New Subscription Based Licenses

[mlh5953]

By now I'm sure most of you have seen the recent email from NI announcing their new subscription based software instead of our SSP: " We’re moving to subscription-based licenses beginning in January 2022"

Looked at the FAQ page, and I don't see anything about CVI.

Does that mean it doesn't affect us?

[rolfk]

Likely not, but I'm not sure. I guess it would be a hard sale to try to sell a yearly subscription for a program which has only seen biannually minor updates for quite a few years.

[Wolfgang]

I understood that both should be possible,

(1) extending an existing SSP or

(2) moving to a subscription based license.

However, if one misses extending the SSP in time, the only option left will be the second.

[rolfk · Accepted solution]

Check the buyer page on https://www.ni.com/nl-nl/shop/electronic-test-instrumentation/programming-environments-for-electroni.... It would seem they only sell subscriptions now. Maybe it is still possible to extend an existing SSP but in the case of LabVIEW you can't. You only can take advantage of "upgrading" to a subscription plan for up to three years for the price of the current SSP cost, but you are getting a subscription nevertheless.

[mlh5953]

I hadn't seen that link you posted Rolf.

I guess that answers my question.

Compared to what the SSP renewal cost was this year, the price of the Full Edition seems a bit high.

[rolfk]

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@mlh5953 wrote:

Compared to what the SSP renewal cost was this year, the price of the Full Edition seems a bit high.

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Yes they sell it as a price decrease since a single year subscription costs less than to original perpetual license purchase. In fact it is a price increase if you intended to pay for three years of SSP or more. And for existing SSP customers it is simply about a doubling of the price across the products, and you lose the perpetual license if you make use of the "upgrade" offer to change your SSP into a subscription at the same cost for up to 3 years.

[Wolfgang]

As an existing customer I was able to renew my SSP - and I am curious if CVI will see a new release this year. And let's see how long this possibility of a perpetual license will last. For universities this is an issue...

[rjhok]

I came here to check on actual terms (or term) of subscription license because I was told that with LabView the product stops working after the subscription expires.

Do new versions of LabWindows/CVI stop working after the subscription period is expired?

I cannot find this information on NI's web site.  It just sends me in circles showing product features, not license terms.

This is very important to my small company because we support the machines we make for their lifetime (decades).  We currently maintain VMs with versions from LabWindows/CVI 7 to (almost) the latest so we can make program changes for our customers without having to update all our source code and their runtime libraries to a new CVI version every time we make a little change to our code.