In response, a Miva support engineer posted an explanation of this "new feature" in the 4.18 version, the Miva License Validation Lockout system. "Once a day during an admin login attempt, Miva Merchant will connect to the license manager to check two things: 1. That the Miva Merchant license is active, (and) 2. That the store running the license is the same store that registered it initially," the Miva engineer's post read in part. "If any of this information does not check out or does not match up, the admin interface will be locked and you will be directed to contact Miva Support. If for some reason, like a firewall issue, the store cannot connect successfully with the license manager, it will try for three days before locking you out. This is to prevent people from disabling the license verification feature."

To say the least, Miva's customers had a few issues about this. Why hadn't Miva announced this phone-home lockout system when they released 4.18? Why did the license have to be checked every day? What was a customer supposed to do if locked out on the weekend, when Miva support was closed? Were Miva Merchant users running servers behind firewalls going to have contact Miva every three days? And what would happen to the customer's investment in Miva Merchant if the company went out of business or was sold to a rival with no incentive to maintain the license validation system?

By the time I contacted Miva, such complaints had already resulted in the company releasing Miva Merchant 4.19. Instead of a three-day window, the storefront now tries to access Miva's system for 30 days before locking out the customer. During that period, warning notices are displayed that count down how many days the customer has left. While these "bug fixes" in 4.19 have mollified customers' most urgent concerns, many are still uneasy. "Miva still phones home," noted one reader. "If the company turns to vaporware, we're all doomed after 30 days."

My main question for Miva was why they adopted a system that keeps checking license compliance on a continuing basis. Derek Finley, Miva marketing director, said this is due to the company's desire to enforce its license agreement that restricts each license to use with only one domain and one storefront. "If we don't check the licensing on each store as it runs, we're not making contact with all possible copies of the software running out there," said Finley. "As a licensee of Miva Merchant, I can install my first copy of the product and build a store in compliance. But, if Miva doesn't check up on me as I copy that installation around to multiple web sites, or even multiple sub-directories of my single web site, then I could build a lot of Miva Merchant stores with my single license that was only validated once. Now, each storefront out there running 4.19 and later will have to be licensed to run. Those who are honestly running the software should be able to continue doing so without any problems."

OK, but let's talk about who is acting honestly here. How honest is it to slipstream in a "new feature" like this without even letting customers know it's there until it bites them? By the way, those customers who read Miva's license agreement to find out what it considers honest behavior did not learn about the license validation lockout there either. And with all the digital restrictions management technology out that's now floating around, I find it hard to believe Miva needs to take this continuous product re-activation approach in order to keep its honest customers honest.

I applaud Miva's customers for standing up and forcing the company to back off as much as they did. But as TurboTax customers did earlier this year, Miva customers should consider what this incident implies for the future. When a company decides that squeezing a few extra dollars from its customers is more important than assuring the long-term benefits of its products, isn't it time to vote with your feet? If you don't, there's no telling how far some software companies will go.

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