Not a valid donor email address

Hello,

I have been a long time user of Heidi and it's one of my favourite pieces of software.

I donated a long time ago, but recently have started seeing a 'Donate' button. I know this is checked on start up, but usually it goes away after a few hrs, but now I've seen it for several days. If I click the about link and test the email address the message shows in the screenshot attachment.

Any idea what is causing this?

Also, it might be better to have a key file placed in the folder if someone donates. Relying on an internet connection is pretty poor. Just a thought.

Anyway, thanks again for this superb software.

That's because I'm now letting donations below 50€ to hide that button for 2 years only now.

Thanks for understanding!

That should NOT apply to people who donated before you changed the policy. That is untrustworthy and unfair.

Well I had to do something about some donors spending the minimum amount and giving away their donor email address to others. That is unfair if you ask me.

Be aware that this is not some license key - it's just for hiding the green button. You can leave it there, it does nothing but sit there. I am looking at it for 10 years now. You never have to disable it.

Doesn't matter. I understand what you are saying, but genuine people who have been kind enough to donate, you are saying "Thanks, but your donation isn't good enough unless you pay another 50 euros", is just not acceptable. If the checks are coming from your server, why not send some identifier from the users machine so that the email can only be registered once?

Well, maybe you're right - in your point of applying that to previous donors. But what do you suggest for these people having spent a euro 7 years ago and telling colleagues to use their email address in Heidi?

Your idea with a machine identifier only works as long as the machine does not change - that would make it even worse, wouldn't it?

SevenDaysWalking: I consider my donation expired, I wanted to re-donate for some time anyway :-) Ansgar does an excellent job and HeidiSQL is in a paid SW territory for a long time. HeidiSQL is open source, so you probably can compile it without the button yourself. And if you go with the lowest donation, 50 cents a year is a laugh (although I'm worried more money from such donation will go to PayPal).

ansgar: If this is your only motivation, I think more effective method would be to aggravate those "sharers". I don't know how robust the donator system is, but if GDPR permits, I'd store last 5 IP addresses per e-mail. Regular user will have to re-enter it from time to time or endure temporary Donate button when on foreign networks, while the "sharer" will see the button again and again, as everyone he shared it with will re-enter the e-mail address constantly. You could turn this off per user request, like for honest digital nomads.

Also, instead of time you can go with a version. Any donator, who doesn't want to see the button, can stick with the version they donated for (major, minor... your choice) and don't upgrade.

@mikiqex thanks for the idea, that sounds indeed nice. Going to find a way to do that.

done!

I only should probably hash the ip address. And anyway store them for a few months only.

Hashing the IP address is a good point, never thought of that to be honest and not storing personal info is always a good idea. Anyway, with IP addresses there are always some edge cases, so it will probably require some tweaks along the way.

Limited time storage depends on the implementation you went with. If you extend a validity period for matching address, I'd say it's a good idea and should do no harm to honest users. Also depends on if you're using local IP address of ISP public address. If they share the e-mail among colleagues in the same institution that use single ISP address, this solution will probably not work as desired. And address acquired from a DHCP server may change every time in the worst case scenario. But I'll rather stop right here, because I'm out of my depth when it comes to practical networking. Sorry... :-/

done!

I only should probably hash the ip address. And anyway store them for a few months only.

Perfect, that works for me. Thanks ansgar. Your software is amongst the best free windows software. The time and effort you put into it should get some compensation. Shame some people choose to share emails, but then, no surprise as everyone wants everything for free these days. :(

Can I ask about similar issue without creating new topic? Today donate button reappeared on all computers. Is it because I used same email too many times? Or I need to donate regularly for button be hidden? How much times same email can hide button before it becomes too much?

Yes, you're one of the first hitting that 5-ip-address maximum. Not sure if you really use it from one company only?

OK. I can donate from another two emails no problem. Or two more times from my original email not sure what is better? I use Heidi on different IP addresses but it's same company, 14 IP addresses in total. Actually, one IP is dynamic (sometimes it is from VPN), not sure how to count this.

@qupear no problem - I suppose you're a honest one :) So I raised the allowed number of IP addresses for your donation to 20. Should work now again.

I have dynamic IP address, my ISP changes it every day. Some times I'm sharing mobile phone network connection or work from remote locations such as cafe. I guess I'm not the only one. No, seriously, I'm sure that most people nowadays are using broadband internet access with dynamic IP addresses, so this check is ridiculous.

@plakhin I learned using most people is subjective. For me, most people are on LAN/WLAN with either static IP address or not-so-changing dynamic address. There are just two complains after a week, which doesn't look most-people-ish to me. My premise was hardcore DB specialists have more robust tools and others don't use HeidiSQL on every network they're on, or it's just a "quickie", so the temporary Donate button won't be a problem.

I admit the solution I offered is not accounting for cases like yours, but I believe all of us here are devs, yet I can see only a single suggestion helping ansgar with the problem about donators sharing their e-mail addresses. So why don't you add yours?

In my message most people is not subjective. You can Google for some statistics data on internet connections around the world, it is open. Another question is what type of connection is used by most users of heidisql. And 2 complaints is more than enough to understand the problem exists. Don't forget about people who don't use forum, they may be not aware of it or don't have enough time for this complaints. Just, google for the statistics of how much users actually report problems they meet and how much are just silently waiting for problems to be solved with next release. You will be surprised.

Sharing license key is a common problem. Don't you know there's no software that still wasn't cracked or doesn't have a keygen? If you know one, the solution can be taken there ;)

So, at the moment the situation is: years ago - please donate if you like the software; some time later - please donate to remove the button; some time later - please donate more than 50€ or at least once per 2 years to remove the button; now - please donate and don't change your IP address too often.

I understand the problem, I understand that Ansgar wants to have more and he deserves with no doubt. But current solution is not a solution. If people don't want to pay they will not, regardless of what you think.

Another way of getting paid for open source is GitHub sponsorship. It becomes popular and a lot of devs are already happy with it. Some benefits for sponsors like early access to new features are nice to have and they don't split donors to good and bad by amount of donation or ip address.

And yes, don't you know there are cities and even countries using one IP address?

Or let's talk about regular internet connection in the office. It uses NAT and/or Proxy. So all users of this office will have one IP address. So one can donate and everyone else can use. While people with dynamic IP will see annoying button even if they donated. Nice.

@plakhin I'm very aware that this IP check is a workaround. In my experience the IP is not changed so frequently as it was the case earlier. Many people (including me) seem to have a pseudo-fixed IP although they are just a small customer of some ISP.

Anyway, I didn't want to change the whole process, so that was easy to set up. I raised your number of allowed IPs to 40, and detected IPs are deleted after a while, so that should help you a bit.

Let's stick with the "please shout if your IP changes frequently" approach.

@ansgar thank you. But I'm carrying not about myself only. It's completely up to you which approach to use. But I highly encourage you to take a look at GitHub sponsorship and some additional benefits for sponsors instead of donate button.

Some devs are using "this feature will be released (or become available for all) after getting X number of sponsors". In combination with voting for features this may become very useful. In one hand you can get stable income, in the other hand software will have more and more features really needed by people who are ready to pay

• Some devs are using "this feature will be released (or become available for all) after getting X number of sponsors" approach.

The software is once again saying "Not a valid donor email address". My IP hasn't changed as far as I know.

@SevenDaysWalking if you send me a note with your donation date/time and/or transaction id I can check and most probably solve that. For a pm see my email address in the imprint.

Thanks ansgar, it's ok now. Maybe the connection dropped. Sorry.