Hello Job,
There are certain remote storage providers which are use OAuth2 for authentication such as Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive and Google Storage. OAuth2 requires a secure service set up to act as the authentication endpoint. It needs to be accessed when setting up the link between our backup software and the remote service, as well as when taking a backup. We need to keep these endpoints updated and on-line. This costs us money.
The way things were until November 2018 you would spend 40 Euros once and you'd be using these services forever. Obviously this creates a problem. Do we raise the price to cover the provisioning of a service which you may or you may not need? That's unfair to the people not using this service. Do we stop offering that service? That would limit which services are supported by our backup software? Do we require an active subscription so you can use this service? This solution is the most fair and that's what we decided to do.
In the coming months we are going to enforce the requirement of Download ID to do remote uploads for this reason. We are not going to backtrack on that. I would suggest creating a per-site Add-on Download ID on our site and use that on each site you manage. Once you stop managing that site simply unpublish the Download ID.
I should also note that not putting the Download ID to prevent other Super Users from downloading Akeeba Backup when they do have access to Akeeba Backup and its downloads is pointless. At this point they have access to a backup that contains all the code of the component. They can easily install the Core version and then just dump the Pro file on top, effectively upgrading their copy to the Pro version. This has happened, these people have used our services without paying and that's played its part in my decision to enforce Download ID checks when using the OAuth2 endpoints for remote backups.
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Lead Developer and Director
🇬🇷Greek: native 🇬🇧English: excellent 🇫🇷French: basic • 🕐 My time zone is Europe / Athens
Please keep in mind my timezone and cultural differences when reading my replies. Thank you!