NI's New Software Subscription Model

[crossrulz]

34 minutes ago, X___ said:

He didn't leave and in fact should be back by now:

Last I was aware, he is still not part of R&D.  His initial project came to a close and he moved on to another one.

[Sparkette]

On 12/15/2021 at 6:25 AM, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

And the Community Edition does not include things like RT, FPGA, and just about every other thing with a paid license including the Application Builder.

Community Edition does have Application Builder.

  

On 1/8/2022 at 6:42 AM, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

While I do believe that the LabVIEW developers and the managers who directly work there really would like to make LabVIEW a good and flourishing product, I feel the higher management has already decided that this is going to be a dead end and have very little intentions to do anything else than let it bleed to death, so they can get rid of that liability.

Are you saying you think they're looking to discontinue LabVIEW? If they aren't going to sell it anymore, it would be great if they'd make it open source. Not sure how likely that is though.

Edited January 16, 2022 by flarn2006

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

14 hours ago, flarn2006 said:

Are you saying you think they're looking to discontinue LabVIEW? If they aren't going to sell it anymore, it would be great if they'd make it open source. Not sure how likely that is though.

Open sourcing sounds very unlikely. And what I feel here is not that they will abandon it in the next few years just like that. There is also the question about their original assurance for a software escrow of LabVIEW, that NI used when trying to convince companies to use LabVIEW in the 90ies. Never heard about that since, so it may have been not much more than a smoke screen or some empty promise, or it may still be an actual fact.

But if you look at what is happening with LabWindows CVI now, it may be an indication about what they are heading for with LabVIEW in the coming 10 years. And NI's track record with acquired software and how they treated it is not very encouraging either. Ever heard of HIQ, Lookout, BridgeVIEW, Electronics Workbench and a few others?

Edited January 17, 2022 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[X___]

8 hours ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

But if you look at what is happening with LabWindows CVI now, it may be an indication about what they are heading for with LabVIEW in the coming 10 years. And NI's track record with acquired software and how they treated it is not very encouraging either. Ever heard of HIQ, Lookout, BridgeVIEW, Electronics Workbench and a few others?

What is happening with LabWindows/CVI?

I have heard of HiQ, even tried it when it became an NI product. It appears dead according to the forums: https://forums.ni.com/t5/HiQ/bd-p/160

The others ring a bell, but I never tried them.

This thread on Lookout tells it all: https://forums.ni.com/t5/Lookout/NI-Lookout-Support/td-p/3278274

BridgeView is now LabVIEW DSC according to this: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/What-is-or-was-BridgeVIEW/td-p/248264

Electronics Workbench is now MultiSim according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NI_Multisim

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

21 hours ago, X___ said:

What is happening with LabWindows/CVI?

I have heard of HiQ, even tried it when it became an NI product. It appears dead according to the forums: https://forums.ni.com/t5/HiQ/bd-p/160

The others ring a bell, but I never tried them.

This thread on Lookout tells it all: https://forums.ni.com/t5/Lookout/NI-Lookout-Support/td-p/3278274

BridgeView is now LabVIEW DSC according to this: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/What-is-or-was-BridgeVIEW/td-p/248264

Electronics Workbench is now MultiSim according to Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NI_Multisim

Indeed and LabVIEW DSC is on the way out. There have been no updates to it in years and support questions are blissfully ignored for a long time.

HIQ was acquired in the first half of the 90ies and had the potential to compete with Mathematica and Matlab back then, but NI mainly used it to cannibalize some of its mathematical routines and add some of it to LabVIEW and then lost interest on it.

Lookout was acquired around the some time. It was a very unique DSC software package with a rather interesting object oriented architecture. NI used the low level components to create its Logos network protocol infrastructure on which things like Datasocket and later Shared Variables were implemented. They also used various components of Lookout to convert the originally purely LabVIEW based BridgeVIEW system into LabVIEW DSC. After that Lookout spend its existence as a rather badly cared for step child in the NI product portfolio and eventually nobody was left over to support it anymore.

LabWindows/CVI changed from yearly updates with new features added regularly to two year updates with not much more than cosmetic bugfixes for several years already. It's worse in terms of new features added than LabVIEW ever was for many years. But with LabVIEW they used the excuse that all effort was directed towards LabVIEW NXG and LabVIEW was going to be replaced by it one day.

NI MultiSim used to be two products from the same company (Electronics Workbench)  who were named Electronics Workbench and ULTIboard before they got acquired by NI and were at that time one of the leading EDA products in the educational market worldwide. Nowadays they are completely insignificant in the EDA market. If you have the money you will subscribe to Altium Designer, if you try to be a bit cheaper you may use Autodesk Fusion 360 or if you are an old time Eagle user then maybe Autodesk Eagle PCB and if you insist on Open Source then KiCAD will be very likely your choice (which has made large strides since CERN has decided to back it). Electronics Workbench (or NI MultiSIM) is not on that list for sure. I have used it a few times since it is part of our Alliance Member software lease but it is not up to the task of creating modern PCB designs and hence not worth the effort to learn its many specific mechanisms and bugs.

Edited January 18, 2022 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[X___]

Sort of squares with the links I posted. But that's the life of software or most products in general...

It would be preposterous for NI to claim that they will bring LabVIEW to the TIOBE index or similar ranking lists, but there is a difference between running out of idea for a product (which might be the case and justify your prediction of the future demise of the language) and corporate double-speak like what we were served when they axed NXG: https://forums.ni.com/t5/LabVIEW/Our-Commitment-to-LabVIEW-as-we-Expand-our-Software-Portfolio/td-p/4101878

[X___]

Discussing the new SaaS LabVIEW model with the IT officer in charge of paying for our Departmental subscription, it dawned on to me that they could very conceivably decide not to continue paying for our license at any point in the future, due to the dwindling demand for LabVIEW in industry (and increasing pull to Python and other alternative).

This would leave us peons to have to shell for individual seat licenses from our meager federal grants, something that is not sustainable. In other words, I have concluded that I will try out LV 2021 SP1 when it is released (presumably not yet SaaS), and if no major bugs prevent me from working with it, I will stop there and start migrating all my applications to py-prefix named ones. Otherwise, I will stick to LV 2019 and do the same.

To each his/her/their own ambition, I guess.

[thols]

Remember when Adobe started with SaaS? Everyone hated it. But since there was no real competitor to Photoshop, many accepted the subscription model in the end. The big difference to LabVIEW is that there ARE real alternatives, FREE alternatives. If NI had successfully taken LabVIEW into a modern era, they would have earned trust. Now, they instead throw this at us after NXG is scrapped and no hope is given to us that any real progress into the future will be made with LabVIEW, and they expect us to pay. (By no hope, I refer to the corporate one-liners about NXG and LabVIEW that scares me and that silence has reigned since). Maybe it is an intended strategy: to start implementing real progress in LabVIEW when we have to subscribe to get it. I really hope not. I hope they listen to the concerns in this thread, since that mirrors the concerns of most of the LabVIEW user base.

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

8 hours ago, X___ said:

Discussing the new SaaS LabVIEW model with the IT officer in charge of paying for our Departmental subscription, it dawned on to me that they could very conceivably decide not to continue paying for our license at any point in the future, due to the dwindling demand for LabVIEW in industry (and increasing pull to Python and other alternative).

This would leave us peons to have to shell for individual seat licenses from our meager federal grants, something that is not sustainable. In other words, I have concluded that I will try out LV 2021 SP1 when it is released (presumably not yet SaaS), and if no major bugs prevent me from working with it, I will stop there and start migrating all my applications to py-prefix named ones. Otherwise, I will stick to LV 2019 and do the same.

To each his/her/their own ambition, I guess.

I think you can NOT purchase perpetual licenses anymore since January 1, 2022. So unless your current SSP does run until after the release of 2021 SP1, you would have to go with 2020SP1 (2021 non SP is not an option IMHO).

As to your previous post about trying to get LabVIEW into the TIOBE index: It has been for almost 20 years, with the highest ranking somewhere in the 20ies I believe, and currently lingering around 40, on the brink to falling out of the top 50. But that has been the case for over 10 years already.

Edited January 24, 2022 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[X___]

17 minutes ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

I think you can NOT purchase perpetual licenses anymore since January 1, 2022. So unless your current SSP does run until after the release of 2021 SP1, you would have to go with 2020SP1 (2021 non SP is not an option IMHO).

We shall see about that. Having to subscribe to get a bug fix release would be the nail in the coffin in my not so humble opinion. But in any case, I am fine with 2019 SP1 as I have no use for secure HTTP.

The recommendation to upgrade by the NI engineers I dealt with to solve (and eventually did not solve) my recent problems, take a fresh new perspective in this context! At the time that sounded to me like a stupid advice. Now it sounds like a sneaky marketing ploy...

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

27 minutes ago, X___ said:

We shall see about that. Having to subscribe to get a bug fix release would be the nail in the coffin in my not so humble opinion. But in any case, I am fine with 2019 SP1 as I have no use for secure HTTP.

The recommendation to upgrade by the NI engineers I dealt with to solve (and eventually did not solve) my recent problems, take a fresh new perspective in this context! At the time that sounded to me like a stupid advice. Now it sounds like a sneaky marketing ploy...

Most likely no real malice involved here. But simply the fact that he has only the latest version installed and there is always the (not so likely) chance that the new version fixes the problem magically either through a bug fix introduced since or a fresh new full installation of all software components.

[X___]

15 minutes ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

Most likely no real malice involved here. But simply the fact that he has only the latest version installed and there is always the (not so likely) chance that the new version fixes the problem magically either through a bug fix introduced since or a fresh new full installation of all software components.

I doubt it. They never asked me for my code, and never answered my questions as to what my failure logs were telling them. Honestly, I had the feeling they really did not care beside just raking the number of support hours they are supposed to log per month. But it's just my disappointed customer opinion, obviously.

[ShaunR]

6 hours ago, X___ said:

But in any case, I am fine with 2019 SP1 as I have no use for secure HTTP.

And when you do, there are still options

[HYH]

Here is a little story about the dilemma I have with subscription. Should I have one or should I just stop and use what I have now.

I have been a happy SSP customer for 20+ years. Because every 4..5 years I run into a problem where I need assistance from NI. Not to fix problems in my code, but to fix problems in LabVIEW.

I develop and maintain a test system for our production including an application with a big VI having a complexity of 18. 

It killed the LabVIEW 2010 compiler which NI resolved by introducing the hybrid compiler in LabVIEW 2010 SP1. And introducing the ini file setting "CompilerCodeComplexityThreshold".  

Smooth sailing with 2010 SP1 till around 2016 where I decided that it was time to look for a newer LabVIEW base version. Various problems were found before I finally settled on LabVIEW 2018 SP1. Which I am still using. A very nice version.  

One problem found and fixed was that NI changed the hybrid compiler again in LabVIEW 2015. That meant that every time I pressed Run after a code change the compiler would compile for 4 minutes before actually running, whereas it took 15.20 seconds in earlier versions. This was of course a complete no-go.

NI came to the rescue again. And as other customers before me had the same problem NI had made a new ini setting "EnableLegacyCompilerFallback" to solve this problem.

Recently I thought it was time to look for a new LabVIEW base version. And ran into the old problem. LabVIEW 2019 and newer doesn't support the "EnableLegacyCompilerFallback" anymore. So I contacted NI support to get help. And the support engineer were able to reproduce the problem. 

But now comes the real problem. NI R&D told the support engineer that the 2015 ini setting were a hack ( their words ) and that is was now unsupported because they would not maintain the hybrid compiler in the future. According to them it meant that they should write the same code twice. Meaning more testing I guess.

So I am stuck at LabVIEW 2018 SP1. No more upgrades. Not that I am very unhappy with that. Not much has been improved since in LabVIEW.

NI kindly suggested me to re-write the code to reduce the complexity. Probably a multi year project.

But now to the dilemma. Should I continue with a yearly subscription, knowing that I cannot use any new LabVIEW version being released. If NI changes their mind in the future I can jump onto the bandwagon again then without having to pay big money for a new license.

Fortunately I have another half year before the current SSP period is running out. So time to think.

Regards
Henning
 

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

Sounds like a no brainer to me. Granted a VI that has gotten so complex that the LabVIEW compiler has a problem with it is probably a huge maintenance nightmare in itself. I still have to encounter this problem with any VI I ever created but am pretty sure that chances for that are pretty much zero. 😀

However back to your problem. Your SSP expires in half a year. It means that it still covers LabVIEW 2021 SP1 once it is released, so your existing perpetual license basically grants you the right to use LabVIEW 2021 SP1 or earlier. Once you extend your SSP it automatically converts to a subscription.

The only advantage of extending the SSP is that you can lock in the subscription price for up to three years for the current SSP cost which is about half of what the yearly subscription price is.

Instead you can keep your perpetual license and decide at a later point in time to buy a yearly subscription when you decide you want to go to a newer version that supports the newest and greatest "Quantum Computer Future Prediction Technology" TM

Until then and even after you signed up for that yet to be future subscription, you can still keep using your existing perpetual license for LabVIEW 2018 (or 2021 if you ever decide to make the jump). You loose direct support, access to training material and such perks until you buy a subscription, but that is likely something you can live with for some time. Also in the long run you might get into trouble as NI drivers only support the current and previous 3 versions. So NI-DAQmx (or any other driver for that matter) 23.x will stop providing support for your current LabVIEW 2018 version and if you then want to use an NI board introduced in 2023 and hence only supported in NI-DAQmx 23.x, you have a problem.

[Reds]

So I love a conspiracy theory as much as the next guy.....but I've changed my mind. There is no conspiracy to kill LabVIEW here.

I recently discovered that some of the toolkits NI sells, like the ones used to generate WiFi test signals for the RF hardware, are also going subscription only. Now this is pure madness. Who wants to buy a $75,000 signal generator for your lab, which will be useless if you don't resubscribe to the software package every year? Crazy.

So I've changed my mind. They're not trying to kill LabVIEW with a subscription. These people are just dumb. Really, really dumb.

Never attribute to malice that which can easily be explained by incompetence.

Edited January 29, 2022 by Reds

[Phillip Brooks]

If NI starts talking about NFTs, web3 or cryptocurrency we are all finished...

[AutoMeasure]

Hi folks - I like coding in Python and I like the numpy, scipy, and matplotlib libraries which are pretty complete and powerful. I'd like to figure out how to make those tools practical to use in my industry work as an alternative to Labview. As people have pointed out, making a high-performance, practical, good-looking UI for Python is too difficult and slow to develop. I tried using the REMI UI library at home for fun, and here are a couple of videos:
Thermistors_Triple Python Program on a Raspberry Pi
Tcontrol_PWM Python Program on a Raspberry Pi

Have any of you tried using NI's G Web Development Software as a UI for Python? I know that NI charges for the package, but that could be OK for most industry work. Is it practical to implement and responsive to interaction? I see on NI's website that they recommend the SystemLink API for bidirectional data communication between the WebVI and the Python program.

Have any of you tried calling NI-DAQmx from Python for continuous data acquisition? Does it work?

For instrument control via USB and Ethernet, fortunately more instrument vendors are providing a Python-compatible library, so they're taking on the tough work.

Thanks very much,
Joe

Edited February 11, 2022 by AutoMeasure

[JKSH]

22 hours ago, AutoMeasure said:

Have any of you tried using NI's G Web Development Software as a UI for Python? I know that NI charges for the package, but that could be OK for most industry work. Is it practical to implement and responsive to interaction? I see on NI's website that they recommend the SystemLink API for bidirectional data communication between the WebVI and the Python program.

I used the Web module with SystemLink, but not with Python. It is somewhat (not very) responsive; there is a lot of room for improvement. See the 2022 posts at

 

22 hours ago, AutoMeasure said:

Have any of you tried calling NI-DAQmx from Python for continuous data acquisition? Does it work?

Not personally, but NI does have official DAQmx Python API. It should work: https://nidaqmx-python.readthedocs.io/en/latest/

[Tim_S]

On 2/11/2022 at 9:05 AM, AutoMeasure said:

Have any of you tried calling NI-DAQmx from Python for continuous data acquisition? Does it work?

Been trying to pick up Python and getting continuous DAQ has been part of that. Found where someone created a continuous DAQ with displaying the data on a graph using pyqt. Link is https://github.com/toastytato/DAQ_Interface.

[JB_1592]

On 1/28/2022 at 8:15 AM, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

However back to your problem. Your SSP expires in half a year. It means that it still covers LabVIEW 2021 SP1 once it is released, so your existing perpetual license basically grants you the right to use LabVIEW 2021 SP1 or earlier. Once you extend your SSP it automatically converts to a subscription.

Is that definitely how they are handling this? Extending the SSP wipes out your perpetual license?

This section of the announcement had me under a very different impression. It makes it sound like the subscription license and the perpetual are two separate entities, and would continue to be so after the, "transition."

What will happen to my current VLA perpetual licenses after I transition to subscription?

You will continue to own your perpetual licenses, locked at the version of your services contract expiration. NI can provide you a non-expiring license file or break out the volume license into single seat installations.

 

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

11 hours ago, JB_1592 said:

Is that definitely how they are handling this? Extending the SSP wipes out your perpetual license?

This section of the announcement had me under a very different impression. It makes it sound like the subscription license and the perpetual are two separate entities, and would continue to be so after the, "transition."

What will happen to my current VLA perpetual licenses after I transition to subscription?

You will continue to own your perpetual licenses, locked at the version of your services contract expiration. NI can provide you a non-expiring license file or break out the volume license into single seat installations.

 

I don't know about VLA. Never used one myself. Our company is on a Partner Software Lease contract, which has been an annual subscription based license for as long as I remember. In theory I don't have to care about all this as long as I'm employed at Averna, but I do care about LabVIEW and think it is a bad move for people who are not under such a company provided license agreement with NI.

That the justifications that NI gave for moving to a subscription based license model only, almost all sound to me like marketing jumbo-mumbo that tries to turn the entire meaning of words upside down, or are actually completely misconstructed arguments, didn't help that at all.

For normal perpetual licenses it is definitely how it works. If you make use of the NI offer to extend your expiring SSP for up to 3 years of subscription licensing for the price an SSP was in the past (about half of what a yearly subscription costs now) your perpetual license automatically converts to a subscription license. Instead you could choose to buy a new subscription license for the full cost and let your existing SSP expire. In that case you own the perpetual license from your old license, which gives you the right to install and use LabVIEW 2021 and in addition to that a subscription to the newest LabVIEW version for as long as you keep your subscription active. Once you let the subscription expire you still have the perpetual license for LabVIEW 2021 but can't (easily) look at all the VIs you may have created with newer LabVIEW versions under the subscription model.

For VLAs a different solution may exist but as I said I never had to deal with VLAs myself and have absolutely no knowledge about them.

Edited February 23, 2022 by Rolf Kalbermatter

[hooovahh]

I can talk a little about VLAs since I have them, but I can't say how they will be effected by this change because we haven't had to renew yet.

In the VLA you have a system where you have a bucket of licenses that can be assigned to users, or computers.  I think NI wants this system to be automated, and maybe for larger companies it is.  But in every case I've seen a VLA done licenses are assigned or revoked manually.  At my last company we had something like 4 professional licenses, and 2 base licenses.  Every once in a while someone would create a goal for themselves to learn LabVIEW, and we would go into the VLA, and assign a base license to them and let them take online training.  We'd often make a disconnected license, which was a license type that works without needing network connections to the server running the VLA.  This is because IT, and VPNs, and internet stuff caused problems.  It was just easier to make a disconnected license, then email them a file, with instructions on how to add it to the NI License Manager running on their machine.  For these people learning LabVIEW we'd often make the license PC based meaning any user on that PC can use LabVIEW.  But developers that worked on multiple computers could have the license be user based.  This meant they could log into any PC on the network with their user name, and active LabVIEW with the same license.  This user name also doesn't care about if the user is a local Windows one, or a domain controlled one.

When you create a disconnected license you can give it an expiration date.  This by default is the date that the next renewal takes place on.  However you can create a disconnected license, for a user or PC, that is permanent.  This license can be used on a PC without the internet, and can activate that version of LabVIEW or older.  Again this can be based on a single PC, or a user name.  When a new version of LabVIEW comes out, the VLA gets updated, and a new disconnected license can be created.

I've been making permanent disconnected licenses for myself and I think that means LabVIEW 2021 SP1 will be accessible even after this change.  After that I'm unsure if a disconnected permanent license can even be created.

[X___]

To add some "clarity" to this mud soup, here is the (verbatim) answer I got regarding our academic license (renewed some time last year) and whether or not I could upgrade to 2021 SP1 now without risking to lose access to my code when my Department decides that the investment in an annual license is too costly:

 

"Dear Customer,

Thank you for contacting NI

I would like to help you to clarify some information, we can not cancel your Licenses since they are perpetual, what this change means is for these products is that we will not be able to renew its service contract. In order to get again the secondary license for students, access to software updates, technical support and the rest of online services we will need to license you under the new subscription model, but you can still use it.

Reviewing your Serial Number, if you don't renew this year and don't want to change to subscription the last version that you can use is the 2021 SP1, you should not have any problem using the 2021 version, since is the last one that you have access."

So I "should not have any problem"... unless I do, that is, maybe?

[JB_1592]

Well... we will be due for renewal in November. Guess I'll know by then.

7 hours ago, hooovahh said:

I think NI wants this system to be automated, and maybe for larger companies it is.  But in every case I've seen a VLA done licenses are assigned or revoked manually.

AFAIK, the only automatic system they offer is to use concurrent licenses, which are automatically checked in and out by authorized users/machines as the applications are used. (As opposed to nonconcurrent, which can only be assigned to one person or machine at a time.)

I looked into those a little while (maybe 2 years) ago since we have a number of people that only very occasionally use LabVIEW or other NI products. Unfortunately, NI charges 3x the price for a concurrent license. 😲

My primary purpose in looking into it was to simplify management of them, but I don't spend that much time reassigning them.  😬