3 ms·

> Unfortunately that is far from universal. We have several software products with permanent licences that had 4+ figure costs, and none of them gave any specif

by dpark 11y ago

> Unfortunately that is far from universal. We have several software products with permanent licences that had 4+ figure costs, and none of them gave any specific indication of support at all. Often you only get these things set out in writing with an expensive support contract on top of your original purchase. However, if you're spending literally thousands on a piece of software and that software proves to be fundamentally defective within a reasonable period, I think you should be (and in many cases, you probably legally are) entitled to fair compensation if the defect isn't fixed and any significant resulting damage made good. I can't imagine spending 4 figures on critical software and not getting a clear answer on how long the support life is. That sounds like a screwup on both sides of that transaction. But yes, if you buy a thousand-dollar piece of software, you are undoubtedly entitled to some reasonable support. A permanent license doesn't imply permanent support, but some support is reasonable. > Perhaps, but I'd argue that artificially nerfing the product so despite its permanent licence it can't actually be used after a certain period of time does constitute "malicious damage or major negligence". What "artifical nerfing" are you talking about? What perpetually-licensed software are you buying that is "nerfed" after a certain time period? > You've chosen an unfortunate example there. Safety recalls are pretty much an indefinite obligation in the auto industry, at least in my country. I have recent first-hand experience of this, and someone who apparently didn't ensure the appropriate remedial work was carried out on some vehicles and so left a potentially fatal design problem unfixed is about to get formally investigated by the relevant government department. No, I picked that example very intentionally. A safety recall in a vehicle is not done for minor bugs. It's not done for unexpected wear-and-tear. It's done for major safety issues only. A recall instituted, say, 10 years after the sale would be done only for something egregious, likely for something that would constitute gross negligence. > However, for issues that are clearly fundamental defects in the product, such as serious security vulnerabilities, privacy leaks, data corruption bugs... You want perpetual bug support. I can't agree here. Software is not sold under the pretense of being bug free. There will never be a time when a manufacturer can declare support for a product complete in this model. Is Microsoft obliged to keep around a stash of Altairs so it can fix bugs in BASIC? If not, then you must agree that there is some time frame after which support cannot reasonably be expected. It's just a question of how long that time frame is. > or complete inability to use the product because something like an activation server is no longer available, it seems reasonable to me that we should treat these closer to the way we handle safety recalls on cars. Want to turn off your activation server after a couple of years? No problem, but you're on the hook for either patching out the activation mechanism for all your customers or compensating them for the functionality they're about to lose after they already paid for it. This is a terrible decision on the part of the purchaser to buy a license to software that requires an external license server and no guaranteed support timeframe. Yes, this is crappy on the part of the software manufacturer, but it also shows a lack of foresight on the part of whoever agreed to this. You should have gotten a guaranteed service time or else the rights to run an internal activation server.

Silhouette 11y ago
Unfortunately, I can tell from your response that you've never actually experienced this. If you're a small business, and you're buying let's say some of the big name CAD software, you're easily into 4 figures per seat. You're also so small that a lot of the companies making that software won't even talk to you directly; you get to buy via a reseller or not at all. That reseller will offer you the standard licensing terms or you're welcome to shop elsewhere. You can ask about support, and if you're lucky you'll get an answer that is somewhat related to your original question, but I have never seen more than platitudes in response to even direct, explicit questions about some of the issues we're talking about. Any requests for actual support are also just directed to the reseller if you do manage to make contact with the actual developers, and you'll be subject to some of the strictest licence control and activation procedures in the industry. You aren't going to be individually negotiating your licensing and support terms with the developers. The developers aren't even going to talk to you at any point in the proceedings. And pretty much everyone making software in this league works the same way, so your "terrible decision" is to buy the software you need to do your job, as opposed to your only other choice, which is not to use software to do your job at all. A concrete example, perhaps familiar to more people: Adobe's Creative Suite had some pretty aggressive activation technology built into it in later versions before they went to Creative Cloud, and unsurprisingly quite a few businesses haven't migrated to their new rental model. If you have a permanent licence with, say, CS5, you're still as entitled to use it as you always were, and you can also use Adobe's tools to deactivate it on one PC and reactivate it afterwards if you need to reinstall your OS or upgrade to new hardware. But there are two stings in the tail: firstly, any new installation requires access to those servers to activate, and secondly, the initial releases were very buggy and some updates are needed to stabilise them. As of today, to the best of my knowledge, the activation server still works for installation, as long as Adobe's people haven't got wildly inaccurate information in their database, which from personal experience can certainly happen. However, once you've installed you get prompted to update but then told the updates aren't available when you try to do so. The update installation tool is, apparently, no longer supported. Of course, if you'd like to trade in your otherwise perfectly useful software, they'll be happy to have you on their new locked-in, rental plan instead. This is the kind of artificial nerfing I'm talking about. As a final point, just to be clear: I am not advocating for permanent, free of charge support under all circumstances. We haven't figured out how to reliably build software with no bugs yet, and it's unrealistic to aim for that. However, in most fields, if you pay a significant amount of money for something, you are legally entitled to get what you paid for or to receive compensations. The software industry collectively takes a lot of liberties with providing something that isn't even close to what the customer was actually paying for, and often tries to weasel out of meeting the same obligations anyone else would have to in terms of quality and fitness for purpose via legalese and funny licensing agreements, all the while making billions in revenues from customers who are getting substandard products. I don't think it's unreasonable to question whether the current balance of power is appropriate or whether some software developers could do a considerably better job of providing working software that does what their customers are paying for.

by dpark 11y ago

Silhouette 11y ago

Unfortunately, I can tell from your response that you've never actually experienced this. If you're a small business, and you're buying let's say some of the big name CAD software, you're easily into 4 figures per seat. You're also so small that a lot of the companies making that software won't even talk to you directly; you get to buy via a reseller or not at all. That reseller will offer you the standard licensing terms or you're welcome to shop elsewhere. You can ask about support, and if you're lucky you'll get an answer that is somewhat related to your original question, but I have never seen more than platitudes in response to even direct, explicit questions about some of the issues we're talking about. Any requests for actual support are also just directed to the reseller if you do manage to make contact with the actual developers, and you'll be subject to some of the strictest licence control and activation procedures in the industry. You aren't going to be individually negotiating your licensing and support terms with the developers. The developers aren't even going to talk to you at any point in the proceedings. And pretty much everyone making software in this league works the same way, so your "terrible decision" is to buy the software you need to do your job, as opposed to your only other choice, which is not to use software to do your job at all. A concrete example, perhaps familiar to more people: Adobe's Creative Suite had some pretty aggressive activation technology built into it in later versions before they went to Creative Cloud, and unsurprisingly quite a few businesses haven't migrated to their new rental model. If you have a permanent licence with, say, CS5, you're still as entitled to use it as you always were, and you can also use Adobe's tools to deactivate it on one PC and reactivate it afterwards if you need to reinstall your OS or upgrade to new hardware. But there are two stings in the tail: firstly, any new installation requires access to those servers to activate, and secondly, the initial releases were very buggy and some updates are needed to stabilise them. As of today, to the best of my knowledge, the activation server still works for installation, as long as Adobe's people haven't got wildly inaccurate information in their database, which from personal experience can certainly happen. However, once you've installed you get prompted to update but then told the updates aren't available when you try to do so. The update installation tool is, apparently, no longer supported. Of course, if you'd like to trade in your otherwise perfectly useful software, they'll be happy to have you on their new locked-in, rental plan instead. This is the kind of artificial nerfing I'm talking about. As a final point, just to be clear: I am not advocating for permanent, free of charge support under all circumstances. We haven't figured out how to reliably build software with no bugs yet, and it's unrealistic to aim for that. However, in most fields, if you pay a significant amount of money for something, you are legally entitled to get what you paid for or to receive compensations. The software industry collectively takes a lot of liberties with providing something that isn't even close to what the customer was actually paying for, and often tries to weasel out of meeting the same obligations anyone else would have to in terms of quality and fitness for purpose via legalese and funny licensing agreements, all the while making billions in revenues from customers who are getting substandard products. I don't think it's unreasonable to question whether the current balance of power is appropriate or whether some software developers could do a considerably better job of providing working software that does what their customers are paying for.