Keeping the Docklights on - ecommerce platform MyCommerce (Digital River) in turmoil

Your license remains valid after MyCommerce cancellation notice - please coordinate payment with us!

- updated 2024-10-25, corrected terminology - 

Dear Docklight users, 

Recent online buyers for Docklight licenses have received cancellation / refund notices from the MyCommerce software reseller we have been using until October.  

The MyCommerce cancellation/refund notice

Unfortunately, we are affected by what gradually turns into an international news item and a major issue for software vendors around the globe. Here are the main articles concerning the topic:  

The Register - Digital River runs dry, hasn't paid developers for sales since July

heise.de - Digital River: Missing payments and evasive communication

and in German language:

golem.de - Digital River zahlt Kunden seit Monaten nicht aus

heise.de - Digital River: Ausbleibende Zahlungen und ausweichende Kommunikation

As a measure to safeguard your investment and our revenue, we as the Docklight developers issued cancelations / Entire Order Refunds for the bulk of orders within the period affected. This means three things on your end: 

1. You receive back the full original purchase amount via your original payment channel (credit card / PayPal).

2. Your license remains valid, even if the cancellation notice from noreply@mycommerce.com states otherwise. 

Here is what the MyCommerce cancellation text template says - you may ignore this paragraph:

"All product rights and licenses transferred to you under the terms and conditions of the contract expire upon final cancellation of your order. You are required to immediately cease using the product and to destroy all copies of the product in your possession (electronic data must be permanently deleted)."

 Here is our statement and guarantee as the Docklight owners and maintainers:

"All licenses purchased via MyCommerce during the affected period July - October 2024 remain valid as originally issued, including the period between cancellation and and alternative payment as described in the following."

3. We will contact you and coordinate alternative payment via invoicing directly from us, Flachmann und Heggelbacher in Germany, and payment options via (credit card) PayPal payment or direct SEPA transfer.

If you have any questions concerning this process, feel free to contact us and we will be happy to assist you directly. But again we would like to assure you that there is no need for urgent action – you are using the software in full accordance to our license agreement and this usage right has not been revoked by us.

Only licenses that remain unpaid by the end of 2024 are added to a pool of disabled license keys which will not work with any of our future free software updates.

A short history and personal note

Marco and I have been doing this now for a long time. By long I mean that 23 years ago a gifted software architect and friend of mine, Laurent Schall, told me about his idea and showed me an early prototype of a really clever serial communications tester. With joint efforts from some more friends, we released Docklight V1.0 in 2002 via "share-it", which was later purchased by Digital River and evolved into MyCommerce. Our vendor login at MyCommerce must be one of the oldest still active accounts. When I told the Docklight idea to a trainee student that worked for me at Siemens, I was ridiculed - "selling shareware", as it was still called, was not considered a serious business. Our actual business plan was to sell 10 of these, then make a great Mojito evening out of it and have a bit of money left. And a great Mojito night at our modest offices it was! Until the night of the party, we'd already sold 20, and gradually it turned into a real business.

The Docklight offices and location of the Mojito party in 2002

We are engineers. We are great at engineering things. And probably less great at maximizing profit and licensing revenue – it simply wasn’t a goal. Instead, we set out to prove that you can work on a model of trust. We trust our customers that they use the software the way our licensing agreements describe it. You don't need activation, we don't add sneaky telemetry, your data remains your data and we have no idea what your protocols and projects look like. Unless you ask for assistance and then again we are really great at helping you. 

7 years later, and what an upgrade...

... to a basement

Now it’s 2024, and if you were one of the very early Docklight buyers that co-financed the Cuban rum, you are still good to go to download and use our finest Docklight V2.4 on Windows 11. After more than 22 years of continued development and support. How good is that for software?

At the same time, we have to watch how a decades-old trusty e-commerce platform seems to go rogue under a new management. And sets out to divert money streams away from the rightful owners, small and medium-sized software vendors who put their hearts into their products and services like we do. Well, that stings. And we do take it personally. So – no Mojitos for you, Digital River management. At least not from us.

Oliver Heggelbacher

- From the Docklight Developers - 

www.docklight.de