What do you do with the old license when it is upgraded to a new license?

When you sell a discounted upgrade, a customer may keep running the older version on one computer while installing the new version on another. This article explains why that happens, when it matters, and how to use the SoftwareKey System to control what happens to the old license after an upgrade.

Will the Customer End Up Running Both Versions?

There are two common questions to think through before you decide how to handle the old license:

• When you sold the discounted upgrade, did you intend for the customer to install it as a replacement for the older version, so they still end up with the same number of computer licenses?
• If the customer instead ends up with a second instance of your software running on a different computer, is that a violation of your license agreement? Should customers be allowed to do this at all?

Depending on how your software works and the nature of the upgrade, running two versions on two different computers may not even be possible. For example, if your software is an accounting package with a shared database, a customer generally cannot upgrade one desktop to the new version and keep running an older desktop version, because the new version will likely update the shared database schema. In that case the point is moot, since the two different software versions could not use the same shared database.

How to Prevent Additional Workstation Activation

If the two versions can run independently on two different computers and you want to prevent that, there are ways to do so, along with some important considerations.

In a commercial licensing system, each license normally carries one or more status values. When you allow software deactivation for one reason or another, your software is typically configured to communicate with the central licensing server to validate the license status.

When a customer qualifies for a discounted upgrade because they own a previous version, they usually need to identify their previous license ID or serial number to authenticate themselves. During this process you can flag the old license as "upgraded." Flagging the old license lets you:

1. Prevent the user from purchasing multiple discounted upgrades using the same old serial number.
2. Revoke the old license so the older software stops working on a production system if they continue to run it.

For these reasons, updating the status of the old license during an upgrade is strongly recommended.

Before You Revoke the Old License

Before you revoke a customer's old license, consider how important your software is to the customer's production environment. If you revoke the old license without enough warning and the customer's business suffers from the outage, they may be unhappy with you. Account for this by warning the customer during the upgrade purchase process so they know what to expect.

Handling Upgrades in the SoftwareKey System

The SoftwareKey System includes a special license status called "UPG" that you can apply to any license that has been upgraded to a newer version. Each product has an Upgrade Behavior setting that lets the software do one of the following:

1. Continue to run and allow new activation requests on the old license.
2. Continue to run but not allow new activation requests on the old license.
3. Deactivate the old license and do not allow new activation requests on the old license.

Whichever approach best fits your goals, the SoftwareKey System gives you the flexibility to manage the license upgrade process and decide exactly what happens to the old license.

Related Articles

• Controlling re-activations on minor and major upgrades
• Reasons to allow software deactivation and how it works