CF Upgrade - License questions

Vizzant, I don't work for Adobe so am only sharing my observations from experience. I have good news/bad news...wekk, lots of news to consider about this. :-? 

First, let's make sure we're all on the same page: by "n-2 to n", I presume you mean "from two releases ago to the current release", and so in thise case I assume you are asking (as many may) "will I be able to upgrade to CF2020 (when it comes out) at a discount, when I am for now running CF2016?". Is that right? 

(To be clear, there is no "upgrading of CF" itself. A new version can always installed alongside another, to help with migration. So I am assuming your question is about pricing and discounts.)

Second, before I try to answer that, note that whatever Adobe's past practices may have been, there have not yet been ANY announcements from Adobe about what to expect regarding CF2020, whether in terms of licensing, pricing, upgrade offers, edition differences (Stad vs Ent), and so on. So for now, all we can do is go on is indeed their past practices.

And to that point, I read you as saying that "previous versions of CF allowed" such an upgrade discount from "n-2", but that has NOT been the case. Neither CF2018 nor CF2016 offered a discounted upgrade from a release beyond the immediately preceding one. I'm not just saying this from memory.

Quoting first from the CF 2018 FAQ (https://helpx.adobe.com/coldfusion/standard/faq.html#Pricingeditionsandupgrading), it addresses this plainly (for those who are now NOT on CF2016):

• "I already have a license for an earlier version of ColdFusion. What are my upgrade options?"
  • "Special upgrade pricing is available to those customers who have a valid ColdFusion (2016 release) license. Customers running ColdFusion 11 or earlier are not eligible for upgrade pricing."
• "Am I eligible for upgrade pricing if I’m running a version earlier than ColdFusion (2016 release)?"
  • "Customers running ColdFusion 11 or earlier are not eligible for upgrade pricing."
     

This point was also made clear in an Adobe blog post from the time cf2018 was coming out: https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2018/05/upgrade-path-to-coldfusion-2018-release/

And that stance was not new to CF2018. The same sort of post was made regarding upgrades to CF2016 from anything earlier than Cf11, when cf2016 had come out: https://coldfusion.adobe.com/2017/04/non-availability-of-upgrade-pricing-from-coldfusion-10-to-coldfusion-2016-release/. (I tried to but couldn't find similar resources discussing whether CF11 had allowed discounted upgrades from CF9, etc.)

Again, that's the past stance. Something could well change. Cf2020 is looking to be different in many compelling ways, so we'll have to wait and see. 

Sorry if somehow I have misread you, and you weren't asking about the COST up upgrading, but as you can see from the blog posts and FAQs above, this question IS something that people HAVE asked about/wondered about in the past. I just wanted to put all this detail out there to help folks considering it, for now.

Finally, along the lines of all the above, I will share some GOOD news for those still on CF11, 10, or 9, there IS at least a compelling discount to consider. For a limited time, you can get a 25% discount on a FULL license of CF2018. That, too, has never been offered before that I can recall.  It's not AS good as the discounted upgrade price (from 2016 to 2018), but it's still better than paying full price to get your CF icensing current.

This discount I refer to now is not offered by Adobe directly but by a specific reseller of CF, the makers of FusionReactor (the company, Intergral), who have a site devoted to CF reselling called buy-adobe-software.com, or more simply buy-cf.com. Again, this is a limited time offer.

Hope all that's helpful.