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  • Author Author: dougw
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Which CAD Licensing Model Is Preferred?

There is a big debate occuring now due to changes to the Eagle CAD licensing policies.

I am hearing:

  1. the old Eagle licence policies are more attractive than the new policies
  2. low cost crippled versions are not very attractive as they ultimately result in paying full price or wasting the learning curve investment
  3. there are limits to what makers are willing to put  up with, whether it is performance, cost or learning investment, but they are willing to put up with a certain amount of it when necessary
  4. products that push these limits will alienate some makers and not enjoy wide-spread acceptance

Given that manufacturers want to generate a continuous revenue stream from each product, what is the most acceptable method of extracting cash from makers?

  1. subscription (obvious continuous revenue)
  2. pay-per-view (obvious continuous revenue)
  3. advertising (Google & cloud model)
  4. pay-per-product (not continuous, but users will by new product when new products provide better performance)
  5. perpetual license with maintenance fees (normal CAD model)
  6. other

If any of these is a low enough cost it will gain users, but assuming they are all the same cost, which is preferred?

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  • Hi Doug,

     

    Maybe there are things/guidelines that have been learnt by us and it may be worth listing the ones we can think of, from personal experience or from what we've heard. These are not necessarily for EAGLE, but are just general ideas. I'm not an expert, and it is just stuff I believe, so to be taken with a pinch of salt.. and others will have different ideas/guidelines.

     

    1. A software lock is different from a license; a license is a bit of paper (or an agreement in some other form), and can be enforced through a locking mechanism, or can be met through trust that the parties involved will cease to use a product if their paper license expires

    2. Generally the important customers (the ones that would have paid for software, and/or the ones willing to pay for support) will not abuse a license intentionally

    3. Sometimes it is better not to have a locking mechanism if it means there is a risk that legitimate customers could end up in a situation where their software ceases to function through no fault of their own.

    4. Sometimes it is better to take the hit that some people will abuse a license, in order not to unduly inconvenience legitimate users from jumping through hoops to run their software. As an example, I hate that Tesco (supermarket) makes me waste a few minutes each week to re-scan my receipt to avoid a parking fine. I would rather they just accept the fact that some people will park but not shop at the supermarket. So now I make an effort to shop elsewhere, and they probably lose $5k per year as a result of my action (and maybe they gain $5k from another customer but that's not my concern).

    5. Generally for a subscription model you can encourage people to want to move to this, by showing them a cost reduction (e.g. over time) and/or an increase in functionality/productivity that they will get for no additional cost (e.g. over time), and/or extra things that enable the overall cost to be cheaper than the sum of the individual things (e.g. phone support).

    6. The increase in productivity/functionality can't entirely be a promise of upcoming features, some of it has to be features that you're bundling into the subscription at the time of the purchase of the subscription

    7. No-one likes restrictions, but people are willing to pay to enable features or performance, but only within reasonable rules per feature/performance item. For instance, having restrictions on board size and number of pins and number of layers could be considered 2 dimensions too many. For each feature that is being enabled, it can be better to control it in just one dimension. As an example, if you want to unlock PCB project size, then this could be based on pins, board size, or number of layers, but not all three.

    8. There will always be some customers who will want to milk the product for as long as possible (e.g. continuing to use versions written say five years ago) despite that release long being retired. But even those customers are (at least mentally if not formally) putting a price on the product, they are just stretching it over a long period of years (this I suspect is the case for many EAGLE users). Even those users won't necessarily be subscription model averse, if the pricing reflects that they too can benefit over the period of time they would ordinarily milk the product, which can be naturally reduced if highly attractive new features encourage them to upgrade sooner.

    9. Sometimes a guarantee is needed, e.g. each release of software will continue to be supported (e.g. bug-fixes) for X years, and there will be a new release every Y months. That way if a release doesn't occur, then people can see the warning signs and still have X years to migrate.

Comment

  • Hi Doug,

     

    Maybe there are things/guidelines that have been learnt by us and it may be worth listing the ones we can think of, from personal experience or from what we've heard. These are not necessarily for EAGLE, but are just general ideas. I'm not an expert, and it is just stuff I believe, so to be taken with a pinch of salt.. and others will have different ideas/guidelines.

     

    1. A software lock is different from a license; a license is a bit of paper (or an agreement in some other form), and can be enforced through a locking mechanism, or can be met through trust that the parties involved will cease to use a product if their paper license expires

    2. Generally the important customers (the ones that would have paid for software, and/or the ones willing to pay for support) will not abuse a license intentionally

    3. Sometimes it is better not to have a locking mechanism if it means there is a risk that legitimate customers could end up in a situation where their software ceases to function through no fault of their own.

    4. Sometimes it is better to take the hit that some people will abuse a license, in order not to unduly inconvenience legitimate users from jumping through hoops to run their software. As an example, I hate that Tesco (supermarket) makes me waste a few minutes each week to re-scan my receipt to avoid a parking fine. I would rather they just accept the fact that some people will park but not shop at the supermarket. So now I make an effort to shop elsewhere, and they probably lose $5k per year as a result of my action (and maybe they gain $5k from another customer but that's not my concern).

    5. Generally for a subscription model you can encourage people to want to move to this, by showing them a cost reduction (e.g. over time) and/or an increase in functionality/productivity that they will get for no additional cost (e.g. over time), and/or extra things that enable the overall cost to be cheaper than the sum of the individual things (e.g. phone support).

    6. The increase in productivity/functionality can't entirely be a promise of upcoming features, some of it has to be features that you're bundling into the subscription at the time of the purchase of the subscription

    7. No-one likes restrictions, but people are willing to pay to enable features or performance, but only within reasonable rules per feature/performance item. For instance, having restrictions on board size and number of pins and number of layers could be considered 2 dimensions too many. For each feature that is being enabled, it can be better to control it in just one dimension. As an example, if you want to unlock PCB project size, then this could be based on pins, board size, or number of layers, but not all three.

    8. There will always be some customers who will want to milk the product for as long as possible (e.g. continuing to use versions written say five years ago) despite that release long being retired. But even those customers are (at least mentally if not formally) putting a price on the product, they are just stretching it over a long period of years (this I suspect is the case for many EAGLE users). Even those users won't necessarily be subscription model averse, if the pricing reflects that they too can benefit over the period of time they would ordinarily milk the product, which can be naturally reduced if highly attractive new features encourage them to upgrade sooner.

    9. Sometimes a guarantee is needed, e.g. each release of software will continue to be supported (e.g. bug-fixes) for X years, and there will be a new release every Y months. That way if a release doesn't occur, then people can see the warning signs and still have X years to migrate.

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