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Which of JohnG's complaints apply only to the home edition?
It's not clear to me yet what NI is offering now with this latest package but we do know from reading the license that is targeted towards people wanting to use the tool for their private use. For the full blown software, I have no subscription. I paid for a license when I decide to upgrade and that's it. If I were using it to make a living, this is what I would be running. They offer a maintenance contract if you need to stay current or require help but personally, I have no use for it.
If I lose the software, that's my ow fault for not keeping backups. I started using it regularly when 4.0 came out and have not ran into any of the problems they mention. That's well over 20 years now.
So far it sounds like there is not going to be any cost for this new package. However, I am concerned if some of what JohnG mentioned would not take effect with these tools. I don't have a crystal ball. If you asked me two years ago if NI was going to offer the tools free for the hobbyist, I would have said no way. But here we are....
If NI's goal is to try and build a new base of customers for LabView, I would not think they would go down this path just to cast it aside down the road. Then again we have seen the MBAs do a lot of things when it comes to running a business. So in this sense, I have to agree with JohnG that there is certainly a risk for the home user. For the businesses using the full blown tools, not so much. -
I would expect NI to support the new community edition the same ways they supported the home edition for 6 years. They might not update the community edition with the latest release of LabVIEW every years but at least I'm expecting the old version to still work years later. Pretty much like LabVIEW home 2014.
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I'm not bashing Labview. Where I work, there are people who know it extremely well, and scoffed at our group going with Python for our automated testing and instrument control. Our group, however, had several people who knew Python, and I found it easy enough to pick up (not a piece of cake, but not that hard, either). There is a huge Python community. It did what we needed, did it well, has proven relatively straightforward to maintain and update, and much of the knowledge developed has been transferable to completely different applications.
In my former job, MEs loved Labview. It's all they ever knew. It did what they needed.
For home use, of course you can use their free version. But I can use Python, or other software at home and at work. The advantage for me is that I can get better at a smaller set of tools. This is a big plus for me, because I don't really like programming that much and I don't consider myself very good at it. I just do it to get the job done.
Just to be clear, the list of things I gave is NOT Labview specific. But, all those things have happened to me, and I have become sensitized to them. In my last job, I became quite good at using Saber for simulation. Then it went through a lot of changes, almost went away, and then went from very expensive to super expensive. My company dropped to one license to support one engineer with one application that they could not do without, and anyone else had to transition to something else. I went with Orcad. When it became harder to find a free license, I switched to LTspice. Great for many years, until my current job, where we are moving in a direction that will most likely collide with their licensing terms. The next one I use will be open-source, although I can at least keep most of my Spice models.
I used to love MathCAD. Then PTC bought them. Their salespeople lied to our procurement and sources, all our individual licenses got yanked from underneath us, and then they broke much of the software. It was at this point that I consciously decided to favor open-source solutions whenever I thought it could do a reasonably good job.
This approach has not been without it's own problems. It is not always feasible, it can also lose support or development can cease, etc. But, on the few occasions where that happened, it was relatively easy to move my designs and data to another solution. We have occasionally paid a developer to fix or enhance something, and we have generally been happy. And, when you work for a company, you have hard numbers that you can claim for money saved, and this can be leverage to buy the equipment or commercial software that you need. Finance people love hard numbers...
All that being said, there are jobs where Labview proficiency is a requirement, so a free edition is a great way to learn. And, I firmly believe whatever you do in the privacy of your own home (or lab) is your own business
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Cheers,
John
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"...I became quite good at using Saber for simulation. "
You don't see that posted very often. It would be funny if we worked together at one time. -
Writing models in MAST - those were the days...
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Answering the OP. I think you saved me from a world of pain.
NI is liking dating a hot girl that comes with crazy exes and a love of hermes bags.
We spent something like $30k 12 years ago on a PXI chassis with LabView and TestStand to run an ATE.
Note: the following comments may be out of date.
- Bloated expensive software. Even installing a driver for a $300 NI card meant you had to install every driver for every card NI made with all sorts of nefarious hooks into your OS.
- TestStand was just awful. Slow, inflexible, lots of mouse clocks to do anything.
- LabView beyond anything simple became a spaghetti western, with the casualties being the new guy trying to understand what the old guy did.
- We had a problem with the high density crosspoint front connector which NI weren't interested in solving. I think to this date there is a piece of tape putting torque on the connector to make it work.