Image-Line's New "Monetizing" Scheme for FL Studio

[Teksonik]

Ok since Image-Line has chosen to ignore simple questions about this issue I can only assume they plan on going ahead with their new "Monetizing" scheme to make money from downloads which replaces their "Open Candy" scheme. Here's some excerpts from the exchange:

OpenCandy is not a virus, but it is flagged as such by some virus scanners, while others flag it as "PUP" (Potentially Unwanted Software). In any case, we're not using it..

And what about Ironsource ?

WIKI: "The main product of ironSource is InstallCore, an SDK (Software Development Kit) for the creation of web based software installers with an integrated download manager and advertising component.

"The company help developers monetizes software downloads by advertising an ad supported installs, and is part of the so-called Download Valley in Israel".

Download Valley Wiki:

"Download Valley is a cluster of software companies in Israel, producing and delivering adware to be installed alongside downloads of other software. The primary purpose is to monetize free software and downloads. These software items are commonly, but not limited to: browser toolbars, adware, browser hijackers, spyware, and malware. Another group of products are download managers, possibly designed to induce or trick the user to install adware, when downloading a piece of desired software or mobile app from a certain source".

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So no, a positive result from one scanner is not an issue - so long as lots of others don't also flag it up.

So far three separate security suites have kicked up warnings. Are you sure the warning kicked up by safeappcontent is a false positive ? Did you write their code ? Do you blindly trust them ? I don't nor should I or should anyone else.......

Webroot shut it down and wouldn't let the "download manager" even run.

Here are the files that were Quarantined :



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http://domainsono.com/domain/safeappcontent.com

From the link above:

" We couldn't find any IP address for safeappcontent.com.
The domain is owned by Privacy Protection Service. The site uses whois privacy protection services to hide the contact details of its owners".

http://hosts-file.net/?s=54.69.11.66&view=history

https://www.virustotal.com/en-gb/ip-add ... formation/

the Download Now button links to FL-Studio12.exe from safeappcontent.com . Norton antivirus marked the file as bad and deleted it which seemed strange but I figured it was another false positive. I restored the file and allowed it through the firewall, when it ran it downloaded files for a bit and then gave me an error saying the installation failed. Every time it ran it would just give me that error and after restarting my pc it would flash a loading bar for half a second and then do nothing. I then tried the FL 12 trial button on the image line home page which brought me to https://www.image-line.com/downloads/fl ... nload.html and the image line server mirror gave me flstudio_12.2.exe which worked just fine. I noticed that none of the mirrors on that page were from safeappcontent.com so I'm mildly concerned that the other link was hijacked and has an actual virus. Please let me know if the link and program are legitimate, and if they are then that installer might need to be fixed or updated.

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Let me stress again that none of the other DAWs I own has ever generated a warning from any Security Suite on any system I've ever owned. We're talking about Sonar 5, 7, 8 ,8.5, X1 ,X2, X3 and 3 of their VSTi plugins....Reaper from version 2 all the way up to 4.8 something...Orion Pro, Orion Platinum 5,6,7, and 8 to 8.6 and three of their VST plugins.....Energy XT, Lite versions of Live and Tracktion, Mulab....none of them have ever kicked up any kind of Warning. I have over 300 hundred plugins on my studio computer and not one has ever kicked up a Warning.

(EDIT: Actually I remembered there was one plugin that kicked up a warning and that was Image-Line's Toxic Biohazard).

Why doesn't that other software generate warnings, false or not ? Because they don't use wonky third party schemes to make even more money off of paying customers.

Does Image-Line want to be a company that has a reputation of trust or one that people have to be concerned about installing their software ? Because right now I don't trust you or your installers.

It's no secret that I have not trusted Image-Line for quite some time. A series of "false positives" and having to work with Security Software companies for IL to clear those issues up has left a bad taste in my mouth. Couple that with their rude and spotty "customer service" and I'm just about done with them. Too bad as I was just starting to like FL Studio again after some fresh blood was added to the development team.

Anyway if you value the security of your systems I urge caution when doing business with Image-Line. I have offered on several occasions to pay for clean downloads free from any third party intrusion but as I said they refuse to address the issue so take that to mean what you will. I'm not interested in discussing the issue any further here with anyone outside of IL. Anyone who wishes to do so may PM me..........

[MogwaiBoy]

Are you saying that their "free lifetime updates" will be no more?!!!?!

I would jump ship immediately if so.

[Numanoid]

Are you saying that their "free lifetime updates" will be no more?!!!?!

I can't see how life time free updates would disappear, just because the OP is rather paranoid about perceived intrusions to his computer

the Download Now button links to FL-Studio12.exe from safeappcontent.com . Norton antivirus marked the file as bad and deleted it which seemed strange

What I find strange is that anybody would be using Norton is this day in age

Norton is crapware that comes prepacked on many computers in trial version.

Those being dumb enough to install the trial version. Good luck trying to unistall it, it is like a virus in itself

[bungle]

Their Mac stuff is indeed horrific, very crashy and pretty much unsupported, they should just avoid Mac entirely, their support staff already does.

[aMUSEd]

Their Mac stuff is indeed horrific, very crashy and pretty much unsupported, they should just avoid Mac entirely, their support staff already does.

The only one I find works reasonably well is Morphine. Sakura is very unstable although I love it when it works, Drumaxx I have but don't use. They seem to have abandoned the alphas, I wonder if they are abandoning the whole idea of FL on Mac? tbh it was always questionable given their reliance on Delphi.

[tooneba]

EL CAPITAN strikes again

[Touch The Universe]

Is this confirmed by anyone else?

[stillshaded]

their mac stuff is abysmal, i can't even use drumaxx which is the one i REALLY want to be able to use, their support is non existent, and they all round SUCK pretty much more than any other existing dev. Agreed 10000000%.. Stay away from them.

Just curious, why is drummax not working?

I've used it on two different macs. vst and au. no problems whatsoever. Maybe they can't replicate your error?

[SuperG]

Norton is crapware that comes prepacked on many computers in trial version.
Those being dumb enough to install the trial version. Good luck trying to unistall it, it is like a virus in itself

Never had a problem with Norton in decades of use. If it's bitching about PUA, you can bet your sweet *ss the download in question is the crapware. There's no love for companies that resort to bottom-feeding off of malware, adware and other shady tricks.

[LawrenceF]

False positives can be caused by stuff that's not crapware or adware. It's sometimes just files that look suspicious to it for some reason, like accessing the API or network or something that might look suspicious, so you can decide. It happens so infrequently here with Norton it doesn't even approach being anything I'd worry too much about.

I have Norton Internet Security on all my systems. Works fine for me.

Of course, it's the Internet and no matter what software you use somebody somewhere will always call it crap and say what they like is better.

But anyway, I'm not a fan of any software that installs anything other that what the software needs to run so... yeah... I also saw some things in the FL install process that gave me pause.

[ATN69]

I use a paid license for Malwarebytes and also a paid license for Avast. Fortunately I never saw any of the things mentioned in this thread even though I use FLS. I did however get a lot of warnings when I use Skype. Turns out that Skype is also connecting thru servers that are known to host malware and that's why I see warnings often. Just another example of false positives. I do agree it pays off to be careful with these things. I once got a virus so bad that it crashed my computer and I could hardly boot it up. I had to pay Microsoft online support to repair Windows for me and get my computer back to normal. Microsoft used Malwarebytes to clean up my computer so I decided to buy it. Alternative would have been to re-install everything from scratch and that is out of the question with all hundreds of plugins and licenses that goes with it.

[musiclover55547]

I use a paid license for Malwarebytes and also a paid license for Avast. Fortunately I never saw any of the things mentioned in this thread even though I use FLS. I did however get a lot of warnings when I use Skype. Turns out that Skype is also connecting thru servers that are known to host malware and that's why I see warnings often. Just another example of false positives. I do agree it pays off to be careful with these things. I once got a virus so bad that it crashed my computer and I could hardly boot it up. I had to pay Microsoft online support to repair Windows for me and get my computer back to normal. Microsoft used Malwarebytes to clean up my computer so I decided to buy it. Alternative would have been to re-install everything from scratch and that is out of the question with all hundreds of plugins and licenses that goes with it.

Do you all have SuperDuper on Windows for back up? It works really well with the Mac.

[ATN69]

I use a paid license for Malwarebytes and also a paid license for Avast. Fortunately I never saw any of the things mentioned in this thread even though I use FLS. I did however get a lot of warnings when I use Skype. Turns out that Skype is also connecting thru servers that are known to host malware and that's why I see warnings often. Just another example of false positives. I do agree it pays off to be careful with these things. I once got a virus so bad that it crashed my computer and I could hardly boot it up. I had to pay Microsoft online support to repair Windows for me and get my computer back to normal. Microsoft used Malwarebytes to clean up my computer so I decided to buy it. Alternative would have been to re-install everything from scratch and that is out of the question with all hundreds of plugins and licenses that goes with it.

Do you all have SuperDuper on Windows for back up? It works really well with the Mac.

Superduper itself does not exist for PC as far as I know, but there are other software that do the same thing, which is cloning your harddrive. Clonezilla is one of the common ones for PC. I been meaning to clone my harddrive but I been lazy to do it ..But you are right, it is a very good tip from you! Thanks!

[Image-Line]

Ok since Image-Line has chosen to ignore simple questions about this issue I can only assume they plan on going ahead with their new "Monetizing" scheme to make money from downloads which replaces their "Open Candy" scheme.

Hmmm. Hardly ignored you Teksonik...

http://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.p ... &p=1111171

http://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.p ... 0&t=156015

As noted, we've informed you several times that this is being discussed, but you keep insisting for us to provide you with a definitive answer to your concerns before we have made any decisions. Why are you saying we ignored your questions, when those links clearly show its not the case?

For those who care, here's what we are investigating/testing and why:

IronSource is a monetising system that provides opt-out software options when you download an installer from the web-page. You can see IronSource in use by Adobe here (center panel "Optional offers", please also pay attention to what is on offer) ...

https://get.adobe.com/reader/

and here is our version

https://www.image-line.com/downloads/downloads.php

I am sure everyone here recognizes this system. Ok, but why are we looking into this? The FL Studio installer is downloaded well over 30,000 times per day. A significant chunk of that is by people cracking the software. We trace many requests back to warez sites. The team are investigating ways of monetizing that.

Paying customers, don't see any of this, they download direct from here -

http://www.image-line.com/downloads/fls ... nload.html

So, no Open Candy (we dropped that) and no IronSource. So really, the current system under test means improved service for paying customers (no more Open Candy) and the status quo for demo downloads.

So how much can this be worth? If we monetized it heavily? 100K USD/year. If we monetized it 'sensibly', 50K USD per year. That is a lot of money to leave on the table. Money that can go toward developing new plugins and features for FL Studio and OS X. Have we made any decision? No. As we have told Teksonik numerous times.

PS:

1. FL Studio for Mac OS X is progressing well - http://forum.image-line.com/viewtopic.p ... 5&t=145057
2. Lifetime Free Updates are non-negotiable, they stay.
3. Apologies for the issues on OS X (Maxx Claster) plugins, we will get around to fixing these. Maxx is flat out on FL Studio Mobile 3. When that is done we need him to rework his OS X plugins for FL Studio OS X too. So major updates are not only planned but required for the launch of FL Studio on OS X, which means they are on the top-priority roadmap.

Regards Scott

[robotmonkey]

Norton is crapware that comes prepacked on many computers in trial version.
Those being dumb enough to install the trial version. Good luck trying to unistall it, it is like a virus in itself

Never had a problem with Norton in decades of use. If it's bitching about PUA, you can bet your sweet *ss the download in question is the crapware. There's no love for companies that resort to bottom-feeding off of malware, adware and other shady tricks.

Norton is total cr@p. Has been for a decade.