only 8.0.034 available for free ?!

[vincentboucher]

Hi,

The ifort 8.0.034 version seems to be available for free.
Is it the case for the latest (.046 or .052?)?
In general, the latest versions are not free?


Vincent

[TimP]

There are several previous posts relating to this subject, and it's difficult to guess what you might have in mind which hasn't already been covered. Certainly, it's time consuming to download the publicly posted version, open up your own account on premier.intel.com, and download another, so you could say it's not free.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

Let me take a stab at this.

If you sign up for the free version, you get an e-mail with a serial number and a licenseand a pointer to an FTP site that has, at the moment, 8.0.034. You are entitled to get the current version of the compiler - to do that, register the serial number with Premier Support and you can then download the current version (it may be a baseline version plus an additional patch.) There is no need to download the old version from the FTP site.

The non-commercial license does not allow downloads of newer compilers as they are released, but at least you get the one that is current at the time you get the license.

It is our intention in the future to update the compiler on the FTP site, used for non-commercial and evaluation copies, every few months. The idea is that it is not in anyone's best interest to deliver to such users an old compiler which presumably has had improvements made to it. Better still. we should make it clear in the e-mail you get how to obtain the current version.

[mbkennel]

A suggestion about policy.

I presume that some significant value of the non-commercial users to Intel is that some may submit bug reports and hence bugs get fixed before commercial buyers encounter them.

(I personally have probably had over a dozen verified problems submitted to Premier Support).

Given that, it makes the most sense to me that the non-commercial users always have the LATEST version, otherwise they will waste your time reporting already fixed bugs. In fact there should be no non-commercial support for any but the latest version for this reason.

[Steven_L_Intel1]

We have a significant problem with users, who are clearly commercial, signing up for the "non-commercial" compiler and not buying licenses. It would be even worse if we offered free, continuous updates to these users. In fact, there is some risk that the free non-commercial offering may disappear if we can't find other ways to resolve this. For now, we are going to try making clearer what uses are acceptable for the non-commercial edition.

We do make available the current compiler at the time of the request.