271–280 of 311 posts
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.
It's still updated regularly, and all upgrades are free.
(Total Commander is a dual-pane file manager for Windows)
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It is absolutely lying. The original owners could have put in a voluntary, irrevocable, liquidated damages clause that is sufficiently punitive that no subsequent owner of the company would think to violate it. As they intend to honor the “lifetime license” for a lifetime and totally do not intend to renege for that duration there is no harm in enforcing that clause with force of law.
You didn’t even consider the question I asked. Why are you making the assumption that sale of a lifetime license isn’t currently enforceable by law? The article only complained and didn’t attempt to challenge their license. Your idea only works if someone is willing to challenge the company. If the new owners of a company are choosing to break the contracts or the law, why would you expect another contract to help? T…
That companies find it inconvenient for their pocketbook and deal flow to actually bind themselves in a effective way to the terms of their promises to the legally unsophisticated public is ethically repugnant. If they do no want to do so then they can just not promise or imply such terms, nothing is forcing them to make promises that they have no intention to be bound by.
"Coming back to customers. Do you invest in extracting short term money from customers? Or do you invest in long term relations. In the case of ManyCam they could have sold me add-ons that feel like they are worth it. By honoring the lifetime license the likelihood of me buying from them increases. It is the same as from the detour. In the beginning it’s about getting traction, then about getting money. And then the…
If you want to give someone money based on whether they deserve it, rather than in a market transaction based on the value of the goods they are selling, I'm pretty sure there are better charities around than "pick the nearest produce farmer".
But in software, so often there's no significant cost to lifetime subscriptions. Then it's just bastardy to revoke them.
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> lifetime licenses are dishonest (e.g. company cannot work for free, so their funded is based on unlimited growth, which isn't realistic for most). I don’t really know what you mean by “dishonest”, that seems like a slightly hyperbolic word here. If someone pays for a lifetime license the company isn’t working for free nor necessarily assuming unlimited growth, they just have to understand and correctly price the av…
I'd say it's dishonest in the sense that a company knows the probabilities are such that they can't actually ever truly support a lifetime license, so it's a lie from the start. At the end of the day, companies usually go out of business or else sell themselves to another company within a certain number of years. And a new company (like in this case) may change their mind about lifetime licenses, because it's a total…
If the product can run standalone on the client's computer, make it a license for that specific major version, and sell the upgrade to the next major versions for a fraction of the price. Those who wants the latest features can buy the upgrade and sustain the business, and those who are happy with the current version can keep using their version without feeling wronged.
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> lifetime licenses are dishonest (e.g. company cannot work for free, so their funded is based on unlimited growth, which isn't realistic for most). I don’t really know what you mean by “dishonest”, that seems like a slightly hyperbolic word here. If someone pays for a lifetime license the company isn’t working for free nor necessarily assuming unlimited growth, they just have to understand and correctly price the av…
I'd say it's dishonest in the sense that a company knows the probabilities are such that they can't actually ever truly support a lifetime license, so it's a lie from the start. At the end of the day, companies usually go out of business or else sell themselves to another company within a certain number of years. And a new company (like in this case) may change their mind about lifetime licenses, because it's a total…
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Sorry, but you're wrong. This misconception is very common. https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What... See here in particular https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203511589...
From your first link: > If paying on a monthly basis, as soon as you pay for 12 consecutive months, you will receive this perpetual fallback license providing you with access to the exact product version for when your 12 consecutive months subscription started. You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for. (emphasis added) What did I get wrong?
>access to the exact product version for when your 12 consecutive months subscription started.
(my emphasis)
As for the rest of the quote from Jetbrains:
>You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for.
In a one year subscription, the only version you will have paid 12 consecutive months for is the version that existed at the beginning of the 12 months. If a new version was released with only three months left in your subscription. Then it's impossible to have "paid 12 consecutive months for" it when your subscription is up.
Here's a screenshot[0] I just took of my account. The subscription started about 6 weeks ago when 2022.3 was the latest version. Thus, as shown in the screenshot it's the version I have perpetual license to. Even though 2023.1 was just released two weeks ago (roughly three weeks into my subscription) [1].
It's all worded terribly (probably intentionally so) so I don't fault anyone for getting the wrong interpretation. The whole thing gives me a bad impression even I though I love JB otherwise.
[0] https://imgur.com/a/SSLPijk [1] https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/tag/webstorm-2023-1/
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From your first link: > If paying on a monthly basis, as soon as you pay for 12 consecutive months, you will receive this perpetual fallback license providing you with access to the exact product version for when your 12 consecutive months subscription started. You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for. (emphasis added) What did I get wrong?
From your quote: >access to the exact product version for when your 12 consecutive months subscription started . (my emphasis) As for the rest of the quote from Jetbrains: >You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for. In a one year subscription, the only version you will have paid 12 consecutive months for is the version that existed at the beginning of the 12…
At that point you get the most recent version you've paid twelve months for.
If you cancel a monthly subscription after paying three months you get nothing, because you haven't paid for any version for 13 months.
You paid for a yearly subscription. So you've paid for 12 months already.
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.
They switched to annual accounts in 2015 and have been encouraging people to move but I'm not convinced of the value-for-money if I do so.
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Perhaps a good case study here is/will be Affinity. They produce graphics software competing directly with Photoshop, Illustrator and InDesign, and their core differentiator is that they don't do subscriptions - you pay up front, and get a regular, perpetual license in return. Few months ago, they released version 2 of their software suite. There are some new features and a host of UI and performance improvements, bu…
I am a happy Affinity user myself. I just have version 1 for the simple fact, that version 2 doesn't run on any of my computers. My main is a MacPro 3,1 with Catalina. My wife, has a MacBook Pro M1. She brought version 2. New we have the problem, that version 1 cannot work with the files of version 2.
Oh yes, that surprised me recently. I have both installed on my machine, and some file associations in the OS still link to version 1. I didn't expect v1 to flat out refuse to work with a file saved from v2.