Helix Subscriptions

[quote="jaclazYou might however know the old Latin saying
http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ex_officio#E

excusatio non petita accusatio manifesta

More loosely, 'he who excuses himself, accuses himself'—an unprovoked excuse is a sign of guilt.

jaclaz

Hmm, seems I made you feel guilty, I apologise.

Yes I do work for e-fense - hence I have e-fense in my signature.

I am a developer, not a manager and not an owner of the business. The planning and decision making lies elsewhere.

I can only assume based upon your opinions, you work for an organisation which never seeks to make money and only delivers goods/services for free?

I can only assume based upon your opinions, you work for an organisation which never seeks to make money and only delivers goods/services for free?

Yes, you can assume that, but then you would be wrong. 😉

I don't think this is the right thread to start a debate over the "phylosophical" difference between "Community members" and "Commercial customers", but if you would like to discuss the matter, NOT necessarily related to Helix or e-fense, we could start a new thread for it.

jaclaz

You are right, it isn't the correct thread, and I wasn't attempting to discuss it, merely making an incorrect assumption…

I feel no need to discuss it further. I now fully see where you are coming from. 😉

A user of Helix3 recently contacted me. He asked if I could help him with Helix3 because He was turned away or rather told he had to sign up to the forum at E-fense.

Now it sounds like he either downloaded a corrupt/wrong ISO or simply the ISO is not automatically logging into the user account. In either case, not answering the question and trying to make money from a new user IMHO, doesn't give a user a warm and fuzzy about the "payware" solution.

I sent the question below to e-Fense and got a reply which was no help at all.
[ Their forum won't work unless you're a paid subscriber ! ]
Any ideas?
Thanks.
<name omitted>
[ Scared to open Helix 3 in XP, because of the warning screen that says it WILL make changes to my system. ??? ]
****************************************
Question to e-Fense
I just burned a boot CD from the Helix 3 ISO, booted to Helix CD, and Ubuntu pops up wanting a
USER NAME and PASSWORD. If I make up name & password, it won't accept them.
How do I get Ubuntu Linux to boot?
Thanks.
<name omitted>

******************************************
Reply from e-Fense

Eric <name omitted> wrote

<name omitted>,
Please post this question in the forums (https://www.e-fense.com/forums) so all the users and administrators have the opportunity to respond. Many times someone has run into the same problem already and the issue may already have a resolution. On the other hand, if it's a new problem, it gives us a chance to put the solution in a place where everyone has access to it.

Thanks,
Eric

I must admit to not having read all 8 pages of this discussion so far …

I _have_ paid my subscription for this year at least - it's a good tool, and it isn't an unreasonable price. What will be of interest is the level of support that I get in the next year, so far I found that the download was a little counter-intuitive ( you don't get it from the "Downloads" section ) and that even then I tried across three different machines and OSs before I got a successful download ( over the same connection ).

The model of paying for "free" things is what keeps the open source market moving - MySQL, Apache, RedHat, Nessus, Sourcefire … It is the way of the world, and we should get used to it - however the main difference with all of the above is the continued availability of a plain vanilla free version, something that I don't believe exists with Helix any longer ( or at least I couldn't find it - one of the reasons that I paid … )

So to my mind the question is not so much "Are you going to pay ?" but "Are you going to pay twice ?" 😉

however the main difference with all of the above is the continued availability of a plain vanilla free version

Nail on the head.

I really don't want to be too critical of a decision to offer a commercial product - in fact I support e-fense in their endeavours and genuinely hope they're successful - but it staggers me that a decision was made which so obviously (even to a dullard such as myself) would alienate a fair number of existing, loyal users and destroy a lot of goodwill built up over the years.

I think this really was a situation where they could have had their cake and eaten it but for some reason chose not to, or am I less than well informed and there is still a free version available?

Jamie

I think this really was a situation where they could have had their cake and eaten it but for some reason chose not to, or am I less than well informed and there is still a free version available?

You are spot on there is no FREE version of Helix3.

Greetings,

And they're still spamming us with email trying to get us to sign up while saying that the discount was extended due to the overwhelming popularity.

I keep trying to cut them some slack, but they keep abusing many user's trust, loyalty, and common sense.

The tools may be superb, but the marketing department really needs some help.

_David

Sure there is.

For earlier versions of Helix just grab Knoppix, turn off auto-mounting read-write and set auto-mounting read-only, put your logo on the desktop, add in a few forensics-oriented applications, run the Knoppix remaster script, and there you are!

For the later versions of Helix just grab Ubuntu, turn off auto-mounting read-write and set auto-mounting read only, put your logo on the desktop, add in a few forensics-oriented applications, run the Ubuntu remaster script, and there you are!

Honestly, the process above is trivial. If it seems difficult give it a few whirls and you'll dial it in. However, if you prefer someone else to do it for you then you could invest in their commercial product, supporting them in development and support of said product, because you utilize that product in your livelihood. Less than one U.S. dollar per day for the product _seems_ rather reasonable, if you find the product to offer a solution to one or more of your needs.

There are two _very_ different issues at hand here. One is that e-fense opted to shut off the spigot and charge money for their product. The other is that e-fense didn't ask their community (based solely upon this thread) for their input, and their community feels shafted. Folks need to decide which line to get in and stand in the queue.

Remember, Helix wasn't original. It was a remaster of The Penguin Sleuthkit, which Ernie "developed" by remastering Knoppix (see process above). I saw someone in this thread indicating they were going to yet again remaster Helix and continue on a commercially free version. Three generations of remastering. You could start from scratch and develop something optimized, configured, and well thought out and tested for your needs, or the needs of the community.

Cheers!

farmerdude

www.onlineforensictraining.com

www.forensicbootcd.com

You could start from scratch and develop something optimized, configured, and well thought out and tested for your needs, or the needs of the community.

It's been suggested on more than one occasion that we do exactly that right here…