NI have announced they will no longer activate discontinued products

[te1973]

For me it's not about something written in the EULA or not, it's about fair behaviour and customer relationship.

As long as legal customers go through all the pain of activations, activations used-up etc., opening tickets for regaining activations after hardware changes etc. and then as a special
bonus can't activate their software at all anymore I will at all cost avoid that in the future.

I want to be the master of my hardware and software. And by the way I BOUGHT that software at a full price,
did not rent it. Did companies ever think about what signal they send to their customers? Will these customers better
get their software from 'other sources' then?

Hey NI, it was not us legal customers who asked for that activation thing. But if we are set back like this I see no point
in purchasing any software anymore that has to be activated.

[Matt_NI]

Should I tell everyone to stop working on this until our legal team has come to an agreement on what we want our EULA to say moving forward? Not really.

Your legal team are its own seperate team. So they should be able to proceed, with such matters, without impacting your work.

You're SERIOUSLY saying that NOBODY at NI can request these promises be put back into the EULA because you're personally working on technical solutions for old and (apparently) badly coded copy protection? What has that got to do with your management and legal team, which is who would deal with these issues in detail?

I understand you want this to be addressed yesterday

What is "this"? That NI legally promise to activate their customers purchased software in perpetuity? My goodness, how unreasonable of me! Also, please don't lower yourself with remarks like "want this yesterday". Implying I'm impatient and that what I'm asking is somehow unreasonable. It isn't. Native Instruments are the one being unreasonable here.

I understand things take time. All I asked was that you start that process at NI. Again, all we want is for NI to legally promise to activate customers purchased software in perpetuity. I'm talking about their OWN software here, not 3rd party libraries. This isn't unreasonable, and YES it's related to the current issue. I also understand you're not on the team that would decide those details. All I asked is if you could forward that request and this is what I get..

I'm not saying it's unreasonable but as I said, we will discuss this topic internally when we can. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to do so now and so I will focus on the technical aspects and bring as much updates as I can.
I'll reach back when I have more information on the EULA.

[PAK]

I'm not saying it's unreasonable but as I said, we will discuss this topic internally when we can. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to do so now and so I will focus on the technical aspects and bring as much updates as I can.
I'll reach back when I have more information on the EULA.

Ok Matt. Thank you.

[DarkStar]

Should I tell everyone to stop working on this until our legal team has come to an agreement on what we want our EULA to say moving forward? Not really.

The EULA going forward is not relevant to this particular discussion (but I'm sure that will be subject of a separate thread); it is the EULAs that we accepted when installing the products that are relevant. And, as others have said, your legal team should be able to review the EULAs in parallel with the work your and your colleagues are doing.

I'm not saying it's unreasonable but as I said, we will discuss this topic internally when we can. Unfortunately, we do not have the capacity to do so now and so I will focus on the technical aspects and bring as much updates as I can.

The key technical aspect is making sure that users can continue to Activate the products for which they have licences. Nothing more. It doesn't have to be fully automated - after all, not many users will need to do it on any particular day.

[digitalboytn]

I'm a bit of a dummy,so I obviously need some help understanding something quite simple here...

The activation is working now,so why can't it just keep working ?

What is so technically difficult about that ?

[Gamma-UT]

I'm a bit of a dummy,so I obviously need some help understanding something very simple here...

The activation is working now,so why can't it just keep working ?

It's not really working at the moment. Over the weekend, I tried to get Vokator and Spektral Delay up and running on a second machine in a partition with an old OS and Service Center was just running into communications errors.

I've had them for years on an old laptop that serves as the dinosaur sound module most of the time but wanted a backup in case that dies (the battery gave up the ghost a long time ago) so I'm not in a tearing hurry to get this done but it's clear that it's not well at the moment.

[digitalboytn]

OK...

But what is NI doing after May 31st,so that the old activations are not possible "from a technical point of view" ?

Maybe they could be a little more open and let us know what is really going on here ?

Is June 1st when they are launching some new system or platform ?

Like their subscription service for example ?

I do feel a little sorry for Matt @ NI...

The corporations make these decisions and then they send someone over to the front line to try and calm the masses and pretend that the company is really listening to the lemmings...

The spokesperson gets lambasted and lynched and then has to go back to base and tell them that not all is well with the natives...

The're getting a little restless out there

Usually,the decisions made by the boardrooms are immutable,but they want to appear to be sympathetic and in sync with their customers,so they keep sending their "spokesperson" back to get shot at a little more...

Meanwhile,like someone said here earlier,the "team" back at corporate central are having meetings about meetings..

The big difference in this case is the EULA...

NI don't need to be trying to find any ways to get around this "technical problem" at all...

They already have the solution...

It's all there in the EULA...in black and white

[EnGee]

They just shutdown the server side! Your authorization has two computers interact with each other, your computer is the client side and their server.

[digitalboytn]

I understand that Engee,but there has to be something else going on here...

There is a reason why NI chose May 31st...

[wagtunes]

I understand that Engee,but there has to be something else going on here...

There is a reason why NI chose May 31st...

The reason is most likely because they simply needed to pick a cutoff date. Most likely, on that date, they are going to do something on their side (shut down a server, disable a program, whatever) that will make authentication impossible after that date. The fact that they chose a date at all means that the whole process is completely under THEIR control.

[noiseboyuk]

Just to say thanks to Matt for a) the feedback and b) not giving up here. Well wishes to everyone in crazy times.

[nix808]

+1

[toonertik]

I understand that Engee,but there has to be something else going on here...

There is a reason why NI chose May 31st...

Random generator

[Ah_Dziz]

I’ve never had much in the way of negative views of NI until now. I have bought every NI software product ever released (not to mention the stupidly large amount of 3rd party Kontakt libraries I own). If they can’t keep an activation server up and running then they should at least embed customer information onto an unlocked installer which will be available for some amount of time. I can back all of that up and make it work on systems for ages to come.

I understand that this is a cutoff point so they can try and stop supporting super old software, but some of us just want to be able to access that software, and will handle the support ourselves. Making it impossible to get this stuff up and running at all is going to f**k a lot of people who have invested a lot of time and money into the NI product line.

[clipnotic]

In bad times, customer care should have first priority! Kids learning this already at school!