OK, no one thought the idea of a preemptive license re-up was a good idea (and we never get feedback from inmusic) so now I’m heading to a very off-the-grid session and wondering what I can do to make sure I don’t hit the wall in the middle of that. Is there some way to tell where I am in the sequence of getting “tapped?”
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I wish they’d implement some kind of meter in the LM that told you how many days to reauthorisation you had left, maybe I should add it to the BFD4 feature request list. 
I wonder if de-authorising and reauthorising your libraries in the LM might give you the 30 days you need?
Steve
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The current concept is this…
If you’re online, the LM ‘should’ reset your license expiration thingy (when it does this is still a mystery, on launch I guess?), and the current time for expiration is if you spent a full 90 days offline without ever connecting to the net.
So you should be good for 90 days after a quick on go on allowing BFD internet access.
@BFD_Drew Whats the deal with when BFD checks for authorisation atm? The silent check it does… What triggers that? Just booting it up and having internet access or can we force it to re-check in some way, ensuring we then have 90 days?
Knowing when we last had it do the online check would leave us knowing when we have 90 days from.
90 days tho. Not 30. Its now 90 days.
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My version of BFD3 was converted over to new licence scheme, was working ok, has the latest version of the licence manager, is connected to the internet, but has now stopped working with a message the licence server is unable to respond to the request I wished I had never changed over and its the worst thing that’s happened to BFD in the years I have been using it and is driving me away.
I don’t want to stir up drama but if Steinberg of all companies went from a 30 day license check to a ONE TIME ACTIVATION AND DONE license scheme due to customer complaints, with no calling home or online checks or anything, legit activated offline license… Steinberg (give it a minute to sink in)… I can’t help but start giving exceedingly less leeway to inMusic for what they’re doing with BFD. Seriously. Steinberg.
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I can only hope the online activation with constant 30/90 day checks, whatever time frame it is, gets such bad user feedback in general, that companies turn away from the option and it becomes a bad idea in boardrooms.
InMusic are currently killing this product it seems. So many users posting their love for BFD and still abandoning it is a terrible thing to see.
Its a very silly situation.
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I think you can just blow away all the authorizations in ~/Library/Application Support/com.inmusicbrands/softwareunlock, and it will force it to reauthorize, giving you the full 90 days. I believe that will probably work and get you 90 days off the grid. I’m not 100% sure, though, because I know that the refresh date is embedded in that crypto block, and isn’t based on mod or create time of the file.
But, if that crypto block is actually regenerated when the LM reaches out, and not simply downloaded, then it should reset your auth period.
Unfortunately, I can only try these theories out on average 4x per year, which doesn’t give me a whole lot of data to work with. Plus, nobody is paying me to do this, and I can only put so much time into it. It would be fantastic if BFD staff could just understand what the complaints and questions are about, respond to our issues, and give us some visible countdown timers so we users have some rational understanding of where we stand. But it doesn’t look like that that’s going to happen, either.
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Thank you kafka for your insights and almost down to the code level explanations.
I fully agree with your “It would be fantastic if BFD staff could just understand what the complaints and questions are about, respond to our issues, and give us some visible countdown timers so we users have some rational understanding of where we stand.” assertion.
However, I am holding a more positive stance about the end results of all this. Drew efforts to promote and keep this inMusic relaunch have been nothing sort of phenomenal, plus involved customers everywhere and beta testers here’s combined actions and claims, all contribute to the open possibilities that BDF finally evolves, leaving behind the shallow walls the attempted authorization route was heading us into.
///Ultimately it has shown the communal power and shared interests from all in, related audiences, users and actors participating now or potential. I do hope that a better agreed and satisfactory equilibrium will be reached. As the market, support, brand positioning,etc, etc situations stand, the sooner the better for all involved.