Does anyone know the truth about the Delphi subcription?

[caymon 0]

I have a  Delphi subscription  (for several years already).

I wanted to know if all the Delphi versions, installed during that (long) subscription period, will continue to work if I don't renew my subscription.

 

A sales guy from Embarcadero chated me that ''Every Edition which has been already unlocked, remains available for you''.

 

However, in this legal document: https://www.ideracorp.com/~/media/IderaInc/Files/Embarcadero/v12_0/Embarcadero RAD Studio Delphi CBuilder Software License and Support Agreement English

in the chapter ''ADDITIONAL LICENSE TERMS APPLICABLE TO SOFTWARE LICENSED ON A SUBSCRIPTION BASIS'' we read:

 

Upon expiration or termination of the License Term, Licensee must
immediately cease use of and uninstall the Product but Licensed Works developed
using the Product may still be distributed. Continued use of Subscription Licenses
following the expiration or termination of the License Term is unauthorized, constitutes a
violation of this Agreement and may constitute a misappropriation of Licensor's
intellectual property rights.

 

Then, what is the truth?

 

[Sherlock 663]

It has always been my understanding that you may continue to use the product after the license expires, you just wont get updates or assistance.

But that cited text there reads quite troubling.

You should be aware though, that there are different license agreements for different countries. So please make sure you are reading the correct one, concerning you and where you bought the license.

[Dalija Prasnikar 1396]

18 minutes ago, caymon said:

However, in this legal document: https://www.ideracorp.com/~/media/IderaInc/Files/Embarcadero/v12_0/Embarcadero RAD Studio Delphi CBuilder Software License and Support Agreement English

in the chapter ''ADDITIONAL LICENSE TERMS APPLICABLE TO SOFTWARE LICENSED ON A SUBSCRIPTION BASIS'' we read:

This is for C++ Builder PRO TERM LICENSE https://www.embarcadero.com/products/cbuilder/product-editions

 

Delphi doesn't even have such option.

[haentschman 92]

Delphi: Only the subscription expires. The license remains valid.

[Lajos Juhász 293]

You should backup the installation ISO for every Delphi  you use before you let the subscription expire. Also it could be problem to bump up the registration limit if you don't have an active subscription - a solution could be to install Delphi to a virtual machine.

[Sherlock 663]

1 hour ago, Lajos Juhász said:

a solution could be to install Delphi to a virtual machine.

This is always a very good idea, unless you are trying to develop something like hardware drivers.

[Lorenzo B 1]

In my experience, once installed, the license works forever, whether you renew your subscription or not.
However, the problem I had in the past, when I decided to not renew my subscription, was another.
In practice, having to reinstall Delphi "Seattle" to replace my PC, we are at the end of 2019, I was no longer allowed to install the subsequently released update, but I could only install the release 1.0 of that version.
When contacting Embarcadero I was told that this was the case, basically without an active subscription the updates after version 10.X.0 could not be installed, so, in this case, I would lose the possibility of installing update 1 (which I had instead been able to install on the old PC)!
This was a major problem for me as one of the external components I used explicitly required Delphi to be updated to the latest release of that version.
Now I don't know if things are still like this, but since then I always renew the subscription, even if I don't install many of the released versions, for example I still work with 10.4.2.

Edited February 14 by Lorenzo B