ESET breaching law based on their own EULA.

[Glitch 3]

Not sure where to post this but ESET is breaching their EULA and thus is liable for support.

Reason : ESET is not clear with their EOL policy. Basically when a business license is sold the moment that a license is sold the EOL policy that is used is valid.  To explain:

We received a support case in which an Endpoint V8 indicates that it will no longer receive support at the end of this year. This message was/cannot be clicked away and is also very special. ESET states according to their EOL statement on their page that an old version is supported +3 years after the release of a new version, but something suddenly goes wrong, long live the wayback machine.
V9 launched in November 2021
With that, version 8 should be supported until November 2024!
If we now suddenly look at the website, V8 is supported until the end of this year for limited support, which is not correct.  

This has to do with that ESET says their latest major version is supported for 3 years after a major Vx release however as it is no known on the moment in time if a version is the last major version it would mean that the version available at the said time a customer is purchasing the product that is the latest version which will receive that support of 3 years. 

Currently ESET is changing the rules of the game because nobody knows what will be the last version before a new major release is done so I as as a customer today look at the site and will see version 9.1 is supported for 3 years after V10 release however if version 9.2 is released it will suddenly drop from 3 to 1 year which by law is not allowed.  How to deal with this?   

[Marcos 5,069]

Thank you for your valuable feedback. We realize that the current EOL policy description may not be clear to end users who expect to know for how long a particular version will continue to receive full and limited support at a specific moment in time. We've been working hard on improving the communication towards our users on this matter. Some minor improvements will be done this year with a bigger overhaul to come in 23H1 which should make the EOL policy perfectly clear.

Quote

This has to do with that ESET says their latest major version is supported for 3 years after a major Vx release ...

Let's say you purchased ESET on January 2021. Endpoint v8 was released on December 9, 2020. At this point you'd get full support until v9.0 is released (plus one year) which happens approximately in June (we plan to better communicate the roadmap for new users). According to https://support-eol.eset.com/en/policy_business/support_policy_cat_a.html:
Full Support is granted to the latest release of the latest major version and the latest release of the earlier major generation (for only one year after the release of a new product generation).

Version 8.1 was released on June 15, 2021 and v9.0 on November 30, 2021. From the above statement we infer that full support for the major version 8.1 would last until November 30, 2022, with limited support to end 2 years after the release of v9.0, ie. on November 30, 2024:

 

[Marcos 5,069]

To explain more about the support for version 8 from the point of view of the EOL policy:

The EOL policy for products in category A states that "Full Support is granted to the latest release of the latest major version and the latest release of the earlier major generation (for only one year after the release of a new product generation)."

When verison 9.0 was released, full support end date for version 8.1, as the latest release of the earlier major generation, was set to one year from this release (November 2022) and the end of limited support was set to three years from this release (November 2024).

 

EOL policy also states: "Limited Support is available for the earlier releases of the latest major product version (one additional year after the next generation comes out) and the latest release of the previous product generation (two additional years after the one year of Full Support has expired)."

 

Version 8.0, as the earlier release of the latest major product version, transitioned to limited support at the time of version 8.1 release, ad its limited support end date was set when version 9.0 came out to one year from version 9.0 release (November 2022).

 

Therefore, version 8 is technically supported until November 2024 in general, as version 8.1 is in limited support until this date. However, what was possibly misleading for you and what we are sorry for is that by the time of your purchase, the EOL policy for version 8.0 showed "Limited Support Until version 9 + 3 years". This was true for version 8 in general, but not exactly for 8.0 after version 8.1 was released. As already mentioned, we are working on improving the accuracy of this communication and setting the rules more transparently.

[Glitch 3]

Hi Marcos, 

I understand but where the problem "Full Support is granted to the latest release of the latest major version and the latest release of the earlier major generation (for only one year after the release of a new product generation)."

A end user does not know which version will be the latest major within a generation it can be 8.1.2001 for example or 8.1.3001 etc. As this is unclear the user has to use basic business principal that the version he purchases at that moment is the latest version and thus has the long support period. We have a few screenshots that  version 8.0.2028.0 was Limited support until version 9 + 3 years.  however when version 9 was released it was suddenly changed to end of november this year. Version 9 was released in November of 2021 meaning that the version according to the own EOL should be supported till late 2024 and not EOL it 2 years sooner. Also when buying a product and thus the support etc the EOL at purchase is valid so that can't be changed. It can only be changed when the user would have known that version 8.1.XXX would be the latest major version. 

[Glitch 3]

Any update on this? 

[Marcos 5,069]

According to the information I have, you've been in touch with the Dutch distributor on this matter who consulted it with the head of our technology development.

[TomasP 316]

30 minutes ago, Glitch said:

Any update on this? 

Hello, the "until version 9 + 3 years" applies to version 8 as a whole (8.0, 8.1, etc...), meaning the latest build of version 8 will be supported for that long.

Given there was no version 8.1 at that time, the timeframe was listed with the latest available version (8.0). When 8.1 was released, it "inherited" the "until version 9 + 3 years"  support window.

Technically, it should have said just 8, apologies for that, I can see how that could have been confusing.

It needs to be pointed out, though, that according to https://support-eol.eset.com/en/policy_business/versioning_rules.html, differences between versions 8.0 and 8.1 only consist of bug fixes and minor changes, so a customer may freely and safely upgrade to the latest build within the major version 8 (for which the "until version 9 + 3 years" policy applies) without any significant functionality changes.

With all this being said, we do understand this may not be absolutely clear and easy to understand and, as Marcos already said, a new EOL policy is being prepared, under which every build will have a clearly defined support timeframe already at the time of release.