making licensing easy to get around as well), I dropped them from my product completely.
Dicks...whatever there license profit, it's not worth losing potential clients via word of mouth.
Well they'll be kissing your ass soon I'm sure as soon as someone higher up the food chain gets word - or maybe they're so arrogant that they don't realize how big of community uses your tools.
A few comments:
1) The number one issue with respect to software licensing components is TRUST. You have to trust it will do what THEY say it will do. Obviously this company doesnt get it and enough people read this blog that the publicity will be horrible for them.
2) It's wonderful that you have a signed contract with them.
3) I hope you paid with American Express or MasterCard / Visa so at least you can dispute the charge so you dont have to fight alone.
4) Dotfuscator Pro has a good obfuscator and the tech support is terrific - at least it is. They also make a licensing product named Shelf Life that allows you to embed a drop dead date in an assembly, and have a technology for determining if your assembly has been tampered with. If the tamper trigger goes off in my assemblies I shutdown the app.
5) See if you can pull some strings with the people you know at Microsoft to get into Microsoft SLPS program. This allows you to encrypt your assemblies hard core. The product has been pulled and I received an email that states they arent sure they are going to even sell the product past 2009 - but it's the best protection I've seen for .NET - period. (Now I've let my last anti-cracker secret out - I use 3 products, you all you wannabes go play Madden 09 now.)
6) Check out CrypKey, HASP by Aladdin, or Desaware.
7) I hope you dont have to basically straighten out all the bugs in XHEO's product for free because their programmers SUCK.
8) Like anything, there are a million substitute products so hopefully XHEO will get a huge black eye from this blunder and you will get a full refund.
Wishing you the best.
@josemx
I eat roaches like you for breakfast and TRASH your registry when you run my warez/cracked version so go ahead punk. Ha!
Good to know. My company is planning on re-evaluating our licensing in the near future - I'll be sure to forward this post on to the folks doing the evaluation. Always nice to know how the company treats its customers before you buy the product.
I have to second the call for lawyers to get involved. You also should take down this post temporarily in order to not incriminate yourself or get yourself into trouble with them for libel.
Having said that, the way it looks to me is that you have a rock solid defense and can blow them out of the water. They owe you not only for the money you paid them to purchase their "product", but also for the money you lost not putting your product into the market. For you and NHProf, this could potentially be a LOT of money.
And I put product in quotes because it sounds like it's a piece of shoddy craftsmanship. I wish you well.
Well these guys not only have to refund your money but also pay for hours lost while communicating with them.
Does this Licensing component motivate anyone to write a good licensing component that just works ? I am in need for 1 too.
So what are the alternatives that just works ?
It's too bad you had a bad experience, but I have to come down on you for releasing software that you hadn't personally tried out on x64. I realize it was only a private beta, but still it's your responsibility to test out all hardware and software platforms you support. They even have a demo version where you could have tested this out without spending any money.
It's also not clear why you cannot supply them with the steps to reproduce this problem. Just zip up some files and mail them off.
I have to side with XHEO on this one.
David,
I haven't tested this on Windows XP SP2 Spanish edition either.
The matrix of OS versions and revisions that one would need to test is just too huge.
And to be frank, it would ahve never occured to me that a managed component would even care what is the bitness of the system.
As for not being able to reproduce the problem. XHEO were able to reproduce most of the problems that I have sent them, it is only on the last one that they started saying: "it works on my machine, you figure out what is wrong"
The really sad thing is you don't really need a licensing component yet, the real problem of a new product is getting noticed not piracy.
You should have written a simple "keep the honest people honest" licensing component that takes less time to write then it takes to evaluate the professional options and switch to a good licensing component later when you get some market share and piracy does become an issue.
I write and sell software and that's what I did, I always see people looking for licensing components before releasing and I think its a huge waste of time and resources.
It might be different for you because NH Prof looks absolutely awesome.
heh XHEO = Xtra Hell :)
David, if you read the comment Oren stated that they were able to reproduce most of the bugs up to a point where they decide it best to deny that they even exist. Regardless I am grateful to Oren for this post. Here is what I learn from this:
XHEO is a very shoddy company.
It is clear that they license their product in such a way that con the user to upgrade to one version after the next to the point of no return.
It's not clear why you side with such a shoddy company.
If you really want to piss off your customers, treat them with arrogance and show them how stupid they are. I couldn't believe it when I heard sales manager at my company boasting that he had 'won' the sales meeting by proving customer was stupid :) Heh, the next day customer started to think how to get rid of the company and its product. Of course, everyone will be to blame - product, developers, global crisis, but not this arrogant jerk.
Hi Oren,
I'm a regular reader of your blog, and I'm sorry to see you have such a bad experience with XHEO. I have to thank you though, since I was going to buy their licensing component for my product, but was not sure if it would work well enough. I admit, I didnt get as far as their trial version, but after this review, I wouldn't even consider them!
Thanks once again, and keep up all the good work with NHibernate and all the related projects.
cheers
Krishna
Ayende,
ever thought of writing your own licensing component? I guess still the best way to make sure something is done correctly, is to do it yourself.
Hi Oren
I don't think their request for a case that could reproduce the problem was unreasonable. What I do think is unreasonable is the 5 days delay between you writing and them responding.
However, I have just read that you haven't posted all of the correspondence. Are there omitted emails between the 24th and 29th, or did they really not reply for 5 days?
I just came across this component today that looks interesting.
http://www.mancosoftware.com/licensing/index.htm
@Nir
I completely disagree. The whole problem with managed software is things can be bypassed much easier than native code, therefore it is so important to protect yourself before release.
Of course this assumes you want to maximize profits for your efforts.
Peter,
The did not reply for days at a time.
At some point, it was something like 5 calendar days and 3 business days, yes.
And the issue isn't whatever they can reproduce the issue or not, the issue is that they did reproduce the issue, until at some point they started saying that they don't see any more errors, and that is my fault.
I had the exact same issues and experience when I implemented Xheo for CodeSmith. I think I have heard something to the effect of "works on my machine" many times from them. I ended up having to purchase a source license as well and fixing all sorts of bugs on my own. Every time I would contact them it would take days to get a response that was typically useless.
My personal favorite Xheo moment is when they extorted a ransom out of me and all of their other users to get an update that made their product work on Vista SP1. This was obviously a bug fix on their part and they sent a promo email to all of their customers offering to "take advantage of our rescue pricing". For a mere $149/user they would allow your product to work on the latest OS. What a deal!!
Even though we think we have gotten to a workable solution after much face to wall smashing, I could never recommend this product to anyone. It's one thing to have a buggy product, we are all guilty of that, but it's a completely different thing to treat your users like total crap and to say something like "works on my machine" and blow your customers off.
Dude ... you've saved dozens of us painful experiences and a lot of money. I too was considering paying up for a license!
Thanks for taking the time to publish your experiences with XHEO.
A project I am working on had just entered the phase where we had been looking at XHEO as a licensing alternative to a complete DYI implementation (for the very same reasons as you had, because it would be a substantial effort). I had it on my todo list for this week to give it a good run but if I see how the company itself is responding, or the lack thereof, does not inspire me with much confidence.
The last thing anyone who goes for a commercially available licensing solution needs is to have it fail and as a result incur even more time and effort (and cost!) to deal with those failures. When the vendor then happens to be like what you've presented about XHEO it really makes me wonder if a commercial options is really a more cost effective option in the long run.
Thanks for helping me scratch off one of my todo items for this week!
+1 Infralution - great product and support.
Just curious how many commenters on this post took Neal Blomfield's suggestion and posted a comment to XHEO's blog post at
www.xheo.com/Blog/post/Supporting-Your-Future.aspx
I left a comment there when I read this post, in which I stated in respectful, professional language that due to Ayende's stature in the .NET community that I was influenced by his experience with XHEO not to do business with them. Surprise, surprise: they haven't published my comment yet. In fact, at the time of this writing there are currently no comments published on that post.
Has anyone else left a comment there?
I think it's hilarious that this blog entry is already #12 on a google search for "xheo". Won't be long before it's on the first page i suspect :)
Has XHEO responded to this post? Or are they sweeping it under the rug?
google 'xheo licensing problems' already has this on the first page. It'll only rise from there.
At a company I used to work we tried to get Codeveil working and never could. Finally switched to DotFuscator Pro, which worked great. Licensing was Macrovision. I've also had good luck with Xenocode for obfuscation. No recommendation on licensing components tho.
Also left a comment, and they have not published it
Travis,
No, I had no communication with XHEO after posting this post, and I made sure that they were aware of it.
Arne,
Google XHEO Problems, and this is the first result :-)
Hey thanks, you just saved me from flushing $3,000 down the toilet.
You are on page 2 (#11) for a Google search on XHEO. Maybe they would respond if you get on page 1?
It's different in every country. In Poland, if you google XHEO, you just made it it to the front page (#9 at the moment). Only their page, and links to torrents with their cracked products are higher ;)
BTW,
Have you looked at Eziriz IntelliLock?
You are on page 1 (#7) for Google search on "XHEO".
Can you add the word "review" to the post. That way lot of people using "XHEO review" will find this page.
Dear Ayende,
as said by Mr_Obfuscator, if you paid by credit card, you may still in time to dispute the payment.
You may wish to consult a lawyer before, anyway ..
HTH,
Why do they have to say Professional license or better? Just say Professional or Ultimate license.
I haven't used their products in a few years, but I remember being rather frustrated with the quality of the product when I did use it. I wasn't happy then with the product I evaluated. I think it was a server control sort of thing but it felt quirky and fragile. I hate that this post (and possibly these comments) will do damage to their reputation, as I know the members of the company strive to provide a good product and to drive community involvement. Hopefully they'll take some of this as constructive criticism and will instead of retaliate, will try to fix the situation.
Good luck to both parties, I hope it can be resolved in a manner beneficial to (and representative of) a company striving to help the community and and a community leader trying to keep everyone honest and forthright.
thanks for the info, i will keep this in mind
Have the purchased removed from your credit card for fraud... They will backcharge the company ..
Joshua,
Having it removed for fraud would be a fraudulent act on my part.
Having it removed for delivering a non workable product, however, is something completely different.
This is on page 1 for Google xheo now.
Ayenda, this was very timely for us. We had just nailed down that we were going to use XHEO, until I saw your post. Thank you, thank you, thank you for this fair weather warning. Time to look for another solution....one that won't treat their customers the way XHEO treated you!
One of my clients used Xheo to protect their product several years ago. I just finished ripped it out for them, as they determined that the support costs of tracking down licensing issues for customers -- not to mention the development costs of keeping it working -- was costing them far more than they could afford.
I've had plenty of headaches as well with XHEO. I find that their support is not very helpful and takes quite some time to get back to you. In the last ticket I submitted I could reproduce this issue on any machine I ran the application on. I sent the issue into XEHO only for them to say there was no issue. After giving them the reproduction steps for the second time they saw the issue but thought we modified their source code and wanted use to rip apart our application and give them a small sample that could reproduce this. This would take countless man hours, on top of that you would think a "Professional" company like XHEO would have a sample application / test suite to test their code on.
I would do a chargeback asap. You will either get working software or your money back. If you didn't use a credit card, this could become an expensive lesson :<
If you paid for it by credit card, you should definitely file a dispute. I had something similar to this happen to me recently and I had paid for the item with my Visa card. I filed a dispute and Visa gave me a credit to my account immediately and dealt with the merchant.
I looked at buying DeployLX from XHEO a while ago. After testing the trial I discovered that some of the network activation code was broken -- it was possible to (repeatably) follow steps that would pass network validation without actually making any networking connections.
I sent the specific steps to reproduce the bug and just got an argumentative "no it doesn't" response from them. I invested several days of effort trying to get the product to work acceptably, during which they were unhelpful and seemed to consistently ignore my specific questions.
I really like the technical approach of extending the .NET licensing model they've taken; it's just a shame the execution is so poor.
An obfuscator that makes a working peace of code not to work then it does not work for that peace of code.
It does not matter if one states that it works on his machine. It should work as if it is not obfuscating. So it should work on the same machine with obfuscation and without.
So you have a case there,
Nuno
This post is now position #10 on google.co.uk, searching for "xheo".
This is going to end up a long way down the comment thread but hopefully someone has mentioned this or you have a solution. I have worked on the other side too many times and understand there side of it. However I have been on your side and understand they HAVE to make it work for you. There is a trial product no refunds is bs.
Anyway, whenever the product I supported would not work on a customer PC and did on ours and we have ALOT of machines we would pay to have the customers machine sent to us or even sometimes buy the exact same PC as they had. Dell's for some reason were assholes about our product especially in 64 bit XP or Vista. Maybe 2-4 times out of 100 we could not reproduce it once we got the PC, but most times we d run it see the problem say OH! well the customers is doing xyz wrong and 5 minutes later send the PC back working.
I understand there assertion that it works for them is a valid troubleshoot step, however it is not the end point. That is a start only. It should be it works for us lets find out what is different between our systems.
I did not read anywhere that you tried it somewhere else. I don't recognize the problem or the product but if you can at all get your hands on another PC with a different OS 32 bit and or 64 bit you really should try it. They are not helpful at all.
Paul,
You can assume that we had a lot of communication regarding this.
And yes, I did try it on several machines, with the same results.
I've waited a few days to respond to this post in order to collect my thoughts and let the initial emotion of being so wrongfully portrayed fade so I can provide an honest representation of the actual events that took place.
Ayende, I'm sorry that you were unsatisfied with the way things worked out but your open letter is simply inaccurate and misrepresents the actual events. For someone with such a following and apparent reasonableness I’m surprised you chose to use such tactics. We have never stated "it works on my machine, you figure out what is wrong". We have continually attempted to gather information from you to resolve the issue. At one point we reproduced it and sent you the solution. You were the one that pulled the plug stating that nothing works.
It’s a real shame that you and your readers have found such joy in wrongfully attacking myself and my company. I would hope that others would at least spend some time evaluating the complete story.
www.xheo.com/.../...Ayendee28099s-Open-Letter.aspx
Normally I would not participate in discussions like this, but this one really hit home for me because I've personally had really bad experiences working with Xheo as well. I figured maybe it was just me, but this thread and all the comments saying that they've had the same experience with Xheo is proof otherwise.
My only hope is that some good will come of this by really kicking Xheo in the ass to start actually caring about support and taking care of their customers.
I can't say that this surprises me. I would say two things:
We has Xheo (Paul Alexander specifically) purchase some of the software we are selling and he was abusive and obnoxious that we fired him as a customer believe it or not. Refunded his money and politely told him to take his business elsewhere. So this whole story does not surprise me.
If Ayende exchanged over 50 emails with them, I would have refunded his money after first 25. Unless he spent over $10K at 25 emails he probably was costing more that it is worth it... Without knowing both sides of the story it is hard to say who is right or who is wrong though, but sometimes it is best to let some customers go if they are not happy with the product.
@Paul Alexander
Dang brother I'm almost starting to feel sorry for you because it just keeps looking worse and worse for XHEO.
It's gonna take forever for you to regain the goodwill you lost in this little snot battle. This stuff will stay on Google (and related offline caches) forever.
Nuff said - XHEO circling the drain.
Where is the email conversation in its fullest Ayende? Oh wait... Paul links everyone to a more detailed story about the events and suddenly you're the one who is silent?
I feel sorry for Paul and his company.
Customers like Ayende and the pack of idiot hyenas in many of the above comments are probably the reason so many companies are so careful about refunds in the first place.
DELIVER SOME PROOF SON!!! Not some half ass story where I am expected to believe your sorry ass.
Truth,
You need to follow up on the rest of the story.
Ayende,
I would gladly if you would provide the linkage Mr. Community.
Truth,
Read the rest of the posts in this blog about this topic
We have been using Xheo licensing since 2002. In the beginning they had a support web forum, that was compensating for the lack of support from Xheo team. But around 2004 or 2005 the forum was axed. The official reason from Xheo was that this was done in order to provide better support for the customers. Right....
We didn't have much problem with the v2.X releases, but then the v3.0 was released. The was plagued by bugs. The major problem we had with the v3.0 was a critical bug when in some cases the licensing component failed to create correct machine profile. Due to that it wasn't possible to activate a license. The support weren't able to offer any workaround for this problem and due to this we had lost several customers. It took them FOUR MONTHS to fix this problem.
Then there were couple other critical problems in the v3.1 release. They seems to be fixed in the v3.2 release. But v3.2 release no longer works under Windows 2000 and we still plenty of customers using Windows 2000.
One more thing, it's not mentioned on the Xheo's web site, but it doesn't work with Kaspersky Antivirus 6.0/7.0. KAV blocks Xheo's code obfuscated by CodeVeil.
In our software product we use third-party components from half a dozen vendors. And Xheo Licensing is the only component we are constantly having troubles with.
Our Xheo Licensing subscription plan expires in three months and no way we will be renewing it. We have had way to many problems with it.
Ayende,
Your blog post was the first link in Google today when I was searching for help to get their Xheo licensing working for our product. After spending nearly six hours today trying to integrate their trial version, this was our lead developer's final verdict:
"K it flat out does not work, it is a piece of s**t and I'm done with it"
Thank you for saving us the time & effort since the support after the sale is just as important to me as the product itself.
Jason
I've been working with Xheo's DeployLX for about 5-6 months and I have had more than a few headaches and late nights with it. Even though I am now working my 3rd weekend in a row (It's 2.10 on a Saturday afternoon in Sydney) I am getting there. We have already released a beta version of our product with a Trial Edition License and it all seemed good.
In the next month we will release our product with a trial, standard (single license) , professional (floating license) and concurrent editions as well as subscriptions for all (except the trial version). But man did I have to work to get to this point..
It's a lot of hard work integrating it with their license server, creating serial numbers and activation codes. Creating custom license files at the point of purchase but I doubt that licensing is EVER easy. We are trying to protect our software while at the same time, ensuring that we do not piss off our valuable customers.
I can only talk about my experiences but, Gary in Xheo support has been nothing but excellent in his response to me. I don't know about anyone else in the company but Gary always got back to me within a day of my emails even when I had 4 pages of questions for him.
Having said all that, what has happened here is really bad form from Xheo's point of view and I honestly hope that I NEVER have to work with any licensing product again unless it's for a hell of a lot more money.
By the way, I am more than willing to pass on any knowledge that I have gained if anyone wants/needs it? We are due to release our software in 4 weeks so, I'll keep you informed with how we get on.
Wow... I immediately forwarded this to our Enterprise Architecture team (of which I am a member). I work for one of the most profitable parts of a global bank (that is not in financial trouble... there IS a few of us), and we are currently performing an evaluation for securing all of our .NET assembies. Feature and marketing wise, XHEO looks like a nice product, however I will insist we remove it from the list after this garbage. We don't have the time to waste dealing with a company like this. We've been burned before, and we certainly aren't going to jump in to a "bad relationship" with these folks. Thanks for your clear and concise warning about this company.
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