The Dirty Little Secret About Esri’s EDN at Version 10



I’m sure all Esri EDN users are running in to the same problems I am with the product, licensing. At WeoGeo, I’m testing our new toolbar on many platforms and OS versions so that we know it works with ArcGIS 10. The problem is that the ArcView license included in EDN only allows you to install ArcView twice. Every time I need to switch from one VM to the other, I’ve got to go through this crazy unregister/register process just to use ArcMap. And you’d better believe I’m headed to a point where I won’t be able to install ArcView anymore because I’ve hit the install ceiling (which I’ve heard is at 999 installs).

So don’t assume that an EDN is licensed per developer because it sure isn’t. Makes you question the value of the product where licensing keeps kicking you in the shins. I have no will to fire up ArcGIS 10 anymore because of Esri licensing mess. This wasn’t a problem at 9 and I can only assume licensing was tightened at 10 so we’d all pay up. But EDN is supposed to be licensed for developers, not production and you’d think Esri would encourage me to make sure my toolbar runs on 32/64 bit XP/Vista/7. Time to cue the Price is Right losing horn…

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