If you have only one current Support & Maintenance subscription for ArcaOS 5.0, and you upgrade that license to ArcaOS 5.1, whatever remaining time on your ArcaOS 5.0 subscription will be added to your ArcaOS 5.1 Support & Maintenance subscription, and your ArcaOS 5.0 subscription will be terminated as of the date of the upgrade. Here’s why:
Upgrading an ArcaOS license from 5.0 to 5.1 implies that the installed copy of ArcaOS 5.0 will be upgraded to the new 5.1 license. It is a violation of license terms to continue using the ArcaOS 5.0 license when it has been upgraded to 5.1. Thus, there are no more subscription downloads available for the (now upgraded) ArcaOS 5.0 license.
If you need to continue using ArcaOS 5.0 on one or more systems, but wish to install ArcaOS 5.1 on another system (or partition), you must purchase a new ArcaOS 5.1 license. This will allow your existing ArcaOS 5.0 Support & Maintenance subscription to remain in force, with associated downloads available for that version and provide you with a separate Support & Maintenance subscription for the new ArcaOS 5.1 license, which has separate (and different) subscription downloads available.
You must log into your account and select the option to upgrade a specific license from your ArcaOS Download Center.
See this post for details.
If you renew on or up to six months after the expiration date, this is considered the renewal grace period, and the normal renewal price applies, but will only extend your subscription for the time remaining in the current one-year period.
Example:
- Your subscription expires December 31.
- You renew May 15 of the following year, four and a half months late, for the normal renewal price.
- Your subscription expires December 31 of that year.
If you renew after the grace period, the late renewal price applies and this will reinstate your subscription for a full year, changing the expiration date of your subscription.
Example:
- Your subscription expires December 31.
- You renew July 15 of the following year, six and a half months late, for the late renewal price.
- Your subscription expires July 15 of the following year.
Subscription renewals are discounted by 10% for a renewal order placed any time before expiration. Whether you purchase a renewal the same day as you purchase your ArcaOS license (but in a subsequent order), or the last day before it expires, we consider this an early renewal. Early renewals provide the best value.
Subscription renewals are discounted by 10% for a renewal order placed any time before expiration. Whether you purchase a renewal the same day as you purchase your ArcaOS license (but in a subsequent order), or the last day before it expires, we consider this an early renewal.
If you renew on or up to six months after the expiration date, this is considered the renewal grace period, and the normal renewal price applies, but will only extend your subscription for the time remaining in the current one-year period.
Example:
- Your subscription expires December 31.
- You renew May 15 of the following year, four and a half months late, for the normal renewal price.
- Your subscription expires December 31 of that year.
If you renew after the grace period, the late renewal price applies and this will reinstate your subscription for a full year, changing the expiration date of your subscription.
Example:
- Your subscription expires December 31.
- You renew July 15 of the following year, six and a half months late, for the late renewal price.
- Your subscription expires July 15 of the following year.
You may reinstate any ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription, no matter how long ago it expired, on the order details page for your original ArcaOS order from your customer portal. To access the order details page:
- Visit your customer portal on the main Arca Noae website. If not logged in, you may do so when accessing the above link.
- From the navigation links on the left, select ArcaOS Download Center to view the list of your ArcaOS licenses and associated downloads.
- Locate the ArcaOS license for the subscription you would like to renew, and click the Renew button. This will add the renewal to your shopping cart.
If your subscription expired less than six months earlier, the standard renewal fee will apply, and will extend your subscription for the remainder of the one year term. If more than six months, a higher reinstatement fee will apply, but this is still less than the purchase of a new ArcaOS license, and will provide one full year of support and maintenance from the date of renewal.
We can surely look at it. We’ve done this for other companies where a particular component has been replaced by a newer model and the existing device driver is not capable of handling the new hardware. The component manufacturer may not have a compelling business reason to supply an OS/2 driver for the component, but perhaps there is still a need to access it from OS/2 or ArcaOS.
Contact us to discuss your needs. We work under short or long term contract, with full non-disclosure agreements. In short, your information is confidential, and we are dedicated to keeping OS/2 running.
We also provide extended support agreements for companies and enterprises in need of OS/2 talent to maintain their infrastructure.
An active ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription for the same major and minor version of ArcaOS (5.0, 5.1, 5.2, etc.) will include access to the latest maintenance release for that major and minor version, without the need to purchase any additional software licensing.
Thus, if you purchased ArcaOS 5.0 when first released, and have kept your ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription in force all along, you would have had access to download ISOs for 5.0.1, 5.0.2, 5.0.3, etc. simply by accessing the ArcaOS Download Center from your customer portal. To access the ArcaOS Download Center:
- Visit your customer portal on the main Arca Noae website. If not logged in, you may do so when accessing the above link.
- From the navigation links on the left, select ArcaOS Download Center to view the list of your ArcaOS licenses and associated downloads.
Click the Download ISO button next to the ArcaOS license with active support & maintenance.for the version you would like to download. You should receive an email advising you that your ISO is being created, and a short time later, an email containing your unique download link.
In a word, no.
Software and drivers included with ArcaOS and not distributed separately (either freely available from Arca Noae or provided as part of a non-ArcaOS subscription) are not licensed for use on, supported when installed on, nor have they been tested on other operating systems. In short, once you break the terms of the ArcaOS licensing agreement, you are on your own.
An excellent example of this is Arca Noae SNAP included with ArcaOS. This is not a free upgrade to SciTech SNAP/se installed with eComStation, nor is it an upgrade for SciTech SNAP Professional. While Arca Noae SNAP as included with ArcaOS has been updated, it has only been tested with ArcaOS, and is only licensed for use with ArcaOS. Installing Arca Noae SNAP from the ArcaOS installation media on any non-ArcaOS system is a direct violation of the ArcaOS licensing agreement, and Arca Noae will not provide any technical support for such installations, even when the ArcaOS license itself was legally obtained and when the ArcaOS license is not in use (ArcaOS itself has not been installed).
Yes. If you had a valid OS/2 and eCS Drivers & Software subscription at the time you purchased ArcaOS or an ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription, you may request a prorated credit of the remaining value of your subscription. This assumes that you will no longer be needing updates to any components included in the OS/2 and eCS Drivers & Software subscription for non-ArcaOS systems, as content in the ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription is not licensed for installation or use on OS/2 Warp 4, MCP/ACP, MCP2/ACP2, or eComStation systems. Of course, any software which you installed prior to trading up your subscription will continue to function, and you are still licensed to use it under the terms included with your original subscription.
Be aware also that the metering for the personal editions of the ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription and the OS/2 and eCS Drivers & Software subscription differs. The ArcaOS Support & Maintenance subscription personal edition is licensed only for a single system, whereas the content included in the OS/2 and eCS Drivers & Software subscription, with the exception of the ACPI driver, USB drivers, and Panorama graphics driver, may be installed on an unlimited number of systems (the ACPI driver, USB drivers, and Panorama graphics driver may only be used on a maximum of 5 systems).
See the relevant FAQ items for more details concerning license metering.
To request a trade-up of an existing OS/2 and eCS Drivers & Software subscription, please visit this page.
Personal subscriptions and licenses entitle the holder to create support tickets in the bug tracker, and to access software updates. If a personal subscriber or licensee has a suggestion to make for a product enhancement, we will gladly listen to it. Support issues are handled on a best-effort basis, which means that resolving them may take anywhere from a few hours to a few months, depending upon how busy staff is supporting commercial subscribers and licensees.
Commercial subscribers and licensees, in contrast, receive prioritized support. This doesn’t always mean that problems will be resolved overnight, but efforts are first put into resolving issues reported by commercial subscribers and licensees, and when product enhancements are requested, these go to the top of the stack when we are considering where to expend our development efforts. In essence, commercial customers hold more sway, and their needs are always a priority for us, generally because we understand that mission-critical processes may be hanging in the balance, whereas personal subscribers and licensees should be using the software in non-business, and thus, non-critical environments.
Note also that the included term of support for some products may differ for personal vs commercial subscriptions. An example of this is ArcaOS, where the personal edition includes 6 months of technical support and updates, whereas the commercial edition includes one full year (12 months) of technical support and updates.