I’m making a poll about the required upgrade.
In 30 year I never hesitated to make an upgrade. Now I do. I’m short in money and, well, I don’t have the promised product either and the last two years were a broken promise after the other.
Am I the only one?
Jorge Lavera
I just renewed. There are always fixes, and improvments. Ok the big headline ones have been delayed (In no small part thanks to the Ukraine war) I can see positives coming down the line.
Was the Clarion 12 Delivered already a Gold Release? Can this be used for production?
I’m still using Clarion 11.1.13855. Although most of my applications run well under Clarion 12, I’m still having problems with some applications that communicates with devices (smart card reader, mobile POS). I’m using the updated templates from Capesoft.
I understand why some question the need to pay for a non-production version, but my perspective is that it’s a worthwhile investment. I’d rather support the upgrade now and ensure ongoing development and future updates, rather than hold back funding and risk SoftVelocity’s long-term viability. To be clear, I don’t have any insider knowledge of their financial situation—they may be perfectly stable—but continued support from the developer community is essential if we want the product to have a future.
Was the Clarion 12 Delivered already a Gold Release?: Yes, although there were no previous pre-release neither beta releases. It’s like Clarion 11.1 was the “pre-release”.
Can this be used for production?: Yes, although there are a few reports about problems with SQL (I did not verify them).
Basically, Softvelocity claims it has a lot of work under the hoods preparing to future changes, as for us users we have zero changes from C11.1. It is the same IDE and the same aspect and behaviour of final programs. There is no documentation about any new feature either.
I don’t think it is a a non-production version, basically (from our perspective) it is Clarion 11.1 renamed. My concern, given the past history of the last three years, is precisely that to support the upgrade now does not ensure ongoing development and future updates. It didn’t so far.
Well, I don’t even see an oficial “will do this” time line. Furthermore, all the promises done in the past three years were not fulfilled. Unless Softvelocity is just one programmer in Ukraine, I don’t see that war as a valid excuse for not releasing, for example, the free version officially promised long ago.
Im in the camp that its just “subscription renewal time”. Its been 6 years since the last one. Trying to match up the subscription to features is meaningless (because the two dont really match up.)
So i think of it as the cheapest subscription i have, and just leave it there. Trying to link the timing of the subscription to some feature release leads to my brain melting down.
I’ve renewed my subscription just after C12 was delivered.
Although I’m currently not using C12 and although I would love to see the promised new features I’m following Bruce statement. The last time the subscription was renewed is so far back that I’m glad to renew and give my money to SV in the hope that upcoming C12 updates will bring new features. And in the hope that SV will be on track again and deliver updates on a regular basis.
Jens
“The CSP entitles you to both Major and Minor upgrades for one year. Subscribers will receive all minor version upgrades (dot releases) and also receive the major version upgrade.”
One never knows with SV, but is the “one year” statement new this time around? I certainly would not put my nickel on delivery of another Major upgrade within a year.
Yes and no.
They’ve removed language from the prior upgrade page which, during the time when C11 was current, said
The CSP entitles you to both Major and Minor upgrades for one year. Subscribers will receive all minor version upgrades (dot releases) and also receive the major version upgrade to Clarion 12
Unfortunately, the person that pay the bills in a company, operates on features. Today I had a management reunion and I clearly explained that if they pay now they save 200 usd. They asked all the questions I thought they’ll ask, like “what do we got in this latest upgrade”, and the answer was “nothing really”, and they asked “When there will be any new feature of the possibility list announced?” and the answer was, of course, “No idea, and given the last three years performance, it could be next week or a couple of years or never; nobody’s know for sure.”
So their final answer was “Then, we’ll wait until something useful is released, no matter the usd 200 difference”.
I don’t know their financial situation or even how many people work there. I knew it was quite a while since they did a major version upgrade, so I resubscribed. It’ll probably be a while before I upgrade everything to C12, but 850 / 6 is about $140 a year. I can live with that.
Support ALL of the above statements from developers including Bruces who clearly has access to the Owners. We are rather lucky in that we have our own Technologies on Linux that emulate software. Which means we are not dependent on Clarion but support it as we have used it on Windows since DOS 2. It has some unique features but really the lack communication from the company is rather lacking. No GUI features promised and really its time for some parts of the solution to be put up as public access for the community which you get with your SUB. The proposed AI should not have been anything other than a community add in to the IDE. The company could then have been free to concentrate on the big stuff.. They certainly need to communicate to give developers confidence to invest. Reminds one of the development cycle of 7 to 9.. that took a while..
Well not just one person, but Alexy was the lead compiler programmer with a huge amount of domain knowledge. Replacing him, and getting the replacements up to speed, took a decent chunk of time.
That is unfortunate because SoftVelocity does not “sell software”. So the person is misaligned with the offering. In which case it’ll clearly never make sense.
What SoftVelocity offers is a subscription. (The clue is there in the name). You already have everything they’ve ever produced. Your last subscription included all the work between the Clarion 11.0 gold release and now. That spans 6 years and includes more than a few fixes etc. I certainly would not want to be on the Clarion 11.0 gold edition right now.
Of course if you pitch this to management as “Clarion 12” then naturally it’s a hard sell since you already have Clarion 12.
And yes, we don’t know what comes in the next subscription period. And we don’t know how long it will be. And there’s no real way to accurately guess. I get that’s unusual.
“Waiting for value” is silly because there’s never “one thing” that sparks the update. It’s an accumulation of small things, fixes and so on. Unless of course the specific bug is so material to you that you waste time and effort debugging your own program, only to discover something that’s affecting you has been fixed a long time ago.
The subscription renewal is $850, or $425 depending on what version you have. The last subscription ran for 6 years. The cost is so low, and the benefit (from say a single bug fix) so high that, to me anyway, it’s a no-brainer.
certainly paying the SUB… dont forget there is the whole API you can play with and perhaps at some point very soon technical documentation should come with the SUB besides the HELP… In the DOS days the technical B;s were published and for a fee you could subscribe to them , they were priceless and allowed us to develop database addins for Lotus 123 and Excel when that came along and many other addon’s. Capesofts Documentation program is a wonder to behold.
I see you start using words like “silly” and “no-brainer” to disqualify who doesn’t think like you. That’s ok, you can twist things in any way you like but the bottom line is SV broke their word, and to had 6 years with no paid upgrades, which you see as a “great value”, I see it as a disaster. I wish we were in Clarion 19 already, each build adding great features. I’d gladly paid the usd 850 per year - that’s what you don’t see. It is not a “hard sell”, it is a no sell, as there is nothing to sell.
What API are you referring to?
Same here. I don’t see other option except drop everything and use other tool(s).