lorinkundert

When I bring up the list of available assemblies in LV 7.1 it does not show the newest versions of the assemblies. So I browse to the updated ones, and find the one I need, select it and go back to the browse window which still points to the old assembly.

Anyone w/ experience in accessing the updated .NET assemblies from LV??

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I use .NET assemblies all of the time, If you are constructing the reference from a file you should remove that reference from LabVIEW before adding the new one, keep in mind that by registering it that way you will probably need to place a copy in every directory any VI that uses it resides in to use it properly. The best thing all around is to give the assembly a strong name if you are the author or have the source or ask the author to do it for you, this will allow you to place the assembly in the GAC by moving the file to C:\Windows\Assembly, LabVIEW will handle it better and maintaining the correct revision is easier.

Looks like NI has learned from the great Bill Gates that if you can't beat them, buy them.

So I guess this thread is now irrelevant?   

National Instruments Acquires Measurement Computing

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Unfortunately those changes will not be enough for various segments of business, Medical, Military and any others that prohibit and external connection or communication to 3rd parties. That should significantly reduce the demand for NI products just as many of those business areas are moving to Linux.

:thumbup: What a nice response. Congratulation to each of you who helped!

As many of us suspected, the activation won't disappear, but at least seems to leave us some "free air" to work. Software activation is soooo popular that we will see more and more software be tied to it :thumbdown: .

Since I haven't any other sw product from NI that needs activation, could someone explain me what it involves? Is it something like winXP?

Didier

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Microsoft tried the same type of crap several years ago and was defeated in various court cases, LabVIEW like Visual Studio

is a tool, what you create with it is your business, If that type of licensing held up that would stop all development of any type of software, I would predict that NI is reaching the size that would make it ripe for litigation.

About a year ago, on November 25th of 2003, I posted a message (see quote, below) to Info-LabVIEW about how changes to the NI Software License Agreement (NISLA) affect LabVIEW software developers.  The verbiage of the current NISLA gives NI the right to declare a software product as being not an "authorized application" if it competes with an NI product.  Prior to that, it only prohibited using LabVIEW to create "general purpose tools that permit the development of applications to acquire, display, or analyze data."

To say the least, some people at NI were upset that I didn't come and talk to them about the issue, before announcing it to the world.  Well, it wouldn't have mattered anyway because nothing has changed in the situation, and its been just over a year now.

NI has been very assertive, in private conversations, that there is no intention to enforce the NISLA against OpenG, Alliance Members, or other folks creating software products developed using LabVIEW.  However, NI's intentions for enforcement of the NISLA don't provide much of a foundation for the future of LabVIEW software developers.  Goodwill only goes so far, since companies change (as do their markets, employees, strategies, etc).  The current NISLA agreement does not lend itself to LabVIEW's use as general purpose software development environment.  It boxes it into a mode where it can only be used as an interactive test and measurement environment.  Due to the legal implications of the NISLA, the software artifact work products of LabVIEW software development become worthless.  In my opinion, this is not fair for people that have spent a good fraction of their professional career's learning to do software development using LabVIEW/G.

I would love to see the NISLA change.  The LabVIEW community has been an important factor to the success of NI.  Taking away the community's ability to create software products written in G, is going to push people away from LabVIEW and on to other software development tools.  As most of you probably know, NI's first patents on G begin to expire in the next couple of years.  Following that, there will be competing products coming into existence, both open source and commercial, which will provide the ability to develop software written in G.  I am concerned that NI will push away the LabVIEW software developer community and drive it to competing products.  In my opinion, if things keep going down the same road with the NISLA people will be very happy to jump ship.

This posting will probably make a few more waves at NI, but that's OK.  This is an important issue and NI has a lot to gain by preserving its relationship with long-time LabVIEW users and working together with them to find a more appropriate licensing scheme as the G language becomes a more open and less proprietary software development language.

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It is not too difficult to work around NI's latest licensing scheme, They use the volume serial number of the hard drive that you activated the software on, all you have to do is copy the license file to a machine you want to transfer the software to and use one of many utilities available that change volume serial numbers to the one you want so they match. I have had no problem with it and it makes recovery from a crash simple.

To the person who is quoted as saying to let the NI people go through their activation process when they are out doing demo's all day. They use a master license file that removes the activation requirement.

Hopes this helps you continue with the legal use of the software you paid for.

I have used LabVIEW for many years and had been behind the movement at Motorola to bring it in back in 1996, Unfortunately I have no choice but to design a new system or stay with LabVIEW 7.1.1. People on this forum have touched upon dropping NI or getting involved in legal activity, I have had to choose not to purchase any of the SSP products currently under my control, last count 22; This may not be substantial enough for NI to take notice but I think that many more consultants and companies will follow suit.