NI's New Software Subscription Model

[Rolf Kalbermatter]

8 hours ago, X___ said:

"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?

That grammer sounds almost as bad as what those Nigerian scammers use, who pretend to have embezzled a few millions and now are eager to find someone who would be happy to take that money from them. 😀

[ShaunR]

21 minutes ago, Rolf Kalbermatter said:

That grammer sounds almost as bad as what those Nigerian scammers use, who pretend to have embezzled a few millions and now are eager to find someone who would be happy to take that money from them. 😀

BBC Pidgin.

[X___]

Actually my main problem is not the grammar but the lack of clarity.

Installing 2021 SP1 shows "176 days" remaining before the license expires (in the license manager), or an "expiration" date of August 2022 (our Department renewed in August last year). I am willing to interpret this as "SSL license leftover duration", but I wonder what that would be doing in the license manager? Same goes for Vision Development 2021, VI Analyzer 2021. Is this is a permanent license or not, that is the question...

Older versions do not show anything in the "expiration" date column.

Back to NI support.

[JKSH]

19 minutes ago, X___ said:

Older versions do not show anything in the "expiration" date column.

This is unrelated to the LabVIEW version, and unrelated to perpetual vs. subscription licenses.

In recent years, NI's license servers have changed things such that all activations are only valid until the next August -- Even perpetual licenses must now be re-activated annually. So if you install and activate those same older versions on a different PC today, they too will expire in August 2022.

Edited February 24, 2022 by JKSH

[Bryan]

13 hours ago, ShaunR said:

BBC Pidgin.

That link should have been posted with a disclosure.  After clicking on the link and attempting to read the page, my brain BSOD'd.  

[X___]

9 hours ago, JKSH said:

This is unrelated to the LabVIEW version, and unrelated to perpetual vs. subscription licenses.

In recent years, NI's license servers have changed things such that all activations are only valid until the next August -- Even perpetual licenses must now be re-activated annually. So if you install and activate those same older versions on a different PC today, they too will expire in August 2022.

What's the logic of that? And what does this mean exactly? That on August 2022, LV 2021 SP1 will suddenly stop working unless I reactivate it? That a warning will pop-up until I reactivate each time I launch LV? Sounds more like a perpetual license to annoy the user...

[X___]

Here is NI's (verbatim) response (it is literally signed "NI"):

"The number of 176 day reamaining, it is the time you have until your  active license expire, I can assure you that version 2021 SP1 will continue to work after the license expires. Please review the following link with more information:

https://knowledge.ni.com/KnowledgeArticleDetails?id=kA03q000000YSO4CAO&l=en-US 

The other think is about the code I am no an expert on that, please read the information on the link and if is necessary you can call tech suppoort.

Let me know if this helps you or if you have any other question.

Regards

NI"

So the so-called "perpetual" license expires...but the software still works afterwards. And of course the provided link as absolutely nothing to do with the age of the captain.Time to call (877) 388-1952.

[hooovahh]

14 minutes ago, X___ said:

The number of 176 day reamaining, it is the time you have until your  active license expire, I can assure you that version 2021 SP1 will continue to work after the license expires.

[X___]

I called "NI" and... ended up talking with my email interlocutor!

The long and short of it is that indeed the NI License Manager is mixing up concepts (usage of a version and software support). "NI" herself admitted that she had never looked at a NI License Manger screenshot like the one I sent her, and would pass on the feedback (to clarify and be consistent). We know how this one will end...

Moreover, at this time, the number of installations (under the upcoming licensing scheme) will not be monitored, whether locally or at NI (but don't hold your breath).

Finally, although I am not planning to test that myself, it would appear that the license serial number (academic at least) will change every year. But then maybe it won't...

[ShaunR]

4 hours ago, X___ said:

age of the captain

I actually get this. 

[ShaunR]

Just a heads-up.

NI are offering Tools Network products the opportunity to move from the classic LVTN licence to a subscription licence.

There aren't many details as yet and it's not clear whether you will lose access to the [separate] LVTN products if you don't keep up your subscription to LabVIEW itself, but it looks like everything will eventually be behind their subscription model.

[JKSH]

6 hours ago, X___ said:

"The number of 176 day reamaining, it is the time you have until your  active license expire, I can assure you that version 2021 SP1 will continue to work after the license expires."

...

So the so-called "perpetual" license expires...but the software still works afterwards.

That is... different from my experience.

I had an old installation of LV2017 which has no expiry. When I added the LabVIEW Real-Time Module 2017 to it in April 2020, it was given an expiry date of August 2020. When August 2020 came, I had to re-activate LabVIEW Real-Time Module 2017 (but not LabVIEW 2017). And this repeated itself in August 2021.

My employer had been using the old NI Developer Suite for over a decade and this still kicked in -- we never had expiry dates before.

Edited February 25, 2022 by JKSH

[X___]

1 hour ago, ShaunR said:

I actually get this. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_the_captain

[X___]

24 minutes ago, JKSH said:

That is... different from my experience.

I had an old installation of LV2017 which has no expiry. When I added the LabVIEW Real-Time Module 2017 to it in April 2020, it was given an expiry date of August 2020. When August 2020 came, I had to re-activate LabVIEW Real-Time Module 2017 (but not LabVIEW 2017). And this repeated itself in August 2021.

My employer had been using the old NI Developer Suite for over a decade and this still kicked in -- we never had expiry dates before.

 

I installed the G Web Development Software on August 2021 (not sure why I still have it installed, as I realized that I still had no use for it in the state it is in): no expiration date.

On the other hand, I installed the LabVIEW Analytics and Machine Learning Toolkit, Version 2018, in November of that same year and it has that same expiration date of August 18, 2022.

Edited February 25, 2022 by X___
my business

[X___]

Some feedback requested on NI's forums, from the very person who "explained" why NXG was killed.

[ShaunR]

59 minutes ago, X___ said:

from the very person who "explained" why NXG was killed.

I'm still none the wiser from that presentation but I will say it was probably too many Erics and not enough Darins.

[X___]

2 hours ago, ShaunR said:

I'm still none the wiser from that presentation but I will say it was probably too many Erics and not enough Darins.

I'd agree with that, which makes the call for input on the subscription all the more dubious.

[X___]

There we are: Subscription model and related questions. I fail to see any mention of a subscription model though.

[ShaunR]

8 hours ago, X___ said:

There we are: Subscription model and related questions. I fail to see any mention of a subscription model though.

I'm not sure that was meant to be "Subscription model and related questions" but oh my god. After watching the full video I can safely say I would have walked out within the first 10 minutes. Not only was it not what was advertised but it was one big poll in a totally inappropriate format of "live".

The lady that was incredulous about Unicode being so low was literally articulating what I was muttering at my screen. My muttering became shouts at this guy's response, which weren't family friendly.

It's this kind of feedback gathering that is also responsible for all the inanely stupid political policies that are dreamt up with "focus groups".

And when did "Service and Support Package" become to mean "Primary Software Sales Channel"?

 

[X___]

What's kind of ironical (related to the first video above), is that the LabVIEW Chief (or whatever his official title now is), after a contrite mea culpa in which we indeed don't learn anything beyond the fact that they have decided to go from a semi-organized long term chaos to semi-chaotic short term organization model based on the lessons they have not understood... yet? learned from external consultants, announces that from now own they will listen to their customers.

As you noted, in the second video, he perfectly demonstrates what listening means at NI, by having flash polls which he interrupts arbitrarily as people are still trying to understand what the multiple to the power 2 choice questions mean. It is probable that nothing is going to change in the way LabVIEW is developed, except for the TPS report cover sheets...

Edited March 3, 2022 by X___

[hooovahh]

3 hours ago, ShaunR said:

The lady that was incredulous about Unicode being so low was literally articulating what I was muttering at my screen. My muttering became shouts at this guy's response, which weren't family friendly.

Ouch, yeah that wasn't great. We don't need to work on Unicode support because you've seemed to figure out these issues.  I've gotten frustrated with support several times when it seems they drop an issue as soon as they figure out I have some work around.  I have to remind them that I'm trying to make LabVIEW better, not just get my setup working. 

As I've been reminded recently the resources given to LabVIEW support and bug fixes is quite small, and prioritize make things take longer.  Still it sounds like Windows got unofficial unicode support in Windows 95/98.  Multiple decades later and nothing official has come from NI.

[ShaunR]

3 hours ago, hooovahh said:

Ouch, yeah that wasn't great. We don't need to work on Unicode support because you've seemed to figure out these issues.  I've gotten frustrated with support several times when it seems they drop an issue as soon as they figure out I have some work around.  I have to remind them that I'm trying to make LabVIEW better, not just get my setup working. 

I actually took it as an utter disdain for the time and cost of working around their deficiency.

The presupposition that there was a work-around and I haven't told customers that we can't do it because LabVIEW doesn't support it. That the work-around would cost x weeks of project time to achieve (to the customer's surprise when they thought it would be par-for-the course) so the customer didn't order it. Or even an entire framework based on HTML interfaces was developed relegating LabVIEW to a mere back-end service (this also goes for his "Vector UI nonsense too).

I'm sure the counter-argument would be the 3rd party tools that are available for internationalisation but that just shows that he's never tried to use them in a project or been called out to a customer site when they can't load a file because the filename is Unicode or suddenly everything has turned to Chinese characters.

After all. We've only been complaining about Unicode support for a decade or so, right?

Edited March 3, 2022 by ShaunR

[X___]

I guess they don't really need unicode support at SpaceX (not that I do myself, but it's more like I never enjoyed the benefits of it, to know that I am missing it).

[bjustice]

dev's who only know LabVIEW:

[X___]

I thought you meant unicorn...