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

CadSoft Guest wrote:

 

On 7/21/2014 3:13 AM, Joern Paschedag wrote:

Am 19.07.2014 22:28, schrieb patweston:

 

snip

 

What really irks me is that installing 7.0.0 removed previous versions,

 

Can someone confirm that??

 

And what about a Cadsoft statement regarding it?

 

 

My guess here is that patweston is using a Mac. For some reason, I can't

comprehend like many things, the MacOS automatically uninstalls previous

versions of software when you install a new one. I'm not a hard core Mac

user, and someone more experienced than me can correct me on that but

that has been my experience.

 

It's just another screw-up on Cadsoft's part. The Mac (like any computer) only does what the software engineer tells it to. If your installer deletes old versions, it's not a "Mac" thing, it's a decision taken by the software engineer who wrote that software.

FYI, I have a Mac with

simon% ls -dl /Applications/EAGLE*

drwxr-xr-x  15 simon  admin  510 Oct 13  2011 /Applications/EAGLE

drwxr-xr-x  14 simon  admin  476 Jun  6  2012 /Applications/EAGLE-6.1.0

drwxrwxr-x  12 simon  admin  408 Oct  9  2012 /Applications/EAGLE-6.2.0

drwxrwxr-x   6 simon  admin  204 Aug 13  2013 /Applications/EAGLE-6.3.0

drwxr-xr-x  14 simon  admin  476 Dec 16  2013 /Applications/EAGLE-6.5.0

Clearly, each installation takes place in its own directory in /Applications. I haven't installed v7 because I've no intention of buying it - the brain-dead licensing being the sole reason.

Simon.

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

Am 21.07.2014 21:17, schrieb Jorge Garcia:

On 7/21/2014 3:13 AM, Joern Paschedag wrote:

Am 19.07.2014 22:28, schrieb patweston:

 

snip

 

What really irks me is that installing 7.0.0 removed previous versions,

 

Can someone confirm that??

 

And what about a Cadsoft statement regarding it?

 

 

My guess here is that patweston is using a Mac. For some reason, I can't

comprehend like many things, the MacOS automatically uninstalls previous

versions of software when you install a new one. I'm not a hard core Mac

user, and someone more experienced than me can correct me on that but

that has been my experience.

 

EAGLE never automatically uninstalls by design.

 

hth,

Jorge Garcia

At least not until now?

Thanks for your answer Jorge.

From being a long time user I know that eagle has sometimes problems

with  Mac.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that I am a win user (although if this

problem exist it concerns all eagle users) and maybe I hear some more

statements.

--

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / With best regards

Joern Paschedag

When installing version 7 under MacOS, the CadSoft installer indeed deletes all working files in the old 6.6 directory. Looks like my quick checkout of the new version didn't go quite as planned. Time to scramble and try to restore my previous version from backup.

This is NOT a MacOS problem, it is a Cadsoft installer problem and one that needs to be fixed pronto.

Am 23.07.2014 00:17, schrieb Matt Compton:

When installing version 7 under MacOS, the CadSoft installer indeed

deletes all working files in the old 6.6 directory. Looks like my quick

checkout of the new version didn't go quite as planned. Time to scramble

and try to restore my previous version from backup.

 

This is NOT a MacOS problem, it is a Cadsoft installer problem and one

that needs to be fixed pronto.

 

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Thanks Matt for this clear information.

--

Mit freundlichen Grüßen / With best regards

Joern Paschedag

On 7/22/2014 10:57 PM, Joern Paschedag wrote:

Am 23.07.2014 00:17, schrieb Matt Compton:

When installing version 7 under MacOS, the CadSoft installer indeed

deletes all working files in the old 6.6 directory. Looks like my quick

checkout of the new version didn't go quite as planned. Time to scramble

and try to restore my previous version from backup.

 

This is NOT a MacOS problem, it is a Cadsoft installer problem and one

that needs to be fixed pronto.

 

--

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Thanks Matt for this clear information.

Hi Guys,

I will report this, if it is an installer issue it's not intentional.

Otherwise we would have all of the other installers (Windows and Linux)

doing the same thing, which of course would be very bad. I'll

let you know what response I receive from the devs.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

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.

Hi There ... I had Eagle 6.6.0 running on my mac ... YES this copy did get deleted when installing 7.0.0.  It would have been nice to know about this licensing before the change ... emailed cadsoft about this & they sent me a quotation for a upgrade.  US$500-600 on top of what I paid last year??? (US$1600-1700)

BUT I was able to re-install the previous version.  ( I'm not religious but thank god!!!)

This program has so much going for it ... add such a extreme licensing system???  I have another cad program which uses the same type of licensing, while a good program, the licensing makes it a nightmare.

Hi Leon,

We reverted to our old more flexible licensing system, so at the very

least that nightmare is gone.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

Hi Leon,

We reverted to our old more flexible licensing system, so at the very

least that nightmare is gone.

hth,

Jorge Garcia

Jorge, CadSoft may have revered back to the old licensing, however it doesn't make a bit of difference when a) the license file for v6 no longer works for v7, and b) repeated e-mails to sales@cadsoft are not being replied to. So what's it going to take to get SOMEONE to reply to those e-mails requesting a license update/upgrade?

If I am not mistaken, v6 to v7 is a paid upgrade, so the v6 license naturally will not work with v7. I checked on the upgrade price for my installation, and it was $550. I'm debating whether the new features in v7 are worth that to me, and sticking with v6 for the time being.

Well, that would explain the license file not working. However, regardless, I have received ZERO communications from Sales regarding an upgrade, despite repeated e-mails. So yeah, at this rate they won't be getting my money.

On 8/13/2014 2:48 PM, kirash4 wrote:

Jorge, CadSoft may have revered back to the old licensing, however it

doesn't make a bit of difference when a) the license file for v6 no

longer works for v7, and b) repeated e-mails to sales@cadsoft are not

being replied to. So what's it going to take to get SOMEONE to reply to

those e-mails requesting a license update/upgrade?

Hi kirash,

I think you're sending the e-mails to the wrong place. You should be

contacting sales@cadsoftusa.com, not sales@cadsoft.com. Through some

twist there are two completely independent companies that have Cadsoft

in there name on this earth.

I haven't seen any e-mails from you personally, if you wish you can

contact me jorge@cadsoftusa.com.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

Nope, I just verified and I have been sending them to the correct e-mail address at cadsoftusa.com. It would be coming from kirash4 at gmail ...

On 8/14/2014 4:10 PM, kirash4 wrote:

Nope, I just verified and I have been sending them to the correct e-mail

address at cadsoftusa.com. It would be coming from kirash4 at gmail ...

 

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Hi Kirash,

Ok then, try sending the e-mail directly to me and I'll pass it on to sales.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

Hi,

I also sent a message to 'sales@cadsoftusa.com' to ask them to convert my V7.0 license into a 7.1, but I get not answer yet. I check the address too, and the date of my mail (Thu, 14 Aug 2014 14:37:30 +0200). I don't not if it's just too soon to have an answer, or if the mail get lost, like Kirash one's.

What should I do ? :

- wait a little more,

- send again the mail,

- by an update on cadsoft web site, even if the price is 0$ ?!?

Guillaume Barrey

Hi Guillaume,

E-mail me directly, I think I can take care of that personally since you

already have a V7 license its easy enough for me to do it. Let me know

if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

Thanks Jorge. If going through sales is the same thing as doing it online on the website, I'll just do that. Unless for some odd reason the price would be different.

On 8/19/2014 1:56 PM, kirash4 wrote:

Thanks Jorge. If going through sales is the same thing as doing it

online on the website, I'll just do that. Unless for some odd reason the

price would be different.

 

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Hi Kirash,

The price will be the same wether you go through the site or through the

phone, so do whatever is most convenient for you.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia