Activation / Expiration

[mduarte]

Hi people,

 

I was testing the TweenLite class in one internal project which is a very simple game I have created for education purpose. I have developed it since almost 6 months ago and everything was working fine. Past week I have opened again the project to introduce new functionality on it and I notice that the movieclip has a different behavior than in the past.

After debugging I have found the problem was with TweenLite class. It appears to be expired because the code still exists but it doesn't work directly. No error message at all. I have downloaded the latest version from your web site, and without change any source code line, everything started to work again as it was expected.

I have review the code I was using and I have found I was using also the following Plug-Ins : TweenPlugin.activate([bezierPlugin, BezierThroughPlugin ,VolumePlugin]);

I just want to know if this behavior is by default, I mean.. do you have any expiration or trial version defined which stop working after xxx days ??

Does it happened because my computer was connected to Internet ?

 

This kind of behavior worried me (and I need to understand pretty well the expected behavior and licencing model) because next week I need to start developing a production flash movie and I would like to use your class with those plugins. Aside I am going to purchase the membership, I would like to know how I can be sure it is going to work forever and the same problem is not going to happens again. Also it is probably the flash movie is not going to be connected to internet at all (I want to distribute some CD with Autorun with my company brochure), and I need to know if in the future I may have a similar situation where the animation doesn't work at all.

 

I was searching for that information along the forums and in the web site but I couldn't found anything related to that.

 

Thanks in advance for the clarifications!

Marcelo

[Carl]

Hi Marcelo,

 

The publicly available and free GreenSock class files never expire or self-destruct. They are simply a series of text files with no protection mechanism whatsoever.

There are legions of users who depend on these files year to year in many important projects. If these files simply "stopped working on their own" there would be many many complaints and the platform would have a very poor reputation. To the contrary, the GreenSock tweening platform is arguably the most highly regarded and stable tweening engine available.

 

There must be something else to explain your situation. Perhaps someone was peeking in the source code and inadvertently made an edit or a file got deleted by accident. It happens.

 

If you are a paid member of Club GreenSock your license to use the files will expire after 1 year. http://www.greensock.com/club/ Your projects that are compiled while your license is valid will not automatically stop working.

 

Hope this information helps

 

Carl

[robtarren]

Hi Carl,

 

I'm just in the process of reviewing the options available and would just like absolute clarification of the your sentence - "Your projects that are compiled while your license is valid will not automatically stop working"....does this mean that -

 

a) if I register and pay today, create and upload a Greensock based flash animation tomorrow, then this same animation will still function forever without renewing the license?

if I then tried to tweak the same animation in 18 months time it wouldn't compile and I would have to renew the license?

 

Cheers, Rob

[GreenSock]

I'm just in the process of reviewing the options available and would just like absolute clarification of the your sentence - "Your projects that are compiled while your license is valid will not automatically stop working"....does this mean that -

 

a) if I register and pay today, create and upload a Greensock based flash animation tomorrow, then this same animation will still function forever without renewing the license?

if I then tried to tweak the same animation in 18 months time it wouldn't compile and I would have to renew the license?

Carl is correct - there is no expiration mechanism whatsoever in any of the GreenSock tools. I have purposefully taken a posture of being very trusting of users to do the right thing. Plenty of people have used the code illegally over the years, but I believe my user base consists of some of the highest-quality people out there, so most will do the right thing and honor the license/copyright properly because it's what makes everything work. (See http://www.greensock.com/licensing-considerations/ to learn about why I chose this licensing model)

 

Even the bonus classes that are "members-only" do not suddenly expire and stop working when your membership expires. So, for example, if you purchase a corporate membership today and use the bonus plugins/classes in a product of yours, there is no reason (at least no GreenSock-imposed reason) why they'd stop working (or work differently) later.

 

If you want details about licensing (which is unrelated to functionality), see http://www.greensock.com/licensing/

 

Does that clear things up?

[robtarren]

Thanks Greensock, that's great, thanks for clearing it up.

 

I actually registered a couple of hours ago and downloaded the Shockingly Green package and I'm just playing around with some of the features...absolutely awesome!

 

My main concern was that if I decided that Flash wasn't for me anymore and decided to stop incorporating it in new sites in a few months time, would all my old sites suddenly go kaput in 12 months from today! But you've put my mind at ease!