Free Trial is active?

[BouncySeal]

The Cakewalk website and the announcement on this forum state that Cakewalk Next is now free to use. However, upon installing it, I'm told that my free trial is active and I have 29 days left. Is the free trial required for access to the program as a whole, or does it just grant access to premium features. I assume it's the latter, but in that case why does the free trial start automatically, with zero warning, upon downloading/opening the application? I was planning to use it later as I will be busy for the next month or so, and even if I were able to use it now I would rather wait until I'm somewhat familiar with the core features before trying out the premium ones. I just wanted to set up the application for later - is there any way I can postpone the free trial period? Was there any indication whatsoever that this would happen that I somehow missed?