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Mathematica 10 licensing & bug-fixes

Posted 9 years ago

Note to all Mathematica 10 users: bug-fixes will not be available to anyone unless you:

a) have a Premium license

b) have Annual Home Edition, currently 150 dollars per year

c) pay 95 dollar upgrade fee for every dot-release

Version 10 has already had 2 dot-releases)

It is unclear whether you have to buy every dot-release (who knows how many there will be per year???).

Logically, it is to be expected that every dot-release has to be bought otherwise people would just buy every second or third dot-release and get the benefits of all prior dot-releases at a discount.

If only Wolfram had made this clear up front - I would have bought the annual subscription. Massive disappointment.

Caveat emptor!!! or, "Home Edition users beware!"

POSTED BY: Paul Anderson
8 Replies

Btw, what about the free-Pi-users, will there actually be any further updates? Even if not, I am not disappointed as it is free...but it would be cool.

The only point I am a bit disappointed about personally are the cloud credits...I would be pleased if I could buy more of them with my Raspberry Pi/free license, but that is not possible - only with an expensive ~400€-license/plan, which is too much for me (and for sure for lots of others, too).

POSTED BY: Michael Steffen
Posted 9 years ago

Sorry, my post was a reply to Paul Anderson.

POSTED BY: E Martin
Posted 9 years ago

Note to all Mathematica 10 users: bug-fixes will not be available to anyone unless you:

a) have a Premium license

b) have Annual Home Edition, currently 150 dollars per year _________________________________

Hi Glen,

I can’t beleave it!

Is this true? Tell me that it is not.

Before going ahead in the comment I would make sure this is really so. I have just upgraded to v10.2 from v10.0.1 to stumble into a situation even worse than that of 10.0.1. V10.12 is unusable as it is now.

If it is really so, it brings back a discussion in MathGroup about the different WRI pricing policies applied to USA and the rest of the world (Europe versus USA in particular).

I have been a full (international license) user since the initial versions, 2.xx; purchasing licenses both in Europe and USA, and moved to Home license after realizing that European upgrades costed about three or four times the fee of that applied to USA licensees. In fact Home licenses were launched shortly after this discussion, which involved many different people from different countries and places. My last full license is v6.x.x, and the issue on the pricing aroused when I tried to upgrade in Europe a v5.x.x license purchased in USA (I had upgraded in USA, several times from the earliest v4.x.x licenses purchased in Europe).

If it is as you say, it seems pretty unfair to me. I have just made a post, few minutes ago (on INTERNAL SELF-TEST ERROR : MLParseStream | c | 102 & 296) , describing why v10.2 is truly unbearable. It is impossible to work with it as it currently is; in my case at least. who should anticipate that?

And the instability comes from the very first release of version 10 (v10.0.0, which was upgraded immediately for free to v10.01).

Cheers (!?).

Martin.

POSTED BY: E Martin
Posted 9 years ago

I had a been an on-and-off again user of Mathematica since 2.1 (DOS version and even OS/2). Within a year after graduation, Wolfram offered to convert my student license to a professional for $400. That was when Version 4 had come out. (At that point, I had already had a student license of version 3). My professional career for the next several years didn't lend itself to the use of Mathematica--even with my own professional license--and I couldn't justify the high cost of continually upgrading something I'd only use at home.

But, when Wolfram came out with their Home Edition, I was back on board with Version 7 and then 8. Then, of course, some time later their sales team later threw an offer I couldn't refuse--upgrade my professional Version 4 to Version 9 for $500. I was then in a position where I could install it on my work PC and begin to use it again. And after a year or so, they came at me with another similar offer. (It was definitely cheaper than the Premier Service, and I still got the benefits of Premier Service for a year each time.)

But now, my pro license is stuck at 10.1, and it will probably stay there unfortunately for the forseeable future. I work for a large aerospace company that has all of its IT services and equipment on high-security lockdown. There is no chance whatsoever of me installing my pro license on my work laptop, and I cannot yet justify that my employer acquire a license of Mathematica for me. But that's another story.

So, I'm looking at upgrading my 8.0.4 Home Edition. If I go to the Wolfram Store and put in my license number, I can upgrade it to 10.2 for just $95. I can skip all the dot-releases along the way and get the current release with one upgrade price. But this is what I would have expected, (See attached.)

Isn't this what other users have observed? Or, has my Home Edition license been selected for a special-offer upgrade price? (I seem to recall a relatively recent email from Wolfram, but I can't locate it anymore.)

--Glen

Attachments:
POSTED BY: Glen Deering

Paul - just regarding your comment on skipping dot releases: I believe that makes the next upgrade more expensive. Upgrade prices for Mathematica have always depended on your current version if I remember correctly. So you can buy a perpetual license and then ignore the updates until one arrives that you really, really want. I understand your frustration though. I currently have a license through my university, but that's going to change soon and I haven't decided for a flavour of the home edition yet. (Hint to Wolfram: I'd pay good money for a lifetime, all updates included license.)

POSTED BY: Bianca Eifert

If you buy a professional license I found that if you want the updates you need to subscribe to the premier support. This is around the 700euro per year. If your using Mathematica for home us you can buy 7 upgrades per year for that money! So I think the home edition is still cheaper for personal use. That said the yearly home use edition is perhaps something you might want to consider. I heard S. Wolfram say in one of his talks that they would increase the mathematica releases allot... I would welcome a premier 'light home use' support model with free updates and patches for 200 euro/year. Once you get to know to code in Mathematica it's getting addictive and there you go.. or pay.. :)

POSTED BY: l van Veen

Oh, don't worry, I'm already addicted! I'll definitely get a Home license, I just haven't decided for the annual vs perpetual model yet. Maybe I'll just see what's on holiday sale in Decemeber.

POSTED BY: Bianca Eifert

Did you try to get Wolfram to change your license? My account manager has been pretty good about these things.

It's pretty clear that the only two licensing options that make sense in the current scheme is the annual license (at whatever type you want -- pro, home, student) or to have premier service.

Once you get over the initial hit of buying Mathematica in the first place, Premier service is the best bargain. You get a second license for a home system, free use of Workbench, webMathematica, etc. In my case, the original purchase was many years ago, so the cost has been spread out so much it is 'affordable'. (Even accounting for inflation, Mathematica was less expensive in the late 1980s.)

Having said that, the licensing for the home edition used to cover one release plus the bug fixes (the 0.0.1 releases). Since the major releases came out about once a year, this was reasonable. Now that the bug fixes are folded into the 0.1 updates, people who were relying on the old model are pretty much hosed. I see that Premier service is available for students but not for the non-professional 'home' use. Pity.

The crux of the problem is that the only way to get the bug fixes for 10.0 is to get 10.1 etc. This is a never ending process -- there had better be a 10.3 release to fix the bugs introduced in 10.2. It would make sense to me to treat every major release as the unit that is purchased, and all the 0.1 updates would be included. As far as I can tell, this issue only significantly affects the Home editions purchasers.

This is a topic I hope to talk about when I am at the Wolfram Conference in October.

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