Eagle v8 licensing...

Il 21/02/2017 22:20, techsupport ha scritto:

The customers are the sole driving force to the improvements to EAGLE. 

Some of these 'wants' take time to be done right, that's the reason they

were not done in the first place.

Good! Said that, please, fix the license!

Best regards

Alberto

Hi Gerald,

Not wishing to be mistaken for an Autodesk employee again as I am not, but I will comment again anyway.

Gerald Schwarz wrote:

 

The problem is that the license QUALITY will falling back to the toy version after expiring the license period.

Customers are really punished with this action.

Why is this a problem? If you need to use it you renew your subscription. If you don't need to use it then you don't pay until you do.

Gerald Schwarz wrote:

 

! Most important: the license keeps in the last state of the paid category, and for the standard dimension a DIN A4 format with 16 layers .

With your suggestion somebody could pay $65 for a one month Premium subscription and then cancel and they would be able to use that Premium version forever. That's not financially viable for Autodesk (or any other company) to do a tool like this with that licensing model.

Taking this further, your suggestion of DIN A4 format and 16 layer for $10/month would pretty much wipe out all sales on Premium as those restrictions would probably cover the majority of users design requirements so they wouldn't need the Premium level. I'd love this amount in Standard but I think this is exceedingly unlikely!

Gerald Schwarz wrote:

 

-> what will i do, if i go in holidays for more than 14, or 31 days.....,

after then i switch on the software for an active or new project...,

and then the license will say "sorry...". My customers will also say "sorry...".

 

When you switch on your software it contacts the Autodesk servers and your software starts up and works again. They don't take it away and confiscate your subscription if your computer doesn't contact them The only issue is if you don't have internet access. This could be solved by Autodesk making the call home period equal to the license period, so if you had a three year subscription it would continue to work for three years before dialling home. It would still have to dial home for activating any updates but making the call home match the license period would remove a lot of concerns of people in remote or internet starved places.

Sorry if you think I am sticking up for Autodesk too much, I can understand peoples grievances with the licensing change, especially as Farnell tried to do this too (but in my opinion much worse and they implemented the dreaded flexlm licensing!), but quite frankly some peoples demands are going far beyond reasonable in the other direction. I think with a few more relatively benign tweaks to the licensing that I have mentioned in several threads over the last couple of days the majority of the issues could be resolved. I'm sure Autodesk are reading these suggestions, we'll just have to see if they come up with any additional concessions.

At the end of the day v7 is still a good product and I have that license so if v8 doesn't pan out for whatever reason I will fall back to that until I need capabilities beyond what it can give. I don't see the need for throwing tantrums on forums and ditching all of my existing setup because of a licensing change that won't cost me any more money. The people most negatively affected at the moment are people who previously had the non-commercial Maker license, that currently has no viable alternative so they have a legitimate reason to be disappointed as they have no equivalent path to v8.

Best Regards,

Rachael

The customers are the sole driving force to the improvements to EAGLE.

Some of these 'wants' take time to be done right, that's the reason they

were not done in the first place.

 

Good! Said that, please, fix the license!

The license isn't broken, nothing to fix there.  The majority of users prefer a better designing experience and that's what the team will continue doing. 

Best Regards,

Ed

rachaelp wrote on Tue, 21 February 2017 14:31

The people most negatively affected at the moment are people who

previously had the non-commercial Maker license, that currently has no

viable alternative so they have a legitimate reason to be disappointed as

they have no equivalent path to v8.

I own a perpetual license of EAGLE, schematic, board and autorouter.  I

think you and I are both waiting for some period of time to see if there is

any reason that we should consider a subscription.  During that time,

Autodesk might or might not create something wonderful that we have to

have.  We'll see.

I'm from the small business/DIY/hobby world and I'm a programmer by trade.

I understand that Autodesk needs to make money from EAGLE and make it fit

in with the rest of their product line.  On one hand, I hope that EAGLE

grows into the full-fledged product that it might be.  On the other, I am

now in a period of mourning because the old EAGLE and the community that

surrounded it has been fractured and is probably gone forever.

Yes, EAGLE itself is still as functional as it has ever been.  Yes, the

subscription pricing is probably reasonable.  But for me, and I think for

others, buying a copy of EAGLE (even though it's effectively only a license

to use the software) gave us a sense of ownership, of buy-in to a pretty

cool club.  Autodesk is too big to ever be that.  (Not their fault.)  That

old club has been disbanded.  EAGLE is now just another tool from a big

corporation.  Some day Jorge and Ed won't be the main support team any more

and the transition will be complete.

Yes, it's mainly emotions, but the people I used to share tips, tricks,

scripts, and designs with are all angry and looking to switch to other

products.  Like seeing an ex on the street, every time I start EAGLE, it

reminds me of the way things used to be and that things are different now.

This too shall pass...

--

EAGLE support forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca :: Where the EAGLE community meets.

Ed Robledo wrote:

 

The license isn't broken, nothing to fix there. The majority of users prefer a better designing experience and that's what the team will continue doing.

Best Regards,

Ed

I would be interesting to see if you can create a genuinely useful enhancement for Eagle, that will get as much reaction around the world as the licensing change has. I first heard about it on the time-nuts mailing list

* Time-nuts

https://www.mail-archive.com/search?l=time-nuts@febo.com&q=subject:%22Re\%3A+\[time\-nuts\]+OT\%3A+Eagle+PC+CAD+now+Auto…

* Hackaday

Autodesk Moves EAGLE to Subscription Only Pricing | Hackaday

* Kicad

https://forum.kicad.info/t/autodesk-kills-the-golden-eagle/4964

* Altium

Switch from Eagle PCB

Would incorporating a full 3D EM solver, create as much interest on so many forums? I suspect not.

There does not appear to be any fall in the Autodesk share price - in fact, it is almost as high as it has ever been. So I guess shareholders are not objecting.

Dave

Forgotten in this discussion about license models is the perspective that we as users have put a lot of effort into developing expertise using EagleCAD. And for many of us, our livelihood is dependent on that expertise. With your subscription model you have, in effect, take that expertise hostage,

Exactly. If EAGLE 8 was totally free but needed to connect every two weeks to activate I would still not use it. If Autodesk paid me $500 a year... I would still not use it. If they ever realise that they may have a successful business.

As for the effort on developing expertise... it is not a big deal as one may think. I was hesitant changing to another brand of microcomputers and it was a few months of pain to get back to speed but now it is all past me and I look back and I blame myself for not doing it sooner. Jumping ship from EAGLE for me is now certainty. The only question is what to jump to that is best for my needs.

Doug Wellington wrote on Tue, 21 February 2017 22:37

rachaelp wrote on Tue, 21 February 2017 14:31

The people most negatively affected at the moment are people who

previously had the non-commercial Maker license, that currently has no

viable alternative so they have a legitimate reason to be disappointed

as they have no equivalent path to v8.

 

I own a perpetual license of EAGLE, schematic, board and autorouter.  I

think you and I are both waiting for some period of time to see if there

is any reason that we should consider a subscription.  During that time,

Autodesk might or might not create something wonderful that we have to

have.  We'll see.

 

I'm from the small business/DIY/hobby world and I'm a programmer by

trade.  I understand that Autodesk needs to make money from EAGLE and

make it fit in with the rest of their product line.  On one hand, I hope

that EAGLE grows into the full-fledged product that it might be.  On the

other, I am now in a period of mourning because the old EAGLE and the

community that surrounded it has been fractured and is probably gone

forever.

 

Yes, EAGLE itself is still as functional as it has ever been.  Yes, the

subscription pricing is probably reasonable.  But for me, and I think for

others, buying a copy of EAGLE (even though it's effectively only a

license to use the software) gave us a sense of ownership, of buy-in to a

pretty cool club.  Autodesk is too big to ever be that.  (Not their

fault.)  That old club has been disbanded.  EAGLE is now just another

tool from a big corporation.  Some day Jorge and Ed won't be the main

support team any more and the transition will be complete.

 

Yes, it's mainly emotions, but the people I used to share tips, tricks,

scripts, and designs with are all angry and looking to switch to other

products.  Like seeing an ex on the street, every time I start EAGLE, it

reminds me of the way things used to be and that things are different

now.

 

This too shall pass...

Hi Doug,

Yes I agree with you, the worst thing for me is what this licensing change

has done to the community. There is far less general chatter on these

forums, I rarely see posts from some of the previous long time users

anymore and I do find this very sad. We'll just have to see how things turn

out I guess, I'm hoping once the dust settles some of the original long

time members of these forums will start to visit again.... I hope so, their

experience is valuable and their help was always appreciated....

I'm hoping Jorge, Ed and Richard (haven't seen him on here for a while!)

will be around for the foreseeable future so it's not all change. I suspect

any new tech support people will be on the Autodesk official forums rather

than here though.

Best Regards,

Rachael

--

EAGLE support forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca :: Where the EAGLE community meets.

Il 21/02/2017 22:54, Ed Robledo ha scritto:

The customers are the sole driving force to the improvements to EAGLE.

Some of these 'wants' take time to be done right, that's the reason they

were not done in the first place.

 

Good! Said that, please, fix the license!

The license isn't broken, nothing to fix there.  The majority of users prefer a better designing experience and that's what the team will continue doing.

Best Regards,

Ed

Mmmhhhh....

Is seems that 90% of posts in this formum are related to the licence

model instead other topics, this means that:

1) The license is a concern;

2) Users (me too) are asking you to review the license model.

I just said I am a long term user (schematiclayoutautorouter pro), I

just said that I had planned to upgrade to V8, I just said that I

dropped it due the new license model.

In my decision schema your license model enters as a FALSE in a final

logic AND, so the definitive decision is always FALSE: not upgrade! This

despite the features you plan to add and also the price.

Again, I can accept a yearly maintenance model, I can not accept a

subscription model. Maybe the only valid reason that Autodesk understand

is the revenue instead users requests like this...

I am not in a hurry, so I can wait and evaluating alternatives for the

next months, maybe an year, then, if nothing changes, I have to say

goodbye and good luck.

I am angry, very angry, because I invested time and efforts (libraries,

ULPs and so on) and I will have to rebuild all in another tool. Eagle is

not a new product build from scratch, there is a users, like me, base

who have choosen it for the feature but also for the license: to buy an

existing company/product and to change policies at this level is like to

be an elephant and to enter in a glassware... It is legal, but it is

also absolutely unfair.

So, in my perspective, license is broken and makes the product unusable.

Best regards

Alberto

Hi Rachael,

sorry, but hoping (also hopping and dancing) and praying we can do it in the church.

In business we have concrete facts.

The fact is that, if Autodesk has a disaster in its territory, for example earthquake or internal political problems in the company,

millions of users can also close their company or minimum their software.
Then we all have the huge problem of fixing the billions of damage, with all sorts of court actions.
If we both have a local problem, others are not affected.
If other clients have their problems then we are both not affected by these local problems.

This is the next big problem with such a kind of licensing policy.
These are facts, not belief or hope.
The license is broken!

If the employee is terminated by the support, or is no longer available to us, what is the matter with a licensing policy for us?

What do employees have with licenses? Are the licenses nailed on their trousers or shirts?

These people are not Autodesk, though?
How many servers does Autodesk have on the planet?

We have been waiting four years for a serious and well-functioning software update.
I have not V7 pro, but only V6.xx. pro, because the V7 is a scrap.
So I wanted to skip V7 and I've always told Cadsoft, synonymous I have written this in the German and English forums.
Now with Autodesk, the promised number 8 is here, but with the same weak uptrend.
And come all the time with hopes and prayers .. I can do that in the church, not in the business market.

You must be able to continue working if Autodesk does not update the software.
Otherwise hell is going on, and all this on the whole planet.

Just because Autodesk has a subscription philosophy ... well, this is a "hard tobacco" ...
Should productivity remain stuck on a global scale?

Best Regards,

Gerald

---

David Kirkby wrote on Tue, 21 February 2017 15:49

• Altium

Switch from Eagle PCB

(http://www.altium.com/eagle-switch/circuitstudio/)

I just found out that Circuit Studio maintenance costs $150 a year.  With

the current promotion, that makes it $5 cheaper than EAGLE Premium the

first year, but then $350 cheaper than EAGLE every year after that.  Even

without the promotional pricing, the break-even point is just over two

years.  32 layers, unlimited board size, perpetual license, cheaper than

EAGLE.  What's not to like?

Quote:

There does not appear to be any fall in the Autodesk share price - in

fact, it is almost as high as it has ever been. So I guess shareholders

are not objecting.

Shareholders usually know nothing of the customer; many only look at the

reports generated by a company itself...

--

EAGLE support forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca :: Where the EAGLE community meets.