Subscription vs Perpetual Licenses
The cluster discusses software licensing models, particularly JetBrains' approach of granting a perpetual license for the version current during a one-year subscription plus updates, with comparisons to other perpetual and subscription models and concerns about access after payments end.
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JetBrains style - pay for a license to use the software forever, and get a year's worth of updates. Buy a new licence after a year if they want the next update. Maybe offer a discount for renewal.
Like others, my only issue is that if you pay for 12 months and then decide not to continue that you should get a perpetual license for the latest version your subscription allowed you, not the first version. Maybe that was the intent but it doesn't read that way.Otherwise I am good with the rest of it at this point.
Is this one of those lifetime purchases where I have to pay again in 5 years when the developers realise they regretted offering a lifetime licence?
In fact, you are paying $120 for a license and then getting a year's worth of free upgrades. After your subscription ends, you're still allowed to use that version.
that's no different than pay the full price for new version that comes out every year. do you remember how perpetual licenses use to work?
With your logic, you should pay for every new release. E.g. You bought the product at 1.0.5, you will pay for 1.0.6, 1.0.7, etc... IT IS am ongoing service. Development doesn't stop there. 1Password does this model; you have to pay for every major version of their product.
Suggestion: if a customer pays for an annual subscription of the software, grant them a perpetual license for the corresponding major milestone version of that product. For instance if I paid for an annual subscription of IntelliJ in 2015, grant me a free perpetual license for IntelliJ 14.
you also get a perpetual license if you pay for a year upfront or 12 consecutive months of your subscription, so you can stop paying and keep using the version you paid for forever
JerBrains does something similar (after paying for a year I get perpetual license for the version released that year). I’m pretty happy and feel under control. I have been paying them for years now and in case they screw up I will stop my subscription and still can download and use old version. Sure I will be missing on some bug fixes but I have used the software for a year already, I can live with those annoyances. It’s not like the new version will be all bug free either.
Their website seems to indicate that if you pay for 12 months in a row, then you get a perpetual fallback license.