User Licenses for Modeling Software from RP Photonics

Licenses for the commercial use, e.g. by companies developing and producing lasers, can be purchased from RP Photonics. The license fee normally includes 8 hours of technical support (except for RP Fiber Calculator PRO).

Universities and other educational institutions can obtain licenses for non-commercial use at substantially reduced prices, if the software use is only for public research (i.e., publicly funded research the results of which are generally published) and education (e.g. in specialized classes on laser technology or fiber optics). However, it is not permitted to use such licenses for work in collaboration with a partner pursuing commercial goals, except if this partner has a commercial license for that software himself.

The license fee includes 4 support hours (except for RP Fiber Calculator PRO).

Normally, RP Photonics is selling permanent (temporally unlimited) licenses; you pay a license fee once and can use the software forever. However, since 2015 we are also offering temporally limited licenses. Here, the rules are as follows:

• The license duration can be any number of months. The license fee per month is 5% of that for a permanent license.
• The included support time is 0.5 h per month for commercial licenses and 0.25 h per month for non-commercial licenses. (Exception: for RP Fiber Calculator PRO, the support time is only half that amount.) Of course, you can use up the full support time already within the first month if you order for several months. Besides, it is always possible to buy additional support hours.
• If you decide to switch over to a permanent license within the first three months of the license period, the already paid amount will be fully deducted from the fee for the permanent license. If you decide for that only later on, two thirds of the already paid amount will be deducted.

If you need to thoroughly test our software before fully committing to it, just buy a license for one or two months. We are confident that you will be fully convinced and then decide for a permanent license, not losing any money for the testing period.

Contact us to inquire about license prices and the detailed license conditions.

Software from RP Photonics is constantly maintained: details are improved, bugs are fixed, etc. Owners of user licenses are entitled to free updates of the version they purchased – even years after the purchase. Note that other software suppliers are regularly charging high maintenance fees – we don't.

If a major new version comes out, which is more expensive than the earlier one, existing customers obtain a fair upgrade offer. An upgrade costs only little more than the difference of the new and old license price.

If a customer rejects an upgrade offer, e.g. because the new features are not needed, he or she is still entitled to free updates. These then look like the new version: The new features are described in the documentation, and there may be additional elements in the user interface, only that the code for the new features is not there.

Customers are regularly informed about possible upgrades and updates, as well as on other interesting things, if they get the newsletter which is called the RP Photonics Software news.

When using software for complex tasks, a competent and helpful technical support is essential. RP Photonics takes this very serious. See the page on software support for details.

We are sometimes asked about free demo versions of our software products, but we don't offer that. Of course, we understand well that before deciding for a purchase you need to know well what the product can do for you. Therefore, we have created various options:

• There are comprehensive descriptions on our website. That includes various videos and case studies; see e.g. the latter for RP Fiber Power.
• We are happy to answer in detail your technical questions (e.g. via E-Mail or via the form for software inquiries).
• For those who are seriously interested, we also offer online demos, were you get access to our screen via Internet while we talk.
• If you really need to test the software yourself, you can purchase a temporary license (see above) at a quite moderate price.

You do not necessarily have to posses a license of this software in order to profit from it. Instead, you may obtain consultancy from Dr. Paschotta. He can actually do more for you than any software could: analyze your data, do some sanity checks, give advice for optimized designs, explain technical limitations, alternative technical approaches, etc. And of course it takes you less time to get your results.

Of course, you may later on decide to purchase a software license. You will then obtain the script files worked out by RP Photonics for your project, so that you can further refine the model or consider cases with modified parameters.