Autodesk EAGLE Announcement - Time to Move on?

I'd never thought about it on that basis actually, but it seems like a good point.  Then again, the only monthly subscription I ever had was for Adobe and that was something like £9.98 so I doubt I would have been impacted!  

I have a yearly subscription to Microsoft 365, Amazon Prime and a three year subscription to Fusion 360 but none of those would appear as regular outgoings.

Understandably every software company looks for ways to create a continuous revenue stream from their offerings in the form of periodic fees of some sort. Of course users just want the most value for the least cost. Ultimately companies often end up not selling a product, just a service, or a license to use for a period, or a pay-per-use, or update fees, etc. Consumers will opt out if the fees get too high. The only choice they have is to weigh the total costs, including their sunk investments in legacy designs. In the case of CAD there is such a large investment in learning to use the tool efficiently and of course their legacy designs and IP, that hefty update or license fees are cheaper than the cost of switching. CAD software companies exploit this situation extensively.

The original Eagle product was a decent price point and it had a useful free version, which resulted in more users than all of the major CAD company "seats" combined. Which is one of the reasons Autodesk bought it.

The main reasons why users adopted Eagle were essentially eliminated when Autodesk reworked the licensing model, but they still retained some of the client base that had invested in the learning curve. I am curious how many seats still use Autodesk E-Cad.

Those users that had been flocking to Eagle are now flocking to KiCad.

The whole thing about keeping up-to-date is a separate problem. Bug fixes should always be free, but unfortunately they aren't always free, they are often bundled with feature upgrades which have a cost. It is actually a much more complex issue, and everyone is going to have their own opinion about how tolerable various aspects are.

I am glad that KiCad is a viable alternative although it doesn't seem to be influencing the big for-profit CAD company business models.

The choices I've made make my design flow the lowest possible cost ($0) and I can still re-use all my library work and legacy design work and my productivity is higher than I it would be with any other CAD tool. 

I am torn.  I had an Eagle Pro license before Autocad took over.  I am not a fan of the subscription model, but I grudgingly signed up.   I started using Fusion360 for the mechanical designs, and although I prefer Solidworks, Fusion360 was 'free' and it worked for me.   In the meantime, Eagle has been migrating away from some of the things that brought me to the tool in the first place.   At this point I am slowly migrating the electronic designs to KiCAD, but will probably keep my subscription to Fusion just to continue to support the mechanical cad designs.   In theory having an integrated mechanical/electronic CAD tool sounds great, but in practice, I have found it not to be very useful.

FreeCAD for sure is not anywhere near as good, but it depends how sophisticated your needs are.

I learned how to do this with just a week or two of practice: (it's a cap for a thermal camera (I lost the original piece). It fitted perfectly first-time.

For sure this is not very sophisticated, and FreeCAD might not be usable at all for higher-end designs that Fusion is good at.

Another weird shape.. this too was one of the first pieces I managed to create with FreeCAD (I'm a total beginner at any 3D CAD).

FreeCAD also has some specialist stuff like sheet-metal design capabilities.