Thoughts on expiring licenses & wyBuild integration

It just dawned on me a problem I need to solve for tying license expiration with the ability to update. Just curious if anyone else has solved this problem already.

Say a user has a valid license key but it has passed expiration. When they go to re-download the application if they snag the 1.0 version (no updates) and plugin their license key it'll activate fine. However, when wyUpdate hits the server and asks about an update version the server always replies with the *latest* version to update to. The user actually needs to update to the last version that his key allows for.

If I went the route of stashing off an install build for every patch the user would then be able to install the latest version and use their expired license key (since it's in the same product, it's actually a valid key).

At this point I'm wondering if the time-based updates model will really work for my situation. Thanks in advance for any suggestions or advice any of you have!

~Rob

This is an interesting problem. The easiest way to solve it is to create yet another feature value, let's call it "max_version". When a license expires, you can set "max_version" to the current version of your application. Then, in your app, check the "max_version" feature.

If the max_version is greater than or equal to the copy of the app the user has installed then let the user run your app. If they downloaded a newer version of your app, then tell them to use the older version of your app or renew their update license.

Does that make sense?

Makes sense. After hashing out a few other use cases I'm thinking for simplicity it would be best to stick with the standard licensing model (buy 1.0, get 1.x updates, buy 2.0, get 2.x updates...etc). One of the major SNAFU's I thought of was the need to roll out "critical" updates that every user should get, regardless of their update licensing.

Just because a user's license has expired doesn't mean they should be subject to crashes because of my clumsy code 🤣

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