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There's only negative comments on the thread, but what most people missing here is software development takes resources. Heck, just keeping an online product al

There's only negative comments on the thread, but what most people missing here is software development takes resources. Heck, just keeping an online product alive costs money (check GCP/AWS pricing). A software engineer in the Bay Area costs $200k/year on an average. If you want to hire quality engineers, it takes a lot more. They're not blocking it behind a paywall. It's still free. I understand that for hobbyists, it can be expensive. But if you are using things beyond the free tier, that's more than just a hobby. And I know this is an unpopular opinion, but being a Software Engineer, I really hate it when anytime a software company tries to charge for things, it's unfair and it's price gouging. But people fail to acknowledge that it is the only industry where you can even pick things up as a hobby for free. Literally anything else you want to pick up as a hobby costs money upfront. If all of the 645,000 users were willing to put up with those upfront costs, they wouldn't have had the need to price their plans so high.

MayeulC 6y ago
I guess most hobbyist would be pretty content with 2006-era solidworks if it were readily available: look at how Eagle was used without updates for years, as a shareware. I expect that most of the new features cater to professionnals, except for basic maintenance and a few simple features. The workload necessary to match hobbyist expectations is nowhere near a single full-time dev. But these products are monstrously complicated for wat they are, in part due to the company looking for ways to extract value at every point it can (forcing cloud mechanisms: they cost money for sure, but are mostly used for locking customers in and as an excuse to require a permanent connection). And for every possible revenue stream, it seems... I'd say this is a good thing if it makes FLOSS alternatives a bit more attractive. Hobbyists are usually hard to switch to alternatives once they find something "good enough". In turn, they tend to produce lots of documentation, tutorials, and training material. Just look at the number of people you can ask for help with, say, plotting a graph in Microsoft Excel vs doing it in LaTeX.
jfim 6y ago
When reading through the comments, it's mentioned that one of the reasons for the license change is because of people abusing the free hobbyist license: > [...] as talked about in the announcement, we did not make these decisions lightly, but it is necessary in order for us to continue support Fusion 360 for Personal Use as a free offering, cut down on abuse of the license type, and continue to develop advanced capabilities. The issue of charging from the software is distinct from the issue of enforcing the requirement that the license is for non-commercial purposes. Even if they had a low cost hobbyist license with all the features unlocked, the people currently using the hobbyist license for commercial purposes would just use the inexpensive one as opposed to paying for the full commercial one. Autodesk could've taken the approach of sending sternly worded letters to commercial users using the hobbyist license, or even deactivating commercial users with the wrong license type, since their software is partly cloud-based and requires an Autodesk account and internet connection. Instead, they've taken the approach of changing the feature set, which is why some people are annoyed.
- GekkePrutser 6y ago
  I kinda see where they're coming from though. The account of times I've seen a business user carelessly closing the "please play fair" box of TeamViewer... And I'm not talking small businesses either.
blacklion 6y ago
Export of files in open format for exchange with other hobbyists is not "more than just a hobby". Drawings is not "more than just a hobby."
- darth_avocado 6y ago
  Fine. It's just a hobby. You paint as a hobby, you buy paint, canvass and brushes. You read as a hobby you buy books. You bike as a hobby you buy a bike. You use CAD as a hobby you pay for CAD. Not everything is cheap, some hobbies are expensive, others are not. Buying books is cheap, buying a bike is not. I'm tired of people talking about free software as their right. People who make the software also have families to feed.
  - reelstories 6y ago
    Then they should have charged for it from the very beginning. It's manipulative to use hobbyists as beta testers (while giving the impression of being benevolent and caring for the hobbyist and maker community) and then when the software is mature making it impossible for most hobbyists to financially buy into the software. This is not a one-time $500. This is a yearly or monthly subscription that is very expensive for most hobbyists who do not make money using the software. So while I agree that it doesn't need to be completely free, it does not make sense to charge a hobbyist the same amount as for the business user who's making money with the software.

MayeulC 6y ago

I guess most hobbyist would be pretty content with 2006-era solidworks if it were readily available: look at how Eagle was used without updates for years, as a shareware. I expect that most of the new features cater to professionnals, except for basic maintenance and a few simple features. The workload necessary to match hobbyist expectations is nowhere near a single full-time dev. But these products are monstrously complicated for wat they are, in part due to the company looking for ways to extract value at every point it can (forcing cloud mechanisms: they cost money for sure, but are mostly used for locking customers in and as an excuse to require a permanent connection). And for every possible revenue stream, it seems... I'd say this is a good thing if it makes FLOSS alternatives a bit more attractive. Hobbyists are usually hard to switch to alternatives once they find something "good enough". In turn, they tend to produce lots of documentation, tutorials, and training material. Just look at the number of people you can ask for help with, say, plotting a graph in Microsoft Excel vs doing it in LaTeX.

jfim 6y ago

When reading through the comments, it's mentioned that one of the reasons for the license change is because of people abusing the free hobbyist license: > [...] as talked about in the announcement, we did not make these decisions lightly, but it is necessary in order for us to continue support Fusion 360 for Personal Use as a free offering, cut down on abuse of the license type, and continue to develop advanced capabilities. The issue of charging from the software is distinct from the issue of enforcing the requirement that the license is for non-commercial purposes. Even if they had a low cost hobbyist license with all the features unlocked, the people currently using the hobbyist license for commercial purposes would just use the inexpensive one as opposed to paying for the full commercial one. Autodesk could've taken the approach of sending sternly worded letters to commercial users using the hobbyist license, or even deactivating commercial users with the wrong license type, since their software is partly cloud-based and requires an Autodesk account and internet connection. Instead, they've taken the approach of changing the feature set, which is why some people are annoyed.

GekkePrutser 6y ago
I kinda see where they're coming from though. The account of times I've seen a business user carelessly closing the "please play fair" box of TeamViewer... And I'm not talking small businesses either.

blacklion 6y ago

Export of files in open format for exchange with other hobbyists is not "more than just a hobby". Drawings is not "more than just a hobby."

darth_avocado 6y ago
Fine. It's just a hobby. You paint as a hobby, you buy paint, canvass and brushes. You read as a hobby you buy books. You bike as a hobby you buy a bike. You use CAD as a hobby you pay for CAD. Not everything is cheap, some hobbies are expensive, others are not. Buying books is cheap, buying a bike is not. I'm tired of people talking about free software as their right. People who make the software also have families to feed.
- reelstories 6y ago
  Then they should have charged for it from the very beginning. It's manipulative to use hobbyists as beta testers (while giving the impression of being benevolent and caring for the hobbyist and maker community) and then when the software is mature making it impossible for most hobbyists to financially buy into the software. This is not a one-time $500. This is a yearly or monthly subscription that is very expensive for most hobbyists who do not make money using the software. So while I agree that it doesn't need to be completely free, it does not make sense to charge a hobbyist the same amount as for the business user who's making money with the software.