Author Topic: New licensing in the beta channel  (Read 38703 times)

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Offline petr.chytil

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New licensing in the beta channel
« on: March 16, 2017, 06:06:35 PM »
Dear beta users,
 
this BETA release is also about continuing in new licensing backend development with several changes done also on client’s side. Therefore, we would like to give you more details about it in order to help you with its understanding as well as helping you to provide more specific feedback to it. As we are talking about licensing and subscription, possible issues may impact mainly the product edition, its expiration day and installed components.
 
The original licensing backend system we call „Legacy“ and the new one is „Alpha“. In order to know against which of those backends is the client running, please look at the „C:\Program Files\AVAST Software\Avast\setup\config.def“ and find the „[Alpha]” string by following parameter “Enabled” followed by value [0,1] (0 means disabled, 1 means enabled, missing marameter means disabled). Please note that any manual changes to this file will be invalidated by not matching the content with its signature and the new one will be downloaded.
 
You mas also find the difference in look of the Subscription page in the Settings of the product (see the screenshots).
Legacy licensing in clientAlpha licensing in client

Now, our goal for this BETA regading licensing is to enable the Alpha backend against clients with Free and Trial editions. The Paid one are already running against Alpha for a while. Enabling the alpha for those remaining will be done gradually so it may happen you will not run against the Alpha from the first day of releasing this BETA – we will inform you when the whole BETA channel will be switched once we are confident enough it works. This applies to already installed clients as well as new installations.
 
Scenarios that somehow trigger communication with license backend are the following:
1.      Installing Free or Trial edition
2.      Registering Free edition
3.      Trial or Paid expiration
4.      Downgrading to Free (from Trial or Paid)
5.      Activating Free by Trial (e.g. from banner)
6.      Activating by existing Paid (activation code or license file)
7.      Purchasing Antivirus or other products (such as Passwords, SecureLine or Cleanup) directly from the application
 
Please note that there are more variants and combinations, but those are the basic ones. Also note that migration of existing one without any manual change of the client subscription will be done gradually from our side as mentioned above.
 
Known issues in licensing against Alpha:
1.      After accepting offer for higher edition you might be switched back to previous edition
2.      If you have one license for more products, then all are visible in Settings -> Subscription page even if they are not installed
3.      There is no possibility to choose specific license when inserting old license file which contains more licences for the same product (e.g. two licenses for Antivirus Internet Security)
4.      Conversion to Free edition does not work for blacklisted/refunded licenses
5.      In some cases you might end up with multiple Free licenses instead of just one
6.      Some redundant calls from client to new backend (with no visible impact to you)
 
In case of any issue we would appreciate problem report with the following files for further debugging:
  • %ProgramData%\AVAST Software\Persistent Data\Avast\Logs\Setup.log
  • %ProgramData%\AVAST Software\Persistent Data\Avast\Logs\Update.log
  • %ProgramData%\AVAST Software\Avast\log\AvastSvc.log
  • %ProgramFiles%\AVAST Software\Avast\setup\config.def

Thank you for your help, we appreciate it!
« Last Edit: March 16, 2017, 06:11:20 PM by petr.chytil »

Offline bob3160

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Offline Lano

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #2 on: March 27, 2017, 12:25:23 AM »
Dear beta users,
 
<snip>Therefore, we would like to give you more details about it in order to help you with its understanding as well as helping you to provide more specific feedback to it.

What type of specific feedback are you looking for? I just updated to .2290 BETA from .2289 BETA. I checked config.def file and it shows Enabled=1 under [Alpha]. I'm using Avast free on Win 7.

Offline petr.kolacek

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #3 on: March 27, 2017, 09:40:29 AM »
Is this related ???
https://forum.avast.com/index.php?topic=199512.msg1380702#msg1380702

Hi bob3160, thank you for the post. My colleague will contact you in order to agree on getting more details about this specific case.

Offline petr.kolacek

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #4 on: March 27, 2017, 09:45:13 AM »
Quote
What type of specific feedback are you looking for? I just updated to .2290 BETA from .2289 BETA. I checked config.def file and it shows Enabled=1 under [Alpha]. I'm using Avast free on Win 7.

Hi Lano, we are looking for feedback regarding your subscriptions. You can find detailed information about your subscription in the Avast UI -> Settings -> Subscription. If there is anything strange to you please get back to us with more information so we can follow up on that.

Some of the scenarios are mentioned in the post above - it depends on what subscription you have right now and what eventually would you like to do with them (e.g. start trial, purchase some, renew, etc.). Thank you!

Offline Asyn

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #5 on: March 27, 2017, 02:55:40 PM »
Hi Petr & Petr,

hope you're also interested in some positive feedback. ;)
No issues with Alpha here so far on my test system (Avast Free).
Screenshot attached. Cheers.
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Offline petr.kolacek

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2017, 03:35:05 PM »
Hi Petr & Petr,

hope you're also interested in some positive feedback. ;)
No issues with Alpha here so far on my test system (Avast Free).
Screenshot attached. Cheers.

Good news Asyn, thank you for that ;-)

Offline Lano

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #7 on: March 27, 2017, 06:43:35 PM »
Quote
What type of specific feedback are you looking for? I just updated to .2290 BETA from .2289 BETA. I checked config.def file and it shows Enabled=1 under [Alpha]. I'm using Avast free on Win 7.

Hi Lano, we are looking for feedback regarding your subscriptions. You can find detailed information about your subscription in the Avast UI -> Settings -> Subscription. If there is anything strange to you please get back to us with more information so we can follow up on that.

Some of the scenarios are mentioned in the post above - it depends on what subscription you have right now and what eventually would you like to do with them (e.g. start trial, purchase some, renew, etc.). Thank you!

Thank you, Petr. It looks like I'm also in good shape, then. :)

Offline petr.kolacek

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #8 on: March 27, 2017, 09:42:45 PM »
Quote
Thank you, Petr. It looks like I'm also in good shape, then. :)

Hi Lano, thank you for your feedback too. It would be great if you will get back to this post and let us know what happened in time of the Free "expiration" (1st of May). This is one of the interesting scenario when something may go wrong.

Offline Lano

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #9 on: March 28, 2017, 12:16:39 AM »
Quote
Thank you, Petr. It looks like I'm also in good shape, then. :)

Hi Lano, thank you for your feedback too. It would be great if you will get back to this post and let us know what happened in time of the Free "expiration" (1st of May). This is one of the interesting scenario when something may go wrong.

You're welcome, Petr. I'll be watching for any changes around the first and report back here.

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #10 on: March 30, 2017, 11:31:31 AM »
Я рад, что вышла новая версия Avast Free Antivirus. Буду и в дальнейшем отслеживать новые версии.

Offline bob3160

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #11 on: March 30, 2017, 04:21:54 PM »
Я рад, что вышла новая версия Avast Free Antivirus. Буду и в дальнейшем отслеживать новые версии.
Post in English please.
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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #12 on: March 30, 2017, 04:43:29 PM »
I'm glad the new version of Avast Free Antivirus. I will continue to track new version.

Offline YLAP

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #13 on: April 01, 2017, 09:40:17 AM »
Any plans to add a "prolong" option? For eg. my current license for Premier is valid for 400 days and I have a code for 365 days more. But I can't use it because it is not summing up - I will just add a new licence file into my account.

I don't know about the others but I would like to have an option to extend my current license in any time. The great example is Office 365 subscription. I can buy and add new code any time I want and the subscription time is summing up. The only limitation I think total subscription can't be longer than 5 years, not sure about that.

What I have in mind: I like to buy a new licence and prolong the current one in any time, not only when it is expiring, because at that moment I have no free money left for eg.  :)

Offline Asyn

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Re: New licensing in the beta channel
« Reply #14 on: April 01, 2017, 09:50:35 AM »
I don't know about the others but I would like to have an option to extend my current license in any time.
That would be great (if possible). I second that.
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