I can totally understand how people get triggerd by subscription pricing. For anyone one in favour, i recommend the experience of an Autodesk license audit and you may change your mind. Its about as much fun as a rectal examination. At the same time, TCO goes up every year while development is stagnant since a decade. I could stealth-install autocad 2013 on users, and barely anyone would notice if it werent for the splashscreen.
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Oh goodnessā¦this is too exciting for me to resistā¦making a purchase nowā¦!
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Hi guys,
Iām surprised about the feedback amount in just 2 days!
Yes, it is worth to create a new topic to discuss the functionality. If the McNeel discourse site is the best place Iām not sure. I will check the ability to add a forum to the Cyberstrak website, but this may take a while.
Some first feedback from my side:
- Bobi: Thanks for the example part, I will check the Blend. Concerning Curvature: Here the part would also help.
- Jordi: I know a lot is still missing for the Matching command. Iām also not pleased yet with the surface curvature matching quality, also Trimmed edges as reference are neededā¦
- Gustavo: The licensing I want to keep as simple as possible, since I do not want to spend a lot of support efforts into it, better the efforts go into the functionality. But you can contact me directly via the āContactā page on my website to discuss, how a simple multi user licensing could work.
Anyhow, you can expect 1st update version before Christmas. Major focus will be bug fixing at the moment, in parallel some new functionality is in progress.
Best
Peter
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Hi Peter.
To add to @Rhino_Bulgaria s observations:
Matching curvature in some cases completely stops to work, it literally does nothing then. In other cases it just works as expected, I havnāt found out what the trigger is yet.
I think your presence in discussions on this discourse would be the easiest developer-user connection for all parts involved.
Can a moderator create a sub-topic for cyberstrak in the plug-ins section?
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The problem is this happens even with scenarios that arenāt subscription based. Look into NextEngine-NY vs NextEngine-CA. I lost access to over a decade of work, and $5k+ in hardware and $5k+ in software.
So, subscription based almost makes more sense, but the problem is companies like Autodesk are robbing ppl blind with their outrageous prices.
Rhino is very unique in that their price is very reasonable, especially now sense the 300%+ dilution the fed has done to the USD.
But I suspect everyoneās licenses could be deactivated at anytime for various reasons.
Thatās just how software works. Look at Adobe Acrobat, Microsoft Office, and Windows XP / Windows 7 ā¦ obviously software can become deactivated, made useless / or simply unsupported etc.
The most suitable approach is to provide both subscription and perpetual licenses. This allows customers to select the option that best aligns with their requirements and preferences.
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Indeed. 
What I think is really crazy is that people have been asking for a VSR replacement for like, what, the last 10 years ? And suddenly, like magic, somebody gives it to them - indeed one of the originators of VSR - and minutes later some people are yelling NO! NO! No subscription model!!!
Geez.
If the author of the software decides that subscription model is their best alternative, thatās their decision. If for reasons of āprincipleā, you donāt want to use it because of that, then DONāT.
(I call that ācutting off your nose to spite your faceā)
If there is a tool that allows you to do your job better and faster - and especially if there arenāt any other reasonable alternatives to it - then you just bite the bullet and sign up! Especially if you want to support its development!! At 99ā¬/149ā¬ a year itās totally reasonable.
And - Peter is not Autodesk!!!
@Peter_Salzman - nice to see you in here, been a long time since the old Euromold daysā¦ Very happy to see this developing!
āMitch
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Indeed sounds reasonable. I honestly donāt know what this plugin is yet, but sounds awesome 
Yeah Autodesk would be at least 12x his price or like $100/month 
Hmm, just checking a few of their prices maybe only 6xās that. I wonder if they have reduced their prices. Too bad Fusion is cloud basedā¦ $40/mo not too bad 
Inventorās the one Iād want, but $200/mo is kinda much
Weird how cheap Mudbox is 
Why not offer both alternatives, perpetual and subscription licenses? That would be a win-win situation for both the developer and the customers would It not? Right? 
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I like the sound of that, but the mods only gimmie 50 likes per day, so Iāll have ta wait an hr or so
Grr, looks like Autodesk charges $300/mo for Inventor They get you wanting that 12mo commitment.
How do you know it would be win-win for the developer? That means they have to have two different systems to keep track of licenses and more complex bookkeeping. That does make a difference for a small company.
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Dear Peter you may contact @wim or @Gijs or @pascal
there is other commercial plug-ins that got their Category.
for example
I would welcome this category as the information will be available for all rhino-users, not only those using the plug-in.
and when you re in contact with the mcneel people, ask them to get some insides regarding the amount of Mac-User - my guess - it s worth investing to have the plug-in working on both platforms.
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Due to its high probability of attracting a larger customer base of course.
You donāt know that either, thatās just speculation.
No I donāt know it. I have not presented that as a fact; rather, I am engaging in speculation, as you say.
Buying this immediately after work
lol I want to click the buy button too, and I donāt even know much about it yet
Because people have read things into my other posts: I like one time sale models and those are what I plan for at least my first few products here. However, Iām not philosophically opposed to subscriptions in the way that some are.
I donāt want to threadjack but will note that this is one of those āsounds simple but isnātā ideas with wide-ranging consequences.
This has tradeoffs that may not be obvious at first:
Licensing - A lot of devs, particularly small ones, employ third party tools or servers. It may become a significant burden to keep older versions accessible over time.
In a subscription model, you generally tell everyone āuse the current versionā. In a perpetual model you have fragmentation. Looking at Rhino: Say that a save bug which subtly corrupts models is discovered in V7. This could have a bad impact on the userbase in general. In a subscription model: āUsers, please update to get the fix. Otherwise, you or your clients might experience data loss over time, including ones using the current version.ā Perpetual model: what do you do? Suck up the cost of developing a possibly hard to implement and test fix for a code base you get no revenue from? Just let users suffer including the up-to-date ones?
With the subscription model, itās easier (practically and economically) to release new features, individually, when theyāre available. The dev doesnāt have a thought floating in the back of their mind like āI could really give this to everyone next month, but itās an important part of the sales pitch to get them to buy the upgrade to 9.0 so I guess I should hold it back until the banner release in a year and a half.ā
That also makes QA and related tasks a manageable and steady effort as small changes are pushed to early adopters and then the public rather than a huge merge of different features followed by āLetās see if anything broke.ā and a big push before release.
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