New eagle licensing -> goodbye Eagle

On 18/07/14 22:01, Simon Gornall wrote:

So, I've used Eagle now for over 10 years. In all that time I've always

upgraded to the latest version, but that's just stopped.

 

I have multiple computers, and I use multiple locations. I've always

only ever used one instance of Eagle at a time, and I've never given the

license details to anyone else. Unfortunately, the latest way in which

Eagle is licensed is way too restrictive for me to work with the product

as I have done for over a decade now.

I absolutely agree. Part of the reason I picked EAGLE was because of the

relatively liberal licensing policy. "Install on as many PCs as you

like, as long as they all belong to you personally and only one PC is

running EAGLE at a time". Great!

The reason I switched to EAGLE in the first place was a competitor

product which employed node-locked licensing. My PC failed, and they

demanded I buy the product again to get a new license key. I declined.

Some months later, they went out of business...

What is the EAGLE hostID generated from? The motherboard? The hard

drive? The partition serial numbers? The network card MAC address?

If my network card, motherboard or whatever the HostID is based on

fails, do I need to buy a new license? These type of license policies

are very clearly profit-oriented and anti-consumer, and tells your

customers that you don't trust them.

The problem is two-fold:

• You are only allowed to install on 2 (which is pitiful!) computers if

you have a single user license.

• You cannot use a flexlm-based license for a single-user license.

 

• If your PC (or in the case of some license managers, your network

card) fails, you can't use the software and have to buy a new license,

or at least wait for a new license key.

• If your PC is stolen (very common for laptops), you lose one of your

two licenses...

• Some of us have more than one PC. I have a desktop in my office, an

SFF desktop in the lab, a netbook and a full-size laptop. So I'd have to

buy two separate EAGLE licenses (or a five-machine site license) just to

have enough "single user" seats to use EAGLE on all these machines, even

though I only use one at a time!

The combination of those two things means I can't duplicate the setup I

currently have, so this is the classic example of how proprietary

software owners can screw you over without you having any recompense or

workaround, despite you being a paying and loyal customer for an

extended period of time. I don't consider cracking the software to be an

adequate workaround.

 

So, if I'm going to have to spend $$$ in the thousands, I'll take a good

look at the competition first, and even at the freebies like kikad.

Kicad is starting to look really good - CERN have been putting a lot of

work in. I just don't like the lack of continuous forward/back

annotation (one of EAGLE's killer features).

A primary rule for any software "upgrade" is "don't break the existing

workflows". Eagle v7 is completely useless to me, not because of its

feature-set, not because of any price issues, but because the management

is being pants-on-head moronic about how it goes about licensing.

Licensing, of all things.

Agreed. Hierarchical design was one of the features I really wanted to

try (especially if I can reuse hierarchical design units), and I'd

gladly have paid the upgrade fee for it.

But with these licensing changes, I will not be upgrading, and I'll be

looking at competing products (of which there are many).

For corporate customers this probably won't be an issue (most of them

probably buy enough 'seats' to get a server-based floating license

anyway). But for hobbyists? This is going to be a deal breaker.

Thanks,

--

Phil.

philpem@philpem.me.uk

http://www.philpem.me.uk/

I'm not (and never have been) an Eagle user but this licensing horror is so familiar. I have at least 6 serious bits of licensed software and only one of them supports a dongle (one of the others does if you pay extra). All the others use these silly machine locked licenses with issues arising at every upgrade and if a computer should die etc etc.

At least the dongle can be moved about easily.

I sometimes feel I should give up on paying and just use a pirate copy with less hassle.

I thought it was generally agreed that it was silly restrictions on legal music downloads that gave piracy such a foothold - why do software companies insist on repeating the same mistake ?

Currently I use EasyPC from Number One Systems, cheaper than Eagle (much) and pretty good - never had any licensing issues.

MK

Am 19.07.2014 10:37, schrieb Michael Kellett:

so familiar. I have at least 6 serious bits of licensed software and

only one of them supports a dongle (one of the others does if you pay

And if all of them had dongles, including EAGLE, you could carry 7 seven

dongles around. What a wonderful imagination. If if one of these dongles

breaks, you'll have to wait for replacement. Even more wonderful.

CadSoft had a perfect single user licensing scheme. Why on earth

couldn't they just keep it as it was, after adding the additional

options for volume users?

Rene

"And if all of them had dongles, including EAGLE, you could carry 7 seven

dongles around. What a wonderful imagination. If if one of these dongles

breaks, you'll have to wait for replacement. Even more wonderful."

I'd still only have 6 - I don't use Eagle

I never said that dongles were perfect but I find them a good deal more user friendly than node locked licenses. Of course different people have different issues and one size doesn't fit all. The best software suppliers manage to offer a range of options so that their customers are happy and their IP is still protected.

In my experience dongles fail a lot less often than computers.

Ideally I'd like a system that didn't rely on node locking, dongles, access to internet etc etc but there doesn't seem to be one. Trust systems seem to work OK with some software but not with other, even similar, products.

MK

"And if all of them had dongles, including EAGLE, you could carry 7 seven

dongles around. What a wonderful imagination. If if one of these dongles

breaks, you'll have to wait for replacement. Even more wonderful."

I'd still only have 6 - I don't use Eagle

I never said that dongles were perfect but I find them a good deal more user friendly than node locked licenses. Of course different people have different issues and one size doesn't fit all. The best software suppliers manage to offer a range of options so that their customers are happy and their IP is still protected.

In my experience dongles fail a lot less often than computers.

Ideally I'd like a system that didn't rely on node locking, dongles, access to internet etc etc but there doesn't seem to be one. Trust systems seem to work OK with some software but not with other, even similar, products.

MK

Am 19.07.2014 14:24, schrieb Michael Kellett:

In my experience dongles fail a lot less often than computers.

Yes. Lots of years ago, CadSoft DID use dongles (I think I remember

version 2.1 in the circuit board lab at University). These were then

cracked by 'The Electric Force Hamburg' (I think they were called), and

due to some clever crack detection tricks from CadSoft, the company even

found its way into some rather amusing press releases (amusing to me, at

least).

At my institute, I started working with EAGLE 3 (I think), using a

dongle connected in series to AutoCAD's dongle. I darkly remember always

having to switch on the printer before starting EAGLE or AutoCAD,

because otherwise, one of them would complain about 'dongle not found'...

Only AFTER CadSoft threw away the dongle (was it version 3.5?) did we

start buying licenses with MORE than one seat (yes, with the possibility

to copy illegaly, we PAID for more seats - probably because I'm stupid).

Otherwise, we would have needed to always mount/unmount dongles for use

with the other PCs of the same user (mainly office/lab at that time),

which nobody wanted to do.

Andreas Weidner

On 21/07/14 22:18, Andreas Weidner wrote:

Only AFTER CadSoft threw away the dongle (was it version 3.5?) did we

start buying licenses with MORE than one seat (yes, with the possibility

to copy illegaly, we PAID for more seats - probably because I'm stupid).

Otherwise, we would have needed to always mount/unmount dongles for use

with the other PCs of the same user (mainly office/lab at that time),

which nobody wanted to do.

I've worked at places where the IT policies are written along the lines of:

• For unprotected software, there must be enough licences to cover

the machines the software is installed on (even if it's an

N-concurrent-users license, they go by machines).

• Compliance of this is strictly controlled (IT keep the install CD,

logs are kept of installs and uninstalls, and generally it's a ton of

paperwork).

• Dongles are allowed for single-user licenses, the software goes on

the "anyone can install it" list, on the basis that the dongles limit

the number of concurrent users to that which was licensed.

• Floating licenses are to be used where not cost prohibitive but a

trial license must be obtained to allow IT to check that the license

server software doesn't conflict with the other license servers.

According to an IT manager at a former employer, it's so that if a

disgruntled employee reports the company to the BSA or FAST for a

license audit (whether true or false), they can wave the licenses at

them and say "nope, we can't possibly be in non-compliance, now please

go away!"

So in short, it's a CYA measure: "We have five machines but likely only

one in use at a time, but we'd better get licenses for all five just in

case more than one is in use and we accidentally violate the licence."

--

Phil.

philpem@philpem.me.uk

http://www.philpem.me.uk/

While I am just a hobbyist now (with the hobby license) since I retired, I

still work with lots of folks that want to know what design software I

like.  I think I am going to stay with version 6 (no, I have not "loaned"

my license to anybody or installed it on more that one machine (does having

it installed on the same machine twice - once for XP and once for Win7

(dual boot) count as 2 machines?).  Looks like V6 for me.  One of the big

problems lots of companies run into is they spend so much time trying to

block the pirates (who will find a way around anyway), that all they do is

irritate the legitimate users who are actually paying them money.

mikey

--

Web access to CadSoft support forums at www.eaglecentral.ca.  Where the CadSoft EAGLE community meets.