HELP how to get license for CF9

[jdmrye]

please help i have an old server that updated it to CF9 previouslyt installed was CF8 but the person who installed the CF8 was dead already so I cant revert back to CF8. CF9 is now running at developer mode with a limit of 2 external ip and a water mark everytime i generate an PDF file. please help

[Charlie Arehart]

You have 3 choices:

- find a cf9 license offered online for sale from a former user

- update instead to a supported cf version, cf2016 or cf2018 (and buy a license from Adobe, a reseller, or a 3rd party) 

- move to Lucee, the 3rd party open source cfml engine 

As for how hard it would be for you to move to Lucee or to cf2016 or 2018, no one can readily say. Some find it takes only hours, some days or weeks, some months. There are many community  discussion resources which one can seek help from others. Some folks give up thinking it's impossible or too difficult, when someone with experience (like myself) might help greatly ease that migration effort. 

Here's a question in closing: why did you or anyone update it to cf9, when that has stopped being supported several years ago? Same with cf 10 and 11,as again the only currently supported cf versions are cf2016 and 2018.

(And to be clear, Adobe only offers installers for cf2018, and only sells licenses for that, not for cf2016. And when cf2020 comes out, the same will be true of cf2018. Finally, note that cf2016 will be supported/updated into 2021, and cf2018 to 2023.) 

[jdmrye]

hello,

Charlie_Arehart thank you for your wisdom.

if I moved my CF9 to Lucee. does it still support my CF8 codes, directories, etc?

[Charlie Arehart]

Well yes. But again, see the paragraph after my bullets above, which anticipated your question. 

[BKBK]

If your main problem is with the PDF watermark, then use the free tool wkhtmltopdf

I gave an example of wkhtmltopdf usage in a previous forum post: https://community.adobe.com/t5/coldfusion/cfdocument-processing-speedtest-results-and-inquiry/m-p/10...

[jdmrye]

thank you for your reply BKBK much appreciated.

[pete_freitag]

Just want to add, since it was not mentioned that CF9 has reached end of life many years ago. That means it presumably has security holes that are not patched, and will never receive any future security update. You really should not be using CF9 in production anymore (CF2016 & CF2018 are still supported currently).

[BKBK]

Hi pete_freitag,

jdmrye mentioned running CF9 Developer Edition, later following Charlie_Arehart's advice and moving to Lucee. In any case, your advice is invaluable to any CF9 developer who happens to arrive here.  

[Charlie Arehart]

With due respect to both of you:

Pete, I had indeed mentioned that in my first reply here.

And bkbk, I proposed 3 solutions, of which the option of moving to Lucee was only one. 🙂 Not saying that to criticize but merely for the sake of any other readers who might not read/read entirely my first reply.