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You're right that I've not experienced this. Still, I feel like you also need to reconsider the situation you're describing. The small business in this story

by dpark 11y ago

You're right that I've not experienced this. Still, I feel like you also need to reconsider the situation you're describing. The small business in this story was told that they need to pay thousands of dollars for software that needs to call an external server to operate. Imagine if you bought a car that needed to call GM in order to keep running. Wouldn't you be obliged to confirm how long the server would be up? And wouldn't you otherwise share some of the blame for the inevitable eventuality when GM turned off the server? Yes, it's crappy and user-hostile to turn the server off, but that doesn't absolve the purchaser from all responsibility. As for the big name CAD software, I would assume you're referring to AutoCAD. They do offer offline activations according to their site. They also offer on-premises license servers. I don't even see an external server option except for the initial registration (which can be done manually). So maybe you're referring to some other CAD software? Regardless, I don't think your claim that "everyone making software in this league works the same way" can be accurate, given that I can buy seats directly from Autodesk.com and they explicitly state that a network connection is not required for continued use. (Though it looks like they are going subscription-only starting today) As for Adobe, that does sound frustrating. Was/is it not possible to download the updates and save them offline for later use? I do agree this is customer hostile, regardless. At the same time, I wonder how long they need to keep the update servers going. CS5 is nearly 6 years old. Certainly they should be able to continue to support their older products for longer than this. But it's not free for them to do so, assuming that the reason support ended is because they actually replaced the underlying update infrastructure. As an industry, we should really come to an agreement for how long software must be supported. If we think 10 years is reasonable, we should commit to that. If it's 5, then we should commit to that. In either case, we should make it clear to our customers what the support life is, because modern unsupported software is basically dead, even if you have a license (as the broken Adobe updater demonstrates). I feel like this is going to get resolved eventually, but whether by the courts or by the move to subscriptions, I'm not sure.

Silhouette 11y ago
Sorry, but I'm not going to get into any specifics about the CAD systems. I have seen first-hand (though fortunately as a third party) what happened when someone upset the wrong big name in that industry, and I have no interest in either spending the next part of my life defending a frivolous lawsuit supposedly necessary to protect their reputation nor in having licences tied to me revoked under blatantly abusive EULA terms. I will say that your assumption was wrong, though; it was not AutoCAD that I was referring to. As for the Adobe issue, as I see it the point is that the original product was known to be faulty, and a means of correcting the defect was already made. Given the cost and expected useful lifetime of the original software, and given the relatively small and presumably diminishing-over-time cost of maintaining an update server relative to that, I have no problem in this sort of case with literally requiring perpetual availability of the existing updates for as long as the developer is around and it is commercially viable to do so. I don't think this is a universally appropriate solution, but for the kind of software we're talking about that makes many millions or billions in revenues, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. If the software developer doesn't like it, they are free not to incorporate artificially limited technology in their product in the first place, for example by distributing updates in a freely downloadable form instead of via a proprietary system with limited availability. Incidentally, if a software product really has no remaining value after just 6 years, the developers are welcome to relinquish the relevant copyright as well since clearly it also has no remaining value at that point, and then anyone else who is willing and able to solve any future problems with that software can lawfully do so. Perhaps the law should no longer give the developers a choice, by including a specific exemption to copyright for actions reasonably necessary to allow the continued effective operation of the software according to the original deal. In this case, that might extend up to and including installing a cracked pirate version instead, provided that the use would otherwise have been lawful. As you say, I suspect in the near future a lot of these big software developers are going to try to bypass these issues entirely by moving everyone onto subscription models anyway. I don't expect that strategy to remain a viable exclusive proposition in the longer term, though, because it's too hostile to users. In most cases, it will naturally create opportunities for less hostile alternatives in the market, as we're already seeing with the increasing competition faced by Adobe Creative Cloud from smaller, cheaper, but still professional-quality and well-regarded alternatives in various niches.

by dpark 11y ago

Silhouette 11y ago

Sorry, but I'm not going to get into any specifics about the CAD systems. I have seen first-hand (though fortunately as a third party) what happened when someone upset the wrong big name in that industry, and I have no interest in either spending the next part of my life defending a frivolous lawsuit supposedly necessary to protect their reputation nor in having licences tied to me revoked under blatantly abusive EULA terms. I will say that your assumption was wrong, though; it was not AutoCAD that I was referring to. As for the Adobe issue, as I see it the point is that the original product was known to be faulty, and a means of correcting the defect was already made. Given the cost and expected useful lifetime of the original software, and given the relatively small and presumably diminishing-over-time cost of maintaining an update server relative to that, I have no problem in this sort of case with literally requiring perpetual availability of the existing updates for as long as the developer is around and it is commercially viable to do so. I don't think this is a universally appropriate solution, but for the kind of software we're talking about that makes many millions or billions in revenues, it doesn't seem at all unreasonable to me. If the software developer doesn't like it, they are free not to incorporate artificially limited technology in their product in the first place, for example by distributing updates in a freely downloadable form instead of via a proprietary system with limited availability. Incidentally, if a software product really has no remaining value after just 6 years, the developers are welcome to relinquish the relevant copyright as well since clearly it also has no remaining value at that point, and then anyone else who is willing and able to solve any future problems with that software can lawfully do so. Perhaps the law should no longer give the developers a choice, by including a specific exemption to copyright for actions reasonably necessary to allow the continued effective operation of the software according to the original deal. In this case, that might extend up to and including installing a cracked pirate version instead, provided that the use would otherwise have been lawful. As you say, I suspect in the near future a lot of these big software developers are going to try to bypass these issues entirely by moving everyone onto subscription models anyway. I don't expect that strategy to remain a viable exclusive proposition in the longer term, though, because it's too hostile to users. In most cases, it will naturally create opportunities for less hostile alternatives in the market, as we're already seeing with the increasing competition faced by Adobe Creative Cloud from smaller, cheaper, but still professional-quality and well-regarded alternatives in various niches.