Has any company’s “lifetime” license lasted more than, say 5 years? 10? (I mean for software that is updated or requires a server of course). I like the jetbrains model well enough.
Image-Line's FL Studio has been going strong for decades
ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
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Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#22They are usually called "Lifetime for now, but there is no law that forbids us from changing the terms later down the line" license, but it's shortened to just Lifetime license for convenience.
Don't trust any lifetime agreement. And conversely, anyone that sells lifetime licenses to me sounds really naive and that they have no idea what they're doing. It's not a sign of a mature business.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#23Isn't this just breach of contract, plain and simple? Change of ownership should have little to do with it.
There is probably some legal way that the transferred company can wrangle itself out of such obligations. Such as, for instance, that the company is actually a wholly different corporate entity which is just using the assets and branding of the original.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#24I treat all lifetime guarantees and lifetime licenses the way I treat employee stock options, as predicated on the company continuing to perform well. And my priors for that assumption lead me to be fairly skeptical and build in a certain amount of risk. Then I weigh that risk against the potential upside and the cost to buy.
This seems like an exercise a CTO should have down pat.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#25Has any company’s “lifetime” license lasted more than, say 5 years? 10? (I mean for software that is updated or requires a server of course). I like the jetbrains model well enough.
One of my original Joyent lifetime licenses is still active. I had a shared hosting lifetime plan and one of their container services as a lifetime plan, both of those are long gone. But they sold off Strongspace to Expandrive and that's still going, somehow. It's only 100gb, so, not exactly huge amounts of storage these days, but it's all still accessible, though the service doesn't seem to have been updated since I originally bought it either lol.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#26Isn't this just breach of contract, plain and simple? Change of ownership should have little to do with it.
Not a lawyer, not a customer, not read the ToS.
But the wording allows for many options.
A lifetime license, to a specific version. With no updates. A lifetime license for upgrades.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#27The part that blows my mind is they found someone willing to click send on a "life-time is now two years" mail.
I personally couldn't stomach that & I'm definitely no paragon of virtue.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#28Has any company’s “lifetime” license lasted more than, say 5 years? 10? (I mean for software that is updated or requires a server of course). I like the jetbrains model well enough.
Edomondo did provide a workaround for existing customers when they changed tp subscription, - but was later shut down by the new owners.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#29The problem with such betrayal is, that companies names are all but smoke and mirrors by now. The reputational damage should be tracking with the leading employees. One customer betrayal travels along with the manager who caused it, to whatever company s/he touches. No matter how the company is named, no matter how much branding, one linked in api roll call later you know what you got.
This, forcing exposure of personal skin in the corporate game, would fix an untold number of issues.
Re: ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
#30Has any company’s “lifetime” license lasted more than, say 5 years? 10? (I mean for software that is updated or requires a server of course). I like the jetbrains model well enough.
I think the ones that give a lifetime license to a freemium like version of their app often do better than those who give lifetime to the overall.
But if I pay a few bucks and get 2-3 years of use I'm probably going to be pretty happy. If I spend tons of bucks then I'll probably be less than happy.