Pro Tuning license

[GMC-2002-Dmax]

Lawyers............the reason things cost so much, because always someone is trying to sue you for their own stupidity.

Darwin would be rolling over in his grave.

[DMan1198]

The comedian that hypothesized taking all the warning stickers, and safety things off of everything, and letting natural selection take its course might be on to something

[Blacky]

Got to love those wrning stickers, some of my favorites: http://mistupid.com/people/warnings.htm

Meanwhile back to the "Pro Tuning" option. We are still looking at how to provide the Pro features to Pro tuners who need them and are responsible enough to use them properly without exposing EFILive to undue legal risk.

Regards
Paul

[catman3126]

So what will these pro tuning features be?

[Blacky]

So what will these pro tuning features be?

To obtain a Pro Tuning license will require that the applicant can demonstrate a level of skill required to be considered a professional tuner. How EFILive can determine that accurately is not yet defined. It's a "legal issue" regarding supplying product to the public v's supplying product to appropriately skilled personnel.

Evidently the argument that "Anyone can by a set of tools that can be used to disable/damage almost any part of a vehicle and yet if/when the disabled vehicle crashes injuring the occupants, the tool maker is not responsible", doesn't stand up legally. Legally it may be possible to argue that EFILive (with the training wheels removed) cannot be sold to the general public and can only be sold to tuners who have passed some arbitrary level of training. What that training could/would be is anyone's guess.

Anyway, the first two features are:

1. Less restrictive *.cax files, i.e. allowing calibrations to be defined that overlap (or replace) existing EFILive defined calibrations.
2. Ability to bypass the "incompatible operating systems" checks when flashing incompatible operating system files into various controllers.

Mostly it will be used to allow the Pro Tuning license holder to bypass restrictions* that if/when used incorrectly will brick the target controller and render it useless and usually unrecoverable.

* Restrictions (i.e. training wheels) that we have to include in our software to prevent customers accidentally or naively shooting themselves in the foot.

Regards
Paul

[catman3126]

Makes sense, when this pro tuning license is implemented will the general tuning public have less access to parameters then they do now?

[Blacky]

Makes sense, when this pro tuning license is implemented will the general tuning public have less access to parameters then they do now?

No, the Pro Tuning License is only intended to bypass existing restrictions. It is actually already implemented in this latest pre-release, it is just that we can't start selling the Pro Tuning licenses until we cross all the legal t's and dot all the legal i's.

We don't plan on removing any existing features from the standard version just to move those features into the Pro Tuning version. You may be thinking of our previous license types: Personal, Commercial and Workshop that each offered a different set of features. That's not where we are heading.

The spirit of the Pro Tuning license is simply to allow tuners to bypass existing restrictions but at the same time for those tuners to assume the risk/responsibility for choosing to do so. We are not implementing the Pro Tuning option as a way to lock existing users out of existing features. It may be conceivable in the future that if some feature in our software becomes a problem and it is causing too many controllers to fail then we may consider moving access to that feature into the Pro tuning license version. However, I can't think of any existing feature that would fall into that category.

Having said that we may in future add additional license types (custom licenses) specifically to allow us to recoup development costs for features that we would otherwise not spend development resources on. Say a group of tuners or even a single large supplier wanted exclusive access to a specific feature (that is not already available) and was willing to pay for it to be developed. EFILive could issue a custom license to activate that feature for that supplier's or group of tuner's exclusive use.

Regards
Paul

[Mitco39]

Having said that we may in future add additional license types (custom licenses) specifically to allow us to recoup development costs for features that we would otherwise not spend development resources on. Say a group of tuners or even a single large supplier wanted exclusive access to a specific feature (that is not already available) and was willing to pay for it to be developed. EFILive could issue a custom license to activate that feature for that supplier's or group of tuner's exclusive use.

Paul,

I strongly disagree with the last paragraph of your post. Doing this will hurt all your customers who do not have the means to pay extra for exclusive service. You guys have many many smaller guys who can compete with larger companies based just on the merit of having good tunes and strong customer service. If you do develop something like this these shops will now lose customers to bigger ones because they cannot compete. EFI Live has in the past been about working on an even playing field and that appears to be changing as time goes on to favor larger shops instead of both the individual and the smaller shops who tune out of passion, not out of the ability to get the most sales.

Talk to any one of your well known but lets say "have not" dealers. Ive spoken with many of them and we are all very much the same, we tune because we love it. We do what we can with the personal we can to provide the best service possible. To offer exclusive use to one faction of your reseller group over another will cause much unrest. I know that because you guys are unique in the world in the service that you offer that you could very well do this without any repercussions so all I am asking is for you to reconsider that direction of development.

If you wanted to do it such that any developed product in house was sold to the general public then thats one thing, but to offer it only to a single tuner or small group of tuners would make things very difficult for a large percentage of your clients. I come from the diesel side of things, and I know your gas market is also very very large so I guess they might have a difference of opinion on this.

I would much rather see further development in new controllers IE. Ford. Just like business has been with your development into the cummins world has been.


Again this is one resellers opinion, and whatever way you guys choose to do it we all will have to live with.


Thanks for your time,

Mitch Cooper

[catman3126]

I can just imagine what is going to happen with this. It's something Efi live has wanted for a long time.

[Highlander]

Paul,

I strongly disagree with the last paragraph of your post. Doing this will hurt all your customers who do not have the means to pay extra for exclusive service. You guys have many many smaller guys who can compete with larger companies based just on the merit of having good tunes and strong customer service. If you do develop something like this these shops will now lose customers to bigger ones because they cannot compete. EFI Live has in the past been about working on an even playing field and that appears to be changing as time goes on to favor larger shops instead of both the individual and the smaller shops who tune out of passion, not out of the ability to get the most sales.

Talk to any one of your well known but lets say "have not" dealers. Ive spoken with many of them and we are all very much the same, we tune because we love it. We do what we can with the personal we can to provide the best service possible. To offer exclusive use to one faction of your reseller group over another will cause much unrest. I know that because you guys are unique in the world in the service that you offer that you could very well do this without any repercussions so all I am asking is for you to reconsider that direction of development.

If you wanted to do it such that any developed product in house was sold to the general public then thats one thing, but to offer it only to a single tuner or small group of tuners would make things very difficult for a large percentage of your clients. I come from the diesel side of things, and I know your gas market is also very very large so I guess they might have a difference of opinion on this.

I would much rather see further development in new controllers IE. Ford. Just like business has been with your development into the cummins world has been.


Again this is one resellers opinion, and whatever way you guys choose to do it we all will have to live with.


Thanks for your time,

Mitch Cooper

THIS IS PERFECT

What paul wants to do is... lets say i want something done with the software for my liking, he will be able to do it.. CHARGE ME for it but only me can have it. That is GREAT stuff. Specially if i say... i want this custom OS done..... It could be in the thousands in RD but I can have that and it will be beneficial for what i want to do.

They are NOT removing anything, they are just doing a for hire programming custom stuff, be it on the software side or wherever.



Thanks