LabVIEW community edition won't activate

[Jay14159265]

Why can't the CE version be a perpetual license? It's such a headache as it is I have given up on CE, which is bad because I actually like and want to use LabView. I can't imagine this terrible CE experience is bringing new users into the fold when not even the diehard users can get it to work. 

[billko]

Community Edition was the first to be a subscription.  I think this was a subscription license beta test and it's still suffering from that.

[rolfk]

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@billko wrote:

Community Edition was the first to be a subscription.  I think this was a subscription license beta test and it's still suffering from that.

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Actually subscriptions existed before. The Base package was sold optionally as a subscription since about 2016 or earlier. All Volume Licenses and Site Licenses as well as the Alliance Member License were 1 year time limited licenses too.

What is different is the entitlement generation. For all commercial licenses that is tied to a serial number stored in the NI license server. For the Community Edition this is generated when you start a download and this entitlement-is strictly tied to whatever user account you are logged in when starting the download. When you try to then license your installation with a different account, nothing works

It doesn’t help that NI in fact has at least two different accounts that may or may not be the same and/or coupled together. One is for ni.com, the other for the forum here. If you have at some point changed your email, because of changing employer, they can easily get out of sync without you noticing for a long time, and getting the right one changed can be an exercise in hide and seek until you find the correct account profile page.

Also NI servers are all behind a Cloudflare shield, theoretically invisible, practically causing regularly very long delays before Cloudflare determined that you are not a bot or even something more nefarious. And those delays can cause timeouts that could render such server interactions with the Community Edition entitlement server invalid.  

[Jay14159265]

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@rolfk wrote:

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@billko wrote:

Community Edition was the first to be a subscription.  I think this was a subscription license beta test and it's still suffering from that.

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Actually subscriptions existed before. The Base package was sold optionally as a subscription since about 2016 or earlier. All Volume Licenses and Site Licenses as well as the Alliance Member License were 1 year time limited licenses too.

What is different is the entitlement generation. For all commercial licenses that is tied to a serial number stored in the NI license server. For the Community Edition this is generated when you start a download and this entitlement-is strictly tied to whatever user account you are logged in when starting the download. When you try to then license your installation with a different account, nothing works

It doesn’t help that NI in fact has at least two different accounts that may or may not be the same and/or coupled together. One is for ni.com, the other for the forum here. If you have at some point changed your email, because of changing employer, they can easily get out of sync without you noticing for a long time, and getting the right one changed can be an exercise in hide and seek until you find the correct account profile page.

Also NI servers are all behind a Cloudflare shield, theoretically invisible, practically causing regularly very long delays before Cloudflare determined that you are not a bot or even something more nefarious. And those delays can cause timeouts that could render such server interactions with the Community Edition entitlement server invalid.  

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When confronted with this, what does NI expect the user to do? 

[rolfk]

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@Jay14159265 wrote:

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When confronted with this, what does NI expect the user to do? 

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The common wisdom was in the past to initiate another download under the correct account. You do not have to actually download the installer. Just start the download and abort it right away. The actual start of the download used to be the part that generates a Community Edition license entitlement in the license server.

[styrum]

So for SIX YEARS now this "free" version is not really installable and usable (activatable) for the vast majority of people, even those willing to jump through some hoops.  The user downloads Community Edition but gets only the Evaluation version installed and activated for 7 days. "Community" indeed shows up in NI Package Manager and even in Activate Software dialog but pushing Activate gives "Activation failed due to server error". And it does not show up in the license manager main window after installation of presumably "Community Edition". The "Evaluation" does. What a disgrace! I do have the CE listed as a product in My Products on my account at NI. Don't even remember how I managed to do it a few years ago. Yes, the same account I used to download and was logged in to. I still couldn't activate it on a laptop recently. At some point I was able to do it but apparently you need a lot of luck for that to happen.

[Jay14159265]

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@rolfk wrote:

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@Jay14159265 wrote:

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When confronted with this, what does NI expect the user to do? 

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The common wisdom was in the past to initiate another download under the correct account. You do not have to actually download the installer. Just start the download and abort it right away. The actual start of the download used to be the part that generates a Community Edition license entitlement in the license server.

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Yes, but this is some kind of 'tribal knowledge' with no useful end user messages about what went wrong or how to resolve the issue. Also the notion of 'correct account' is lost on most NI CE users, IMO this should be handled by the package manager, not scouring the forums : / 

[Mr._Jim]

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@styrum wrote:

So for SIX YEARS now this "free" version is not really installable and usable (activatable) for the vast majority of people, even those willing to jump through some hoops.

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In spite of my inner voice of reason advising me that it's not wise to engage, I'm sharing my two cents: Your frustration is shared by many, and I definitely didn't find the installation process intuitive. I was initially rather frustrated, myself, and I almost fired off a message on this thread to vent. However, I contend that it's a stretch to claim and/or assume that the "vast majority of people" haven't been able to install and use it.

Lots of people in the community are running it based on conversations during GDevCon NA last week. Once I found the right sequence of installation steps, it's been working flawlessly for me. I guess you could call the installation sequence "jump[ing] through hoops," but I don't perceive NI imposing strings attached. Maybe that's not what you were getting at. My biggest gripe (besides installation annoyances) is that it's 32-bit, but it's not really that big of a deal, and besides, it's free.

I wrote up some detailed instructions further back in the thread, and I also linked to another thread from which I gleaned the step I was missing.

Regards,

Mr. Jim

[styrum]

Do you realize that when new potential LabVIEW users get to the point of failed activation and end up with the 7 day Evaluation version instead of promised a "free" version, they won't exactly be in a mood to patiently search for your "detailed instructions"? They will feel deceived, annoyed, like they just wasted a lot of their time, taking into account how long the installation takes. What is the probability of them willing to continue to explore LabVIEW then?

[Mr._Jim]

Hey, my name isn't blue and I don't work here. 😉

I am a mere mortal as you are. I tried to be helpful by going back and posting what worked for me. I can't really help you with your frustration, but I'll absorb it if you want to blame me.

If I were in your position, and assuming that I wanted to continue further in an effort to get it working, I would try and see if I could get the iso file to download. If so, I would then uninstall any expired version of LabVIEW and start the installation from scratch with the iso file. I can tell you that this is exactly what I had to do, myself, although I didn't wait for it to expire. I just knew something was wrong when I got the trial notification at startup and went back here to figure out what I'd missed. If, after downloading the iso file, your NI sign-on account is associated with the Community Edition, (which it now should be after downloading it) it should install successfully. If you downloaded a stub and not an iso file, then it's going to be an evaluation "license" and not the Community Edition. The latter only comes as a full download.

If you feel totally burned and don't want to try again, I can't help you there, but here's some more information in an effort to assist you. In any case, I hope things go well for you. If you're done trying to get this working, then I still wish you success in whatever you're doing.

Jim