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“Home Edition” license for Mathematica: country and upgrades

Posted 10 years ago

Hello, I'm interested in buying a "Home Edition" license for Mathematica, but there's the following information which I'd like to know beforehand and which I cannot find online:

  • As I'm about to buy it, the Wolfram website says "Software may not be registered for use outside the country of purchase". "may not be" - how can I find it out if it actually is or not? I'm usually based in Brazil but I'm currently travelling all around Europe, so if I buy it now in Europe will I be able to use it in the various European countries that I'm travelling to as well as back in Brazil?

  • The "Home Edition" license is valid for one year. If there're any Mathematica version upgrades during this year, would I get the upgrade for free or would I have to pay?

Many thanks!

POSTED BY: Marc Tinder
6 Replies

The definitive answer to this can only come from the Wolfram licensing folk. I suspect that the real legal bind in the Home Version use license is how Mathematica is exploited. I have actually read right through my own home user license agreement and the key points are to do with commercial benefits that may arise from using Mathematica to solve problems.

In my last career post, I was involved in managing the licenses of specialised engineering packages used by maybe less than 1% of the engineers in a globally operating, oil company and it was a real pain. The $ cost to go from a single desktop user in London to roam anywhere was significant but made life simpler as we were commercial users.

Marc if you are a 'hobby' user like me then I imagine you won't have a problem with the Wolfram IP people. On the other hand, if you are using Mathematica to support a business, whether it crosses national boundaries or not, then you are looking at the wrong licence to start with in my opinion.

POSTED BY: David Mackay

Well, at 1/10 the standard price I'd expect there to be some restrictions... ;-)

POSTED BY: David Reiss
Posted 10 years ago

David R.- thanks for your reply. I see how your reading of it is perhaps the correct one. In that case, however, I find it totally ludicrous that I cannot use Mathematica on my laptop while travelling to another country. As I travel a lot, that would be enough of a reason for me to not buy it.

POSTED BY: Marc Tinder
Posted 10 years ago

David M. - thanks for your reply. I'd imagine that every now and then, whenever the computer is online, the locally-installed Mathematica connects with Wolfram so as to check that the license is valid. And I suppose that, when doing that, it sends its IP address thus indicating which country it's located in at the time, although I really don't know how license checks work (eg, I don't know what happens if the computer never goes online!). PS: I contacted Wolfram support a couple of days ago with my questions above but I still haven't heard back. I suppose I'll just keep waiting, although every day that passes by is another day without me using Mathematica.

POSTED BY: Marc Tinder

I believe that the phrase "may not be" means that it is not permitted. It is not that there is ambiguity. Contact Wolfram if you are not sure.

POSTED BY: David Reiss

Marc,

I guess the Wolfram licensing folk are the only ones who can properly answer the first part of your query but as a Home Edition user myself, I'm not sure how Mathematica would 'know' what location it was being used in as you do not need any kind of Internet access to use the basic software?

If you pay for the Home edition in a single hit, then that's all there is to it. The license doesn't expire at the end of a year (at least that what the guys at Wolfram UK told me). I just received the upgrade from 10.0 to 10.0.2 for free. That probably wouldn't be true for a major upgrade say going from 10 to 11 but then the Home Edition license fee is really good value for money in my opinion and so buying a new license when you want to take up a major improvement upgrade is not too unreasonable.

POSTED BY: David Mackay
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