Is the parent link field dependent on having a Portfolio license?

[Charles Parra]

My organization has been using Portfolio but we are planning to stop using it and will drop the license. We have a number of epics that are linked to Initiatives. Will eliminating the Portfolio license also remove the Initiative issue type and the parent link field? Trying to determine whether I will have to implement a different approach to linking epics to their parent initiatives.

[Pete Singleton]

Yes - the defined hierarchy requires Portfolio to be available.  Without the plugin, you can't have an additional hierarchy level above Epic.

You could still have an issue type called Initiative, and link to it using Linked Issues (using a parent/child link type).