A long time ago, Capitalware Support was constantly having issues with customers not upgrading to the latest version of a product and the customers reporting bugs/issues that had already been fixed months or years earlier.
About 12 years ago, we added expiry code to output the “too old” error message. The error message is outputted when a product is more than 5 years old.
At the same time, we started doing a “yearly release train” of all products on all platforms. It was very time-consuming to release 14 Capitalware products across 13 varied platforms. After that, customers using very old releases of Capitalware products was greatly reduced.
In 2021, I decided it would be far better to do “iteration releases” like most open source projects. Hence, all emails with download links would included the line “Please use the latest release of the product” and the 4 digit release number.
Until this year, we have never ever had an issue with customers using older products with the expiry code. It would appear that many customers took the major release number, i.e. 4.2.0, as nothing has changed, which clearly was not true, versus the full release number of 4.2.0.26. Clearly, I didn’t understand that the message of upgrading in a timely matter was not being heard or understood.
I really don’t want to go back to yearly release trains but it would appear that maybe it is something I should seriously consider. Based on a customer suggestion, I have begun adding code to output a warning message 6 months before the release is set to expire.
Regards,
Roger Lacroix
Capitalware Inc.
