ColdFusion 8 Trial Period is more than 30 days

June 1, 2007 · 4 Comments

My company, Scazu, is in the process of switching from hosted to colo as we prepare to launch our service this Summer. Because we're going to have fairly close control over our initial user base and because our site runs much, much faster on ColdFusion 8 than it does on CFMX 7, I requested permission from the ColdFusion team to go to production on the Public Beta build which they graciously allowed. A question then occurred to me about the trial period. You have the option to install ColdFusion 8 as Developer Edition, Serial-licensed Edition or Trial Enterprise. The former won't work for a public site (IP address restrictions). The middle option won't work either - ColdFusion 8 is not yet on sale so you can't buy serial-license keys (and, as you may have discovered, it won't accept CFMX 7 serial-license keys!). So that meant going to production on a trial license which the installer says will last 30 days. Since I didn't want to run the risk of having my production servers revert to Developer Edition unexpectedly, I asked whether the 30 day trial was really a 30 day trial. Damon Cooper said that the ColdFusion 8 Public Beta Trial Period actually extends to July 31st, despite what the installer says. He also asked me to blog this (since it's likely to be a common question). We at Scazu are very excited about launching our service on ColdFusion 8 as it means that certain "Phase II" features can now be part of our initial release (leveraging image manipulation and AJAX integration specifically - as well as server monitoring functionality). Remember: you need to get explicit permission from the ColdFusion team to take a site to production on the Public Beta build!

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Tags: adobe · coldfusion · scazu

4 responses so far ↓

1 Scott P // Jun 1, 2007 at 10:55 AM

Hopefully that will cover you until *mid-year* 2007.

This really is a big deal because it is a such a major release. From the sales/marketing side of it, Adobe has to love early adoption because it is a guaranteed sell. NO WAY I'm going back to 7 after this, like eating steak then having to go back to spam sandwiches.
2 Brian Swartzfager // Jun 1, 2007 at 1:16 PM

That's...interesting. I suspect there will be much speculation as to why they chose that particular date.
3 Peter Bell // Jun 2, 2007 at 3:30 AM

Well, I wouldn't read too much into it. Bear in mind that the people running Scorpio in production aren't going to necessarily go out, buy and install a license key on the very day Scorpio is released (sure, they'll try to do it ASAP, but stuff happens), so you gotta think there is going to be a 2-4 week window between the launch and the end of the trial - maybe 1 week if they are being stingy - but unlikely.

Also, don't rely on this, but there have been amnesties in the past and it might not be impossible that if you are forced to buy CF 7 for a project before 8 comes out that there might be some kind of preferential upgrade path if you buy it just before launch (I believe that has been done before, but nobody will say for sure whether it'll happen this time around, so I'd hold off on those purchases if you can).

Must admit that after the Scorpio presos at Scotch I'm seriously considering porting my in-house framework to CF8 . . .
4 William // Jun 2, 2007 at 6:38 AM

Speculation? Are you implying that they would release CF8 at the start of the 8th month? That wouldn't make any sense...

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