CodeWeavers Licensing and Support Policy
This page contains information and answers to frequently asked questions about CrossOver and Licensing.
Satisfaction Guaranteed
Your skeptical friend was all like, “CrossOver does not support all Windows applications.” Fret not, intrepid explorer! For we offer a free 14-day trial. Kick the tires, take it for a test drive, and decide for yourself if CrossOver meets your needs. (Take that skeptical friend!)
Buyer’s remorse? Not on our watch. If you purchased CrossOver within the last 30 days, have NOT activated/registered it, and you aren’t feeling that CrossOver magic, we’ll cheerfully refund your money.
Jumped in with both feet, purchased, and activated CrossOver within the last 30 days? Experiencing issues getting your applications to work? We still have you covered. But before we’ll consider a possible refund, we need you to help us help you solve the problem. We aren’t trying to be difficult; we just stand behind our product! And our service, for that matter, so click here and we’ll help you chart a course to freedom.
Support and Upgrade Policy
- During the support period, CrossOver + and CrossOver Lifetime customers receive all product upgrades and releases at no additional charge. This includes point releases (bug fixes), major releases, and unsupported builds.
- CodeWeavers customers also qualify for free support via email during the support period.
- That’s not all! Customers have a perpetual license to use and redownload any version they were entitled to during their support period, even long after the support period ends.
- CrossOver is a per-user license. Install CrossOver on as many machines as you like, but only one person may use CrossOver per-license.
- We offer discounted rates for customers who wish to extend their support period, or snag a new version of CrossOver + after their original support period expires. This discount is available for up to 30 days after the support period expiration.
How To Upgrade
- CrossOver Mac: Launch CrossOver, go to the CrossOver menu, and pick "Check For Updates". If there is an update available, CrossOver will give you the option to "Install Update".
Note: If your support license is expired, it will not allow you to update.
- CrossOver Linux: You can also login to your account and go to My Downloads to redownload the last version of CrossOver you're able to unlock.
- To check if your CrossOver license is still active go to your Support Licenses. If your license has expired you can purchase a new one at our Store. You will then be able to download and unlock the latest version of CrossOver from My Downloads.
Educational Discounts
- CodeWeavers offers special discounts for students, teachers, and educational
institutions on some of our products.
- To sign up, contact our Sales Team
and state you would like to get an educational discount before your purchase.
Please let us know what educational institution you're from, and the nature of your affiliation with that institution.
We will provide you with an account that gives you access to our educational
pricing.
- Educational discounts are currently:
- 30% off for One Version, and One Year
- 20% off for Lifetime
- Note: We provide generous discounts to the educational community. However,
due to the need to keep our accounting as simple as possible, we cannot
provide educational discounts on purchases that have already been made!
In order to qualify for these great discounts, you must contact us
before you make your purchase. Fair's fair.
Truth in Advertising: The Real Dirt
Tangible things you will get now:
- The ability to easily install and run many Windows applications.
You'll be able
to start those Windows applications from your dock or whatever menu
you like best. Applications, notably games, will run at essentially
the same speed as they do on Windows. And all of this without having
to buy or run a copy of Windows itself.
- Kick-ass support
Paying customers can submit problems to
our elite Ninja support team.
As of September 2015, their average response time was 2.5 hours per email. Obviously,
some responses are a great deal faster, and some slower. But the bottom line is
that we respond to all of our customers as quickly as we can. So if you don't
hear back quickly, check your spam folder.
You can refer to our support page
for details on all of our support options.
The Catch:
- Not everything works.
The catch is that CrossOver doesn't run every Windows program,
and some programs that do run, run with flaws.
We have excellent resources to help you see whether or not
your application works in our
Compatibility Center,
and a lot of other tips and support options in our
support center.
Tangible things you will get in the future:
- Support and upgrades
During your one year support period, you will be able to download
all versions released and you will be able to obtain technical support.
Upon the expiration of that time period, all customers will still be able to
download the most current version of the software that they received
while under the support agreement, forever (or at least as long as
we can practically make that possible). See our Upgrade Policy for more
information on how to upgrade.
- Community resources
We're committed to providing community resources so that
our customers can help each other. The
Compatibility Center
is key to that - with tips and tricks, discussion forums,
and much more. We also continue to host the Wine website
so that you can always turn to the broader Wine community.
We also provide forums
to foster direct communication between our customers and so
that you can exchange tips and learn from the experience of each other.
Intangible benefits you will get:
-
You will be helping to provide a much needed source of income to
a Free Software company that has provided a large range of
valuable improvements to one of the most key Free Software
Projects - Wine. You can see a list of what we have done on our
Wine page.
CodeWeavers will use the revenue from the end user version
of CrossOver to continue its work on Wine as well
as to enhance and improve our products.
CrossOver and Microsoft
The interaction of CodeWeavers' CrossOver products with those of Microsoft raises legal issues
around what Windows software can be run under Wine. In order to help our customers
better understand these issues, CodeWeavers has compiled a list of commonly asked
questions and their answers.
Q.
Can Microsoft sue CodeWeavers or its customers for copyright infringement or
reverse engineering, either for Windows or its Windows applications such as Microsoft
Office?
A. No.
The underlying technology utilized by CodeWeavers to enable Windows software
to run under Linux is an open-source technology called
Wine.
Wine has been developed completely independently, with no reverse engineering and no access to
Microsoft source code. The Wine source tree, with a complete revision history since the inception
of the project, is freely available to the public, and demonstrates that Wine is strictly
separate from Microsoft's proprietary code base.
Q.
Can Microsoft prevent CodeWeavers' customers from running Microsoft applications
on Linux?
A. No.
Microsoft's end-user licenses do not preclude operating their applications under other operating
systems. Were Microsoft to attempt to prohibit such usage, by requiring that Microsoft products
be run only on the Windows OS, they would be in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The
Sherman Act precludes making the usage of a non-monopoly product dependent on the purchase of a
monopoly product. Microsoft has been convicted of monopolistic practices under the Sherman Act
regarding their operating systems. As a result, they cannot legally make the Windows OS a
prerequisite for running a Windows software application.
Q.
Isn't Wine a risky new technology?
A. No.
In fact, Wine has been in active use since 1993. Since then, it has been
adopted by many large companies and integrated into their products, including Borland®,
Google®, IBM® and Sun Microsystems® (now Oracle®). Wine is a stable, well-understood technology that is being
continuously refined and enhanced.
Q.
Can Microsoft change its Win32 application programming interface (API) and break Wine?
A.
Sure, if they also wanted to break every other application on the planet. There is a common misperception that Microsoft changes the Win32 API on a constant basis, making it difficult for Wine to "keep up". This isn't true at all, since changing the API would break Microsoft's existing codebase, as well as those of many other software developers. So long as other software vendors produce or support programs for multiple versions of Windows, Wine will work too.
Further Help
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