Updates, Upgrades and Maintenance Reinstatements
The Alchemy Solutions Inc. update, upgrade and maintenance reinstatement policy is designed to encourage you to stay current on maintenance agreements as this gives us a sure platform for planning future releases. This topic explains update, upgrade and maintenance reinstatement pricing for different situations. On this page:
- Definitions of “Update” and “Upgrade”
- Customers with a current maintenance agreement
- Updating to a new release when maintenance has lapsed
- Reinstating maintenance when maintenance has lapsed and there has been no update release of the product since the lapse
- Replacing licenses when maintenance has lapsed
Update - by "update" we mean receiving a new release of a product you already have. For example, you have release 1.3 and we come out with a new version of that product numbered 1.4 or 2.0.
Upgrade - by "upgrade" we mean the situation where you have a particular product and now want to change to a more expensive edition of that product or a related product. For example, upgrading from a Professional Edition to an Enterprise Edition, or upgrading from the Windows version to a .NET version.
Customers with a current maintenance agreement
Customers who are current on maintenance receive:
- free updates
- credit when upgrading to a more expensive version
When an update to a product is released all customers with up-to-date maintenance are informed and have the ability to download the update release at their convenience. A customer on current maintenance also has the ability to choose to upgrade to a more highly priced product and receive full credit for the price paid for the software portion of their present license as a discount on the new purchase.1 Current examples of qualifying NetCOBOL upgrades:
- Windows Enterprise to: .NET Universal
- .NET Professional to: .NET Developer, or .NET Universal
- .NET Developer to: .NET Universal
- Sparc Standard to: Sparc Enterprise
- HP-UX Standard to: HP-UX Enterprise
Updating to a new release when maintenance has lapsed
If you decide you want to update to a new release of a product, having allowed your maintenance to lapse, your update price is based on:
- Reinstating your maintenance see section below , and
- Adding an update fee equal to 20% of the current product price.
Reinstating maintenance when maintenance has lapsed and there has been no update release of the product since the lapse
If you decide to reinstate your maintenance and there has been no update release since your maintenance lapsed, you will purchase 12 months maintenance but the reinstatement price and starting/end date is determined by how long your maintenance has been lapsed:
| Maintenance Renewal | If any new release comes out after maintenance has lapsed, an additional 20% of current product price will be charged in addition to all of the following late fees to obtain the new release. Alchemy Solutions only supports the current release of all products. |
| Time Late | Penalty (all maintenance costs refer to current annual price of maintenance, i.e. 25% of current software-only price) |
|---|---|
| 1st month | Renewal is full cost of 1 year maintenance, and renews for 11 months from date of lapse |
| 2nd month | Renewal is full cost of 1 year maintenance, and renews for 10 months from date of lapse |
| 3rd month | Renewal is full cost of 1 year maintenance, and renews for 9 month from date of lapse |
| 3 + Months | Renewal is full cost of maintenance from first day of lapse to last day of current month, plus cost of 1 year maintenance ending on last day of current month in following year, plus delinquent fee of 25% of cost of 1 year maintenance |
Replacing licenses when maintenance has lapsed
If your maintenance has lapsed and you lose your product license (for example, if a computer crashes or you need help to move to a different computer), you have two options:
- Reinstate maintenance on all licenses
- Pay the software only cost of the current version and we will supply a license for any version along with maintenance for 30 days for installation issues only
Example: You have NetCOBOL for Windows V9 but never moved from V7 so you decide not to renew maintenance. A year later you lose a hard drive and request a replacement V7 site key. You have the option to reinstate maintenance on all your licenses (with the costs and fees as specified above), or you can pay the software only cost of the current release of NetCOBOL for Windows Enterprise and we will issue a site key replacement for V7 (if that is what you desire) without maintenance beyond the 30 days to get it up and running.
