Zugg Software :: View topic

Newbie Joined: 03 May 2002 Posts: 9 Location: USA

It was stated that you purchase a license for Cmud and have free upgrades for 2 years, after which your license for Cmud will continue to work, but you'll need to purchase another 2 year of upgrades. When does this 2 year time period start? As soon as you purhase the Beta verson or after the first 'offical' release of Cmud?

Thanks

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

As soon as you purchase the Beta. Remember though that there's a special offer on during the Beta period which will probably entitle you to a 1/2 price CMUD purchase, so it'll work out cheaper buying now for half price, rather than waiting for the first full release then buying full price

Newbie Joined: 03 May 2002 Posts: 9 Location: USA

Well shoot, since I'm one of the unlucky ones (been using Zmud since 97) Crying or Very sad

, I have to pay full price, so might as well wait untill they work out the bugs.

Thanks!! Smile

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

I was almost certain that Zugg said at one point that the introductory pricing for CMUD was only good during the beta period but that the two year upgrade period wouldn't begin until the official release. Either way, I'll be more than happy to upgrade if it's only every two years.

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Apprentice Joined: 10 Oct 2000 Posts: 157 Location: USA

Novice Joined: 30 Apr 2006 Posts: 45

Here's a question. Will we have to pay 1/2 price for every single upgrade after 2 years, or will paying an upgrade price give us another 2-year upgrade period? Because if there's frequent-enough upgrades, we'd actually be charged more by the former.

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

You pay for a 2 year license which includes unlimited upgrades during that time. When your license expires you're able to use whatever version you currently have, but no longer upgrade again until you renew the license.
All the details were written by Zugg at the start, just gotta read his posts first.

GURU Joined: 23 Dec 2000 Posts: 4834 Location: USA

Yeah, what you pay for is not the actual upgrade version, just the next 2 years of free upgrades.

Novice Joined: 30 Apr 2006 Posts: 45

I'm just trying to be clear here, because you're all still saying two different things.

1) Buy CMUD. Get 2 years of updates. At the end of those 2 years, buy CMUD at 1/2 price. Get 2 more years of updates. Repeat after 2 more years.

2) Buy CMUD. Get 2 years of updates. At the end of those 2 years and thereafter, buy each individual updated version of CMUD at 1/2 price each.

That's what I'm trying to ask. Are we buying an upgrade license we have to renew every 2 years, or are we simply getting amnesty for 2 years and then have to start paying for every version?

Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 1:08 am

You obtain the upgrade license for 2 years, which you pay for at half the orginal price of CMUD at the time you you renew. So if you bought it now, in 2 years you'd have to buy another license to upgrade after the first purchase. But my question is what happens if you license is expired and you lose CMUD... does that entitle you to the upgrades from the day of your license, or only the public release of CMUD?

Wizard Joined: 03 Mar 2001 Posts: 1127 Location: London

Jakj, we're not saying different things, we're all saying exactly what Zugg said in his first post on the subject months ago.
Anyway, you've understood it with option 1.
1) Buy CMUD. Get 2 years of updates. At the end of those 2 years, buy CMUD at 1/2 price. Get 2 more years of updates. Repeat after 2 more years.

Not quite sure what you're asking Strakc

Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 4:35 pm

alright, after your license expires, and you dont plan on paying again. Somehow you lose your machine because it breaks and what not, you end up losing CMUD all together. In this event you dont have a license or CMUD, but you have had it at one point. Does it entitle you to any verison from the time of your license... or just the current public release after it gets to that time.

Posted: Sun Jun 25, 2006 4:51 pm

Strakc i think that will be a question for Zugg and I suppose he will have to make available all past copies of CMUD available for download. If you lose CMUD and you log back into the store, you license won't get you the latest copy of CMUD, but it should be able to get you the latest copy of CMUD that was available when you license expired.

Wizard Joined: 25 Mar 2003 Posts: 1113 Location: USA

Your license is not lost when you lose data on your own machine. Zugg's store system keeps track of your purchases and also your license keys. As long as his data is not corrupted or lost, you'll always be able to request your keys from the store here on the web site.

Beginner Joined: 09 Aug 2005 Posts: 17

I believe Zugg has said in the past, although I can't find it at the moment, that he doesn't plan on making previous versions of CMUD available for download.

Like most software purchases, it is your responsibility to keep track of the installation disk/file and not lose it. Make a backup of the install file for CMUD after you download it, so that you will be able to install the version covered by your key again after your HD crashes (you will be able to recover the license key from the store, as others have said).

Beginner Joined: 08 Oct 2002 Posts: 20 Location: USA

Or hope you can find a friendly forum person that still has the installation files... but I'd go with the first option and create installation disks to have at hand.

Posted: Wed Jul 05, 2006 6:13 pm

Everyone has mostly answered the original poster correctly. But I wanted to expand upon this a bit.

The official policy is that you will need to pay for upgrades after 2-years. Buying an upgrade after the 2-year period will entitle you to another 2-years of free upgrades. The upgrade price will typically be half of whatever the full price is. All of this has already been posted and is correct.

However, in reality, it's even better than that. In order for a new version to require an upgrade, I must actually change the license used for the new version. In other words, I must create a new license key for a new version. For example, if I released v2.0 but used the same license as v1.0, then everyone who has 1.0 would still be able to use 2.0 without paying anything extra. It's only when I change the license that you would then need to potentially purchase an upgrade.

I only plan to change the license for major new versions. Each of these "official" upgrades will be handled in a way similar to the current zMUD->CMUD discount offers. The upgrade license will be listed in the online store, and when you add it to your shopping cart, it will show up as Free if your previous purchase was within 2 years.

For example, let's say that you already own CMUD v1.x. When 2.0 is released, I will update the online store so that the CMUD product shows 2.x in the description. If you want to upgrade to v2.0, then you add this item to your shopping cart. If the store sees that you already have a CMUD license purchased within 2 years, then the CMUD 2.0 product will get listed in your shopping cart as "Free" and as soon as you click the Checkout button, you will be sent a new license for that product.

Now, let's say that eventually CMUD 3.x is released, but it's more than 2 years since the 1.0 release. Now the product in the store will say "CMUD 3.0" and when you add it to your shopping cart it will see that your last purchase (1.x) was more than 2 years ago, so it will list CMUD 3.0 as half-price. After you buy it, this resets the 2-year counter so that if v4.x is released within 2 years of 3.x, you will get it for free.

Anyone who has already used the new store system for getting a free or discounted CMUD based upon their original zMUD purchase will understand how this works.

But it's important to see how much work is involved for me to charge you for an upgrade. I'm obviously only going to do this for major version releases. So, for example, if you had purchased CMUD v1.0 and for some reason it took more than 2 years to release v1.8, you'd probably still get v1.8 for free even though it is past the 2-year limit.

In other words, you'll probably still get "minor" updates for free.

As far as being able to download old versions, I will be making the final public release of every version "series" available for download. For example, let's say that the first public release of CMUD is v1.8, and then there is another minor update v1.81. Then I start working on the v2.x series. The final 1.81 version would continue to be available via the download page. So you wouldn't be able to still download 1.8 or 1.7 etc, but you could download 1.81 anytime in the future. Since your license key for 1.8 will still work for 1.81 this gives you the best version that works with your license key.

Only the final stable version within a version series will be officially supported. In the above example, if you were still using v1.7 and reported a problem, you would be told that you need to upgrade to v1.81 (or later) in order to get help.

If I had done this with zMUD, I probably would have made 4.62, 5.55, 6.16, 6.66, 7.05, 7.21 the "major version" endpoints. This should give you a good feeling for what I consider "major versions", even if this wasn't really reflected in the actual version numbers.