vogon

the evil "Website Boy"

member of @staff, lapsed linguist and drummer, electronics hobbyist

zip's bf

no supervisor but ludd means the threads any good


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bluesky
if bluesky has a million haters I am one of them, if bluesky has one hater that's me, if bluesky has no haters then I am no more on the earth (more details: https://cohost.org/vogon/post/1845751-bonus-pure-speculati)
irl
seattle, WA

link to original tweet below the fold

  1. I hope at this point that everyone recognizes that "perpetual licensing with free updates" is a monetization plan that companies use only when they expect to be moving on to other products in a couple years, so they're not continuing to sink payroll into a product that's already been purchased by almost as many people as will ever purchase it

  2. I'm not saying you can't successfully negotiate a transition from perpetual licensing to subscription software when one of the big selling points among your userbase is "you don't have to subscribe to it!", but you definitely have to try harder than "well you need to buy a perpetual license, and also subscribe to an Update Pass to get access to the most recent major version (if you bought a perpetual license to the old version) and feature updates (if you bought a perpetual license to any version), and also the perpetual license doesn't come with any Update Pass time for free"


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in reply to @vogon's post:

I personally don't mind paying for new, fully-fledged products repeatedly. It's when subscription models get thrown around in places that I don't necessarily think are appropriate that I get iffy. From what I understand, I can opt to simply buy CSP "2" (as it were), then 3, and so on, but it still leaves a bad aftertaste in my mouth when weird things like the Update Pass exist at all.

Emphasis on fully-fledged, by the way: I hardly want to drop a bunch of money on a product that's a reskin of the old one with minor tweaks. I'm not saying that's the case here, just speaking generally.

At the end of the day it isn't as bad as Adobe (hopefully that it isn't a "yet") but I'd still probably look at other options whenever I get a new tablet.

I personally don't mind paying for new, fully-fledged products repeatedly.

yeah the more software licensing models get thrown around, the more I think The Ancients had the right thing going with "you pay once for a product at full price, then you buy future versions again at a substantial existing-customer discount"

ok my take on this whole situation was going to be "they should just do the model that jetbrains and vmware have where you get to keep the version that was current when you started your 1 year subscription, because that's a perfectly good model," but now i see that's literally exactly what they've done and they have just. completely botched the communication around it somehow

they desperately needed to drop timeframes and prices with this announcement. having read their announcement im left with so many questions. is the 2.0 perpetual license going to be another 10 years of value before 3.0 comes out? or does it become, essentially, a 200 dollar per year service? because if its the latter, they can go fuck themselves, but the former is 100% fine. maybe also dont mention the subscription model so prominently...