It’s almost a year since Royal TS became Shareware. When you obtain a license for Royal TS you also get a 12-month software upgrade protection to ensure that you have access to the latest versions of Royal TS for a year after your purchase date.
Some of our very first customers were asking about extending the software upgrade protection and thought it might be a good idea to publish a blog post to clarify a few things about our licensing. So here we go…
First of all, there is no extension for the software upgrade protection and there is no need for that. Here's why and how we planned our licensing structure:
The license key currently issued is bound to the Royal TS Version 1.6.x
The next major version of Royal TS (V2.0) a new license key will be needed. The keys for 1.6.x will not work anymore. The key issued for Version 2.0 will work with all minor versions of version 2.x. Version 3.0 will need a new license key again and so on.
With our software upgrade protection we ensure you have access to all new major and minor releases for a duration of 12 months after purchase. This way you will not have to buy another license a month later after your purchase in case a new major version is released.
Every customer qualifying for a free upgrade according to our software upgrade protection will get the new license key automatically by email when the new release is available.
Every customer who does not qualify for a free upgrade anymore (because the purchase date was back more than a year) will get automatically notified by email when a new major version is released and they will also get a discount coupon to use when they decide to upgrade to the new version.
We think this is a very fair approach because you do not have to pay for an extension without having a new major version on the horizon but at the same time ensures that loyal customers get the benefit of a discount when the release is ready and they decide to upgrade.
I hope this makes sense and want to express my appreciation for all of you supporting Royal TS. Thank you!