New developer licenses for NetWeaver on the horizon

With the announcement of Code Exchange at TechEd Vienna, we also mentioned in a by-sentence that there will be new developer licenses for NetWeaver available. Let me briefly explain the key changes and the benefits of the new licenses and why it will replace the test & evaluation licenses.

What are the changes and benefits?

First, the new license will allow individual developers to use the ABAP programming language and the NetWeaver Composition Environment offering free of charge. What you can do with it is to develop, test, evaluate and share your add-on prototypes on code exchange.

Until now the “trial” license allowed you to test and evaluate the software only. With the upcoming code exchange platform, we want to encourage developers to share their work with the community and do so by giving them the “license to code.”

Second, the license doesn’t expire anymore. Now it’s perfectly legal to use the license, keep your installation, settings and projects to continue working on your protoype add-ons – and help the community in the forums by answering their questions.

Third, the license also will grant you the right to consume adapter services (that wasn’t possible up to now) to build your add-ons.

Fourth, you will keep your IP on your code.

What can you not do?

What you cannot do with the new licenses is productive use of the add-ons and no commercialization.

What if this is still not enough for you?

If you should need more rights than this new license grants you – to commercialize and productively use your development, or if you need other components of the NetWeaver stack – then you are always free to get any of the other licenses. The subscription license or the partner license from Ecohub.

We’ll keep you posted with more details. For questions right now, feel free to contact me or post here.