Personal and Professional Edition Compatibility

I'm very happy with the announcements from yesterday. Hooray! That said, there are a few changes I've had trouble nailing down- mainly, that Personal and Pro edition content can't intermingle. If anyone has answers to these questions, let's flesh this out in a more visible way:

1. Can scenes, prefabs, project settings, unity-generated assets (materials), etc. - any project files - made in one version of Unity even be imported/opened in the other?
2. Does this also apply to editor scripts?
3. Does this apply to non-Unity assets? Will Unity Personal attach metadata to an fbx that's been imported into Personal for previewing purposes?
4. How about Asset Packages? Can I bundle some assets in Pro and open them in Personal? Personal -> Pro?
5. Does this also apply to Asset Store content?
6. Can a Unity 4 Pro project be upgraded and opened inside of Unity 5 Personal?

- - -

I am concerned about some of these. I support this restriction to prevent large, in-house teams from purchasing a single Pro license for publishing, while everyone else uses Personal (they've named it "Personal" edition for a reason).

My concern is that it makes two other, common scenarios difficult/impossible:

• A individual developer installing the free version of Unity on a third computer for use on his own project. This is a somewhat-common scenario for some devs: your two Pro license keys spread across a mac laptop and a desktop PC, then a free version of Unity installed on a Bootcamp partifion of the macbook, so you can test PC compatibility while on the road.
• An individual developer or small team (all with Pro licenses) hiring a freelance contractor. Now they can only hire self-employed contractors with $1500 software. This could have the unintended consequence of punishing small studios, who have no control over that contracting pool.

- - -

Again- not complaining. I'm hoping to answer some of these questions and get other folks' thoughts.

 

Technically speaking, Pro and Personal are exactly the same binary. Only the EULA changes. You'll have to find the threads on that subject though, as there are already a few.

I've opened many projects from 4 in 5, and it's been fine - so far. But keep backups, just in case you have to manually cobble together a new version of the project after some freak import accident

People have also reported downgrading from Pro to Personal the past day, and had no problems using their existing projects.

 

Over the past day I could have sworn I read something official saying the version would be saved in asset meta files, enforcing (or at least detecting) single-edition use. ...having trouble nailing it down this morning, but I'll be on the lookout.

Still, EULA changes are enough, of course.

 

Ah, here it is, from the EULA:

"You may not combine or integrate Licensee Content that you develop with Unity Personal simultaneously with any Licensee Content that you develop with Unity Pro or any Unity Pro Add-On Products. Licensee Content developed with Unity Personal will be tagged with an identifier that is used to enforce this restriction."

Last sentence makes it ambiguous whether or not there will be a technical restriction. Honestly though, it sounds more like this is to detect EULA breaches in products after they're published.

 

It would be strange if you couldn't continue using your own projects after switching licence either way, because you find yourself still not making $100k on it, or because you suddenly are making $100k.

 

Agreed, but that (not being able to upgrade from 4 Pro to 5 Personal) does seem to be the official policy. I...bet we haven't heard the last clarification on that.

 

They clarified it in another thread just now. Solo developer = knock yourself out porting the project from Pro to Professional if you downgrade (they might look funny at ya if you keep going back and forth though), as long as you're under the $100k limit. Teams of any size need to be on the same licence.

 

That's good to hear Orb. Otherwise they'd be punishing people who purchased 4 Pro, by not letting them use 5 Personal.

 

Great! Could we link to that thread for posterity? Also, any further clarification on contractors (though I guess that pretty much says they also need Pro)?

 

I think all the questions about it will prompt a sticky official post soon. I can't find it now, as it's buried inside a thread :/

 

You can "downgrade" a Unity 4 Pro project to Unity 5 Personal. Official Post. The EULA would prevent you from then moving that Unity 5 Personal project back and forth between there and Unity 4 Pro since you cannot mix the Pro and Personal on a project. (Though you can always upgrade to Unity 5 Pro later and bring in your Unity 5 Personal project, such as when your gross exceeds $100K.)


The Unity EULA specifically says that you can buy assets from someone and use them no matter which version of Unity 5 you or they are using. The Asset Store wouldn't work otherwise, and it would make life hell for freelancers.

(b) any user of the Software may use content licensed from third parties regardless of the version of the Software that was used to develop such third party content.

 

This was refuted by Aurore

They're looking into fixing this though.

 

Yep. They un-officialed the official response I quoted and replaced it with the original official response that what I had quoted officially replaced for a time.

Or something. I think I need some aspirin now.

I believe the final answer is, "Wait a few days until the Unity lawyers give an really official-official response."

 

Here's the update

 

So, they re-officialed the .........

Never mind. I'm going to go read Unity docs now so I can figure out what all these cool new features do.

 

Well.. I am gonna have to violate the EULA. I switched a clients project to U5 for the new lighting and the PhysX has some strange things happening. The Rigidbody BoxCollider vehicles go through the MeshCollider walls. Checking Convex doesn't help and it made the green collider in the scene view twice as long or more than the roadway piece. If they collide with other RigidBody BoxColliders vehicles the other vehicle disappears in a pop for isKinematic and if not Kinematic they get cram me through the BoxCollider roadway. Back to 4.6.2. I have already been paid in full and spent a whole day adding things to the newer version which I will have to do all over tomorrow. Thankfully this is one of the most understanding clients I had in a loooonnnng time. I expected to have to do a little retuning but not this. I will upgrade from 4.x Pro to 5.x Pro once I know this BS is worked out.