All service packs should be useable for the version you own, regardless of your SSP status. Currently, service packs are only good if you have a SSP active or had enough forethought to buy it in the middle of the year between versions.
The SSP includes more than just software updates, it also includes technical support, so it should be for the same duration regardless of when in the year you subscribe. I agree with Intaris, if a service pack and any patches that follow will not be available to users if their subscriptions expire first, then you might as well not let users download the next version of LabVIEW after the one that was current when they subscribed/purchased. Make it like a software purchase with one year of technical support included, and if one still has time left on their subscription when they buy the next version, extend their subscription by a year. I can't understand why NI would essentially encourage customers to run unpatched software with known bugs by promoting the new year-number version to current subscribers, but not automatically including updates.
Manzolli -- We [LV R&D] are definitely not equipped to do bug fixes for all discovered bugs back into old versions. It often takes a week of effort for a developer to backport fixes for a single bug to the earlier versions after the fix is already implemented in the current version. I was just involved in one patch that the fix for 2014, 2013, and 2012 were all entirely different bits of code. The reason for the divergence is
a) code may have been rewritten between versions
b) the tools at our disposal to fix are different in older versions (patches can't add mutation because there isn't a mutation-forcing version bump for a patch)
c) the bug may be easier to fix given some rewrite of a related feature and that rewrite doesn't exist in the earlier version (happens a lot with compiler changes -- in 201X, there's some new allocator, which makes fixing a memory allocation bug easy to fix in 201X, but in 201X-1, the old allocator is there and you have to build this funky framework to fix the bug as a special case).
For the most part, we don't have the staff to even begin to rise to the level of bug fixing that you're asking for. The dev team is smaller than you think it is.
Just to be clear: I'm not in a position to change any of NI's behavior in this area. I'm trying to understand the situation. Someday I may be in a position of selling my own software, and the way that customers react to various pricing models is interesting to me.
arteitle wrote:
> I can't understand why NI would essentially encourage customers to run
> unpatched software with known bugs by promoting the new year-number
> version to current subscribers, but not automatically including updates.
Let me combine that with Intaris' latest comment:
Intaris wrote:
> @Aristos, yes if you buy 2013, you get 2013 SP1, but you might
> also get 2014, but no 2014 SP1.
> That confuses many users. I really think that you should simply purchase
> 2013 and be done with it. 2013 and 2013 SP1 period.
The reason for the upgrade pattern is easy to explain -- customers who purchase in July get upset when a new version comes out in August and they have to buy anew. To avoid the issue, we let them acquire 2014. In order to keep the system easy to explain, the rule is "you get all new versions for a year."
This is where Arteitle's comment strikes me as odd... you get 2014. Why did you install it if you weren't going to maintain it? What, exactly, did NI do to encourage you one way or the other? The SSP gives you the upgrades. If you want more upgrades, renew your subscription. Yes, upgrades may include bug fixes.
I get the same thing from Adobe or from Microsoft. Patches are free. New versions, which often include bug fixes, cost money. You either keep paying or you lose access to those bug fixes.
In my view, a software vendor isn't encouraging you to do one thing or the other. You are making your own risk management decision about whether and how to manage your upgrade schedule, the same way you do for any software, from your OS all the way up. If the service isn't valuable to you, you stop paying for it and keep working with what you have.
But we're dealing with a perception difference here, and I can see the other perspective.
Intaris (and others)... would the following seem better to you?
SSP gives you free upgrades for a year on full versions (i.e. LV 2013 always gives you upgrade to 2014). SP1 for any given full version is always available to any user whose SSP covered that full version.
If I read your post correctly then yes, that would (for me at least) be the best solution.
If I buy 2013 SP1 today, I am then allowed to install 2014 (as it is currently) but under your new plan would also be allowed to install 2014 SP1, correct?
PS don't forget that NI markets LV to people who don't know how to program so perhaps requiring the user to do a risk analysis before installing a shiny new version is sometimes a bit too much to ask.
PPS My preferred solution to that conundrum would be to stop marketing LV to non-programmers but I know how likely THAT is.
There are so many different pricing schemes for software that it's impossible to say what's the most "fair". Basically the market decides, and if LV sells in quantities that matches the expected market, then the price is right. LabVIEW is a strong product, albeit on a sort of niche market.
What we sometimes tend to compare to is Windows. Here you pay for one license of, say, XP or Windows 7, and then you get perpetual bug fixes for free (Windows Update). The same with Office and a number of other products of that sort. If you want a new look of things (XP->Win7, or Office 2010->2013) you'll have to pay again, but else you don't for many years at least. But Windows and MS Office are much much higher volume products compared to LabVIEW, so that comparison isn't fair at all.
I'm not saying the pricing policy is absolutely wrong - it is a hefty rebate you get when you stay current with SSP - but it is tough to swallow that my LabVIEW 2012 will never be working for the scenario of Inlining+Recursion+Level 10 in compiler optimizations that I need for a certain application of mine. Had I not been able to afford LV2013 (which partially solves that CAR), and thus had had to stay on LV2012, my toolchain effectively would not be able to build that application for me, and I would have had to redesign it. That's not easy to swallow, that there are some things that just won't get fixed, unless you pay for it. Stuff that "the box" says should work. As it is now I can/will never use LV2012 again. I consider it broken, and I pitty those who are stuck on that version (or they might find it working fine for their apps, I wouldn't be surprised :-). But then again, they can always go back to LV2011, which is a bit better, and which they actually paid for in the first place. Did they buy at a time when it was LV2011 SP1, then they already had the maximum they could get out of that purchase, and hence their investment in a one-year SSP was wasted (as I consider LV2012/SP1 broken).
But, this is just a discussion of expectations vs. reality, and I don't hold any hopes of NI changing this policy anytime soon. I understand that the maintenance workload is several orders of magnitude higher should each main LV-version be maintained in its own separate branch. And would that really be a better path to follow (LV-prices would go way up)? I don't think so, and that is obviously also the conclusion NI management has come to.
Intaris (and others)... would the following seem better to you?
SSP gives you free upgrades for a year on full versions (i.e. LV 2013 always gives you upgrade to 2014). SP1 for any given full version is always available to any user whose SSP covered that full version.
I would consider that crazy, so crazy in fact that it is exactly what I suggested earlier.
Adobe is an interesting example. In the days before their subscription model anyway. Bug fixes would flow into a version for a few years, even if it was not the most current. Very nice. Upgrade pricing was much appreciated. You pay full freight once and then upgrade pricing was tiered. You got better pricing based on how recent the old version was. [The other nice things were that each new version immediately felt new and there were immediately tangible improvements. Also, Adobe cared about my carpal tunnels, they studied usage patterns and workflows and took the idea of minimizing clicks and mouse movements very seriously. NI dislikes my carpal tunnels and thinks it is doing me a favor by putting common menu items at the bottom just so I know where it is.]
Protection against a new version coming out the next week is standard. Often products are announced in pre-release with the understanding that you buy the current version and get the new one when it releases. Only NI seems to have this hush-hush wink-wink new versions *usually* ship around August and Service Packs wink-wink ship in March, but really we can't say anything.
Aristos said:"SP1 for any given full version is always available to any user whose SSP covered that full version."
That sounds good to me. Anybody who has an SSP that goes into LabVIEW 2014 should be able to get LabVIEW 2014 SP1, even if the SSP expired before SP1 came out.
There are only two ways to tell somebody thanks: Kudos and Marked Solutions Unofficial Forum Rules and Guidelines "Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God" - 2 Corinthians 3:5
The discussion has essentially flowed into the SPs should be free. Why charge for them at all?
Charge for the full versions only, and allow people to step into a cheaper upgrade path (of full versions) + give them better support options, by letting them buy the SSP. But keep SPs free.
/Steen
Sometimes stating these things in my own vernacular and then asking you to verify that it is what you meant is useful.
I'm seeing all of this discussion through the lens of my own issues with the recent change to Adobe Photoshop/Illustrator. Under the new Creative Cloud model, you pay an annual subscription. They upgrade you when they upgrade you unless you're part of an enterprise running a full server. If you cancel your subscription, your files are still available but the application is dead, so you might as well not have access to your files since there's nothing you can do with them.
That's a style of pricing that I've heard lots of software moving toward, and from that view, the SSP model seems pretty permissive and downright friendly.
This is where Arteitle's comment strikes me as odd... you get 2014. Why did you install it if you weren't going to maintain it? What, exactly, did NI do to encourage you one way or the other? The SSP gives you the upgrades. If you want more upgrades, renew your subscription. Yes, upgrades may include bug fixes.
I certainly intended to maintain 2013, it was my mistake in not realizing that service packs require an active subscription to use. When my company renewed our SSP subscription last year after a long period of inactivity, the sales rep definitely said that we'd be able to install 2013 when it was released, so I'd say it was a selling point. In the case of 2013 SP1 the upgrade consists of only bug fixes, and I assume any future bugfix patches will apply to SP1 only, so without an active SSP subscription we're effectively cut off from any further bugfixes.
Intaris (and others)... would the following seem better to you?
SSP gives you free upgrades for a year on full versions (i.e. LV 2013 always gives you upgrade to 2014). SP1 for any given full version is always available to any user whose SSP covered that full version.
That seems logical to me. A simpler way of putting it would be that service packs wouldn't be considered upgrades, since (at least in the case of 2013 SP1) they comprise only bugfixes, which I think most users would expect to be available without preconditions.
After some back-and-forth with NI support and troubleshooting on my end, the support engineer's advice has been to uninstall all of my NI software and wipe out the folder, then reinstall from scratch. My mistake in assuming that bugfixes were included with 2013 has led to a lot of frustration and wasted time on my part.
