DOpus will not honor my selections for "Check for news and program updates" and "Perform automatic update check silently."
After a fresh install, I go to the Settings->Internet->Updates page and disable both of these checkboxes, then click OK. If I go back to the page, they both have the correct value (off).
But if I exit and relaunch DOpus and then go the same settings page, then both checkboxes, out of nowhere, have the wrong value (on). I haven't noticed this bug with any other config options.
Those options are stored in the /dopusdata/ConfigFiles/prefs.oxc file (along with many others); is the file's timestamp changing to indicate it has been updated recently?
Note that it may take 5-10 seconds for prefs.ocx to be updated after clicking OK in the Preferences window, which is normal. If the file still has not changed after that long, there may be a problem with the permissions in your user profile / config directory which is preventing Opus from updating the files there.
This appeared to fix itself at random, so I did some experimenting (uninstalling and fresh installing multiple times). I found that the problem goes away as soon as I install my certificate.
So DOpus will not honor (i.e. save the value of) those checkboxes unless you have a certificate installed. I don't know if this is intentional or a bug.
If it is intentional, then maybe those options should be hidden or greyed out until you install a certificate, and DOpus should be more upfront about the fact that it intends to phone home.
I did a check in a VM and can confirm that seems to be happening. I think it's a bug but I need to take a look at the code to find out if there's some reason for it.
If you have that little trust in the software it seems odd that you would have (as you claim) paid for it at all. There are so many worse things malicious software could do besides access the internet occasionally.
The problem is that a program I've installed is sending who-knows-what data to who-knows-where over the internet (and who-knows-why). I've also seen (and blocked) the behavior regnim describes.
But those specific connection attempts are probably off-topic for this thread because I assume they're some kind of DRM rather than the update check. I mean, I think that's what they are. Who knows; AFAIK they're not documented anywhere.
[quote="jon"]
If you have that little trust in the software it seems odd that you would have (as you claim) paid for it at all. There are so many worse things malicious software could do besides access the internet occasionally.[/quote]
It's not odd. I bought Opus 8, 9, and 10, and I don't like it either. It makes me nervous that one day an internet connection may be mandated. And "better than malware" is not much of a standard.
[quote="leo"]
I did a check in a VM and can confirm that seems to be happening. I think it's a bug but I need to take a look at the code to find out if there's some reason for it.[/quote]
All internet access is described in the FAQ.[/quote]
It is a common disease, paranoia about "calling home" that is.
Just one word of caution, do not implement a system that relies on calling home to make the software work.
The creators of X1 have just implemented a new regime that locks people out if it cannot check in within, I think, 15 days. Not good news for users who go off with their laptops for two weeks holiday.
We haven't. We never would. We know Opus is used in places without internet access.
Everyone:
By all means complain if you run into a real problem but please don't invent problems that aren't there based on guesses about what might be happening.
e.g. The update checker settings not saving when no cert is installed is a real bug which we will fix; it's unintentional and we're glad it was brought to our attention in this thread.
e.g. The idea that Opus is sending data about you back to our servers for a nefarious purpose is not true, if you look into what the requests are and where they are going (there are several tools which will let you do so). (Also, if there is anything suspicious, make sure it isn't coming from a shell extension or similar DLL/plugin which is loaded into dopus.exe. e.g. Cloud storage tools will have Opus accessing the network a lot more than usual.)
The problem with the update checker not turning off properly in certain situations on a fresh install has been fixed for the next update. (It wasn't directly tied to having a certificate in the end; that was just one of several things which would trigger the relevant config file to be saved. Once any of them were done, the config setting would then work.)
Thanks for linking that page; I didn't know it existed. The relevant parts are vague, but somewhat reassuring and enough for me to give you the benefit of the doubt when DOpus appears to be doing something I don't understand.
Explicitly stating that you "never would" cripple an offline DOpus is even better.
Does the bug appear to affect other options? Just from what you've said in this thread, I'm guessing that it affects every option stored in prefs.oxc.
There are settings for the update checker in both prefs.oxc and another file.
The issue was with two update checker settings which are not stored in prefs.oxc.
There are other update checker settings which are stored in prefs.oxc, and the underlying issue did have a knock-on effect on them, but would not have affected any other prefs settings.