Tag Archives: customer relations

ArcaOS 5 included Support & Maintenance Subscription length

We have recently become aware of some possible confusion surrounding the amount of time (term) of included support for personal vs commercial edition licenses of ArcaOS 5. It therefor seemed appropriate to review our website content, and to our surprise, we find that we really have not done a good enough job of making this particular — though critical — issue very clear. Hopefully, this post will set the record straight.

In an earlier post, we discussed the process for renewing subscriptions, and mentioned that it was renewal season for early adopters of ArcaOS 5. That reference was to those who purchased personal edition licenses for ArcaOS 5 six (6) months ago.

ArcaOS 5.0 personal edition includes six (6) months of Support & Maintenance.

ArcaOS 5.0 commercial edition includes twelve (12) months (one full year) of Support & Maintenance.

Renewal reminders are normally sent one month prior to expiration, one week prior, and finally on the day of expiration.

Although the personal and commercial editions of ArcaOS 5 are code-equivalent (there is no difference in the operating system or kernel itself, e.g., both support up to 32 processor cores and an unlimited number of connections, with the same storage volume types and capacities and included device drivers and applications), there are other differences between the two, namely the level of support and the term (length of time) of the included subscription. The commercial edition includes prioritized support for twelve months (one year), whereas the personal edition includes standard support for six months.

Support renewals for both editions are for one year. For example, a personal edition license purchased June 1, 2017 will be due for a Support & Maintenance subscription renewal on or before November 30, 2017 and the renewal will extend the support a full year until November 30, 2018. A commercial edition license purchased the same day (June 1, 2017) will be due for a Support & Maintenance subscription renewal on or before May 31, 2018 and the renewal will extend the support for a full year until May 31, 2019.

If you miss the deadline for a timely renewal of your included Support & Maintenance subscription, you may still “renew” your subscription at the regular price. Missed the deadline because you didn’t receive your reminder emails for some reason? No problem. Just contact us or open a customer service ticket, and we will be glad to help make things right. That’s our commitment to you as an ArcaOS licensee.

Finally, for those of you with existing OS/2 & eCS Drivers & Software subscriptions, concerned about the differences between the two subscription “tracks,” we have a handy table which compares the two, available here.

We believe there are compelling reasons to move up to ArcaOS 5, and to keep in force a Support & Maintenance subscription, ensuring regular updates and the availability of technical assistance for the operating system as a whole. While there is no requirement to renew Support & Maintenance to continue using ArcaOS 5, doing so ensures uninterrupted access to updates, refreshed installation ISOs, and support.

Please review this post for the specifics on how to renew your existing subscription.

A Note about Third-Party Components in ArcaOS

You may be aware of the recent massive Equifax security breach and the Company’s explanation surrounding a vulnerability in Apache Struts (CVE-2017-5638) disclosed by US CERT in early March 2017. Some reports have implied that the company has somehow blamed Apache Software Foundation for the breach, specifically by not moving quickly enough to address the security flaw. Apache has responded to these allegations clearly and concisely. In light of this incident, we thought this a good opportunity to help provide some clarity concerning third-party work and open source components, in general, as they pertain to ArcaOS and Arca Noae’s position regarding their fitness for use, and who is ultimately responsible to maintain his or her or, in the case of enterprise use, its own systems.

Arca Noae includes several components in ArcaOS developed by reputable third parties, including IBM, Apple, and others. Some of these components are open source, as well, meaning that the code for compiling these components into machine-readable form is freely available to the public. Open source software is often more secure than proprietary software, by nature of the fact that many (sometimes thousands) of developers around the world contribute to the code. This (often massive) group effort allows such projects to react quickly when flaws are discovered, and to work to constantly monitor and maintain the software. However, whether proprietary or open source, Arca Noae may have no control whatsoever over these components, inherent flaws, or as-yet-undisclosed security issues.

It is Arca Noae’s position that each ArcaOS licensee (whether an individual or an enterprise) bears the sole responsibility to consider his or her or its own interests and security. While we do what is within the realm of reasonable possibility to stay abreast of current trends and vulnerability disclosures (CVEs), we cannot guarantee that all issues will be identified and/or reported to our users by us. Thus, best practices dictate that each user remain vigilant and aware of the connected ecosystem in which we live and to take steps to mitigate his or her or its own risks.

Arca Noae welcomes reports from our users of disclosed and non-disclosed vulnerabilities. While we normally encourage our users to avail themselves of our Mantis ticketing system to report issues, those of a sensitive nature (such as an as-yet-undisclosed or little-known security flaw in a bundled component) should be reported through our contact page.

We would also like to take this opportunity to remind all of our ArcaOS licensees that ArcaOS does not utilize telemetry of any kind to communicate with us. We firmly believe that when a user licenses a copy of ArcaOS, his or her or its data should remain on the system as directed by the user, shared only by the user, and with the user’s full knowledge and consent.

The next exciting update to ArcaOS 5.0 is in the making, too. Watch the Arca Noae blog for a release announcement in the coming weeks.

Want to learn more about using ArcaOS? Come to Warpstock 2017 in Toronto!

Warpstock as an event has been around since 1997. Since its inception, the goal of Warpstock has been to educate and expose users to OS/2, its available software, and how to get the most out of the environment. In addition, Warpstock has always been a great venue for meeting developers and engineers involved with OS/2 and its derivative operating systems, including eComStation and ArcaOS.

This year’s Warpstock event is scheduled for September 8-10 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. Several key members of the ArcaOS development team will be on hand to present, answer questions, and take suggestions to improve the operating system as we continue to move toward the 5.1 release, planned for later next year.

More information about Warpstock, its history, past speakers and presentations, and this year’s event may be found on Warpstock’s site: http://www.warpstock.org.

Come join us in Toronto!

ArcaOS 5.0: Full support for existing OS/2 applications

Still running a critical application on OS/2? Still have some old, musty Pentium III workstations humming along, and hoping that a power supply doesn’t fail or that the noisy 20GB IDE disk doesn’t develop a bad spot because the workstation can’t recognize anything bigger? Afraid to power it off for fear it won’t start again?

Perhaps it’s time to look at new – yes brand new – hardware for that application. Let’s face it, that app has been around this long because it works. It’s worked all these years just fine. The fact that the hardware is showing its age and the application continues to be useful (critical, in many cases) is a testament to the quality of the software. Why do away with a perfectly good application, just because the moving parts are wearing out?

ArcaOS 5.0 runs all of those great OS/2 applications just like OS/2. Why? Because at its core, ArcaOS 5.0 is OS/2. No emulation. No compatibility mode. Pure OS/2 Warp 4.52 – with updates, fixes, and modifications to be compatible with the latest multi-core and multi-processor hardware available. Replace that old Pentium III with an i5 or i7 or AMD multi-core system, 16 or 32GB of memory, and a 240GB SSD, or move an existing Pentium 4 with 1GB of memory, and a 250GB SATA 3 hard drive from something else. ArcaOS 5.0 has lean hardware requirements, but can take advantage of some of the latest technologies.

Why replace an entire PBX system because the OS/2 workstation which has been storing voicemail all these years is in need of replacement? (We’d call that an often forgotten, yet critical, application.) Move that software onto a new system running ArcaOS 5.0. Need help? Let our team of engineers have a look. We don’t just develop and license software, we design, implement, and manage it, as well.

How ArcaOS addresses privacy and data security

Personal computers have come a long way since the 1990’s, and today, it seems like everything wants to connect to everything else – even when we don’t want that to happen. Worse yet, it seems that device manufacturers and software publishers aren’t satisfied with a simple product purchase or licensing fee; instead, they seem to want to harvest your personal information and either use it market more stuff to you or even sell it to unknown third parties.

Arca Noae understands this, and we respect your privacy. ArcaOS evolved from roots which predate this overly-connected ecosystem in which we find ourselves today. While there are some trade-offs for the insulation which that affords the user, we believe that these trade-offs are well worth the effort.

Here are some of the things which ArcaOS 5.0 either doesn’t have or doesn’t do. See if you don’t agree that when compared to some other operating system choices you have, ArcaOS looks like a much safer bet:

No Adobe Flash Player. Over the years, Flash has become a major attack vector for compromising not only the browser (when run as a plugin), but the entire system, planting many spyware elements on the system to beacon the user’s actions elsewhere or serve as a path for infecting other systems – regardless the antivirus or antispyware software in use on the system. We made a decision early in the development cycle that as the internet is moving to HTML5 for more native playback of rich media, we would not include such a weakly-secured component in ArcaOS.
No centralized address book. A central address book is a common vulnerability, exposing all of your contacts to discovery (and spamming). There are methods for securing an address book in Thunderbird and SeaMonkey, however. Be sure that if you use anything which stores addresses you keep it password protected with a strong cipher to ward against theft.
No centralized password manager. There is nothing wrong with having a password manager installed, and there are, in fact, several very nice ones which run quite well under ArcaOS. However, why should everyone know which password manager you use? Known exploits could leave you vulnerable even without divulging such information. Because there is no single password manager bundled with ArcaOS, would-be thieves will have to try to determine which application actually holds your valuable information.
Samba 4 file and printer sharing client, including Kerberos and NTLMv2 authentication. No old, weak password hashes for ArcaOS. Instead, Samba 4 utilizes the latest methods for securing authentication to servers and even encrypting data transport to and from servers so configured.
Updates via secure channels, keeping Arca Noae credentials safe. When accessing updates from Arca Noae servers, all transports are done using the HTTPS protocol, and when storing your login credentials in Arca Noae Package Manager, the credentials are actually tied to your local system. It is not possible for someone to steal your configuration and easily decrypt your username and password for your Arca Noae account on another machine.
Arca Noae stores no financial information on our own servers. Should your account credentials actually fall into the wrong hands (a stolen laptop or a careless reminder note), your account information stored on our servers does not include any of your credit card data. We simply do not retain this sensitive information.
ArcaOS doesn’t “phone home.” It’s true. If you ever find yourself stranded on a desert island with just your laptop and a solar panel for electricity, your ArcaOS-powered machine will never complain about not being able to “authorize” the installation for use, because it never looks to contact us. An ArcaOS installation is an island unto itself. It is even possible to retrieve software updates on a single machine and set that machine as a repository for all of the other ArcaOS stations on your network. None of the other systems would ever need to touch the internet to get the latest code.
ArcaOS does not include any trialware or junkware. Many of these applications contact their own publishers over the internet (aside from ceasing to function after a certain period of time). Every bundled application on the ArcaOS DVD is fully functional and fully licensed for use with ArcaOS – forever, with no further registration required, anywhere. None of these applications send information over the internet to anyone else, and are perfectly happy to just run in their own space under ArcaOS, unless you want them to make contact elsewhere. Shouldn’t that always be the case?

This is by no means an exhaustive list of how ArcaOS was designed to keep you safe in our overly-connected world, but merely a starting point for discussion and consideration. All that, and we managed to keep the introductory pricetag under a hundred bucks. How’s that?

Server load mitigated, and order processing moving

If you’ve been waiting for us to get ahead of our server load issues, you shall be greatly rewarded. We have taken steps to address the issue, and traffic seems to be flowing more consistently.

Thank you for your patience, and for all of you who have already ordered and downloaded your personalized ArcaOS ISOs, thank you for your business!

Stubborn renewals…made easier!

In case you renewed your subscription outside the 30-day grace period and previously experienced difficulty accessing your downloads, we are happy to report that the problem has been resolved. If for some reason you are still having difficulty, then by all means, please contact customer service.

In addition, we’ve improved the order details page for renewal orders and added a link to the original subscription, to make it easier to access your downloads.

Thanks again for everyone’s patience and understanding while we worked to resolve these issues. We appreciate your business, your continued support of Arca Noae and our shared computing platform of choice, and we look forward to seeing many of you at an OS/2-focused event sometime this year.

Stubborn renewals

In case you have renewed your subscription outside the 30-day grace period and are experiencing difficulty accessing your downloads, please contact customer service. We are aware of the issue and are working to resolve it. We appreciate your patience.

Another area of some confusion is the lack of download links on the order details page for the renewal item itself. Once you have successfully renewed your subscription, simply visit your original subscription order details page (where you have been accessing these links all along), and all of your downloads should work as expected. If not, just drop us a note. We’re working to improve the flow and presentation of the content.

Subscription renewal discounts

Did you know that the value of your Arca Noae Drivers & Software Subscription grows year over year?

Renewals are subject to a 10% discount when ordered within a month of expiration. We’ve also implemented renewal reminder emails to make renewing your subscription easier. If you renewed by making another full purchase, we’ll be getting in touch to extend a credit voucher for your next order of anything in our store, including sponsoring.

The renewal discount applies to personal and commercial editions, and applies to the total number of subscriptions renewed.

If your original purchase was through one of our resellers, you should definitely order your renewal through the same channel. It may take a short while for all of our resellers to add the proper SKUs to their stores, so be sure to contact your vendor of choice to ask about renewal ordering if you have any questions or don’t see it listed.

If you are already an Arca Noae subscriber, thanks for your business. If you still haven’t felt the need, or for whatever reason have held off purchasing a subscription, we’d welcome the chance to prove the value of our subscription service to you.

Still running mature software? Arca Noae can help

There was some news made recently when Orly Airport in Paris, France suffered some apparent downtime of its Windows 3.1-based DECOR system which provides Runway Visual Range (RVR) information to pilots. Tech news media was abuzz with ridicule for any enterprise still running what it termed as such “antiquated” systems (referring to both DECOR and Windows 3.1, and in several instances, referring to Windows XP and “UNIX” as similarly antiquated (see here, here, and here for examples).

Unfortunately, what many of these news outlets don’t understand is that after all of the years in service, it simply may not make economic sense to replace a working system simply because there’s a new OS or application version available (likely with new and unknown flaws and potential pitfalls). Perhaps a newer version of a critical application did away with what is to that customer a must-have feature, or perhaps the application has been orphaned altogether, and nothing else currently available seems to be able to do as efficient a job as what is already in place.

Arca Noae understands the value of these systems. OS/2 still provides “a better DOS than DOS and a better [16-bit] Windows than Windows” due to its preemptive multitasking capabilities and crash protection, so multiple Windows 3.1 and/or DOS sessions may be started and run independently of one another, where a critical application is less likely to be brought down simply because some other application crashed in a different session.

If you have a need to run mature applications on OS/2, Windows 3.1, or DOS, Arca Noae can help extend the life of your investment in those platforms and those applications. Our OS/2 & eCS Drivers and Software package subscription – available now – can assist in running OS/2 or eComStation on newer hardware. Our upcoming OS/2 release, codenamed Blue Lion, is being designed to provide an installable solution to deploy new systems with an updated OS/2, fully capable of handling those mature DOS and Windows 3.1 applications, as well as native OS/2 applications and ported Linux applications on modern hardware or in a virtualized environment.

Perhaps you need expertise in handling such a transition or in maintaining your mature infrastructure. Arca Noae’s experienced engineers and consultants can provide those services, as well, practically anywhere in the world. Need us? Contact us.