Oh I’m sorry to hear that. My comment probably doesn’t cover a lot of the ways people license things now. For instance, phoning home over the internet wasn’t a thing. I imagine you could still loose access to your work, even if you bought a license, depending how the licensing works. Regardless, it’s hard for me to communicate what I mean. I do consider if I could loose access to my work, by whatever means. So I won’t buy something if that’s a possibility. Surely, with a subscription it’s definitely a possibility. I guess with perpetual licenses it may or may not be depending on the licensing solution. I was more thinking of the old days when you received a box in the mail with the install media and a printed manual. You expected the software was going to work, you would always have access to what you bought, it wasn’t going to use the internet in any way, you didn’t need to go to training classes, you weren’t going to be used to debug their softare, yada, yada yada.
I agree with you. The developer have to price the perpetual license in a way that takes all of the drawbacks into consideration.
hi. i wasn’t referring to vsr plugin. the original thread was about adding the functionality to rhino, by mcneel. i was following it because it contained many of the issues with rhino that i have. i actually never have to report said issues because others have already done it. this was one of those cases. i was just speaking in general. to your point of “cutting off your nose to spite your face”. refusing to buy subscriptions or use the cloud for anything has never been a problem for me. i have always had a work flow i liked without any of that crap. the world is a toilet now and subs and cloud are just one part of it. what was shocking to me here is seeing users spouting off about the glorious benefits of subs. that’s so sad and terrible. anyways, i knew noone who says crap like that was ever going to understand what i’m saying. anyways, this is now a new thread and i don’t need to follow it. the old thread is the one that had the content i wanted. however, now my comments are in this thread. so i guess i have to follow it, lol. regardless, just ignore my posts. i just got so pissed off by what i was reading i couldn’t contain myself.
the part about pushing features to release for marketing is not inherently tied to subscriptions though, that has to do with adopting the major release hype sales model
we release when we release, and our versions are just x.y.z where x is the year, y is the nth release of the year, and z is used for versioning of sub-components (e.g. one plugin has some issue) within the release, if necessary (I think I have used it once)
I’m very happy to not share your vision of the world…
Hi Peter, I suggest contacting the McNeel team about Zoo Licensing support and documentation. I don’t have much else to contribute on this subject other than telling you the end use/buyer friction; If a licensing system is not easy and it’s limited to a local license server, we cannot consider your product a core tool in our workflow. We barely use Xnurbs and only bought 2-3 licenses because I don’t have any visibility/clarity of how to run it. The fact that I don’t even know how many licenses I own should tell you that their licensing system is a self-inflicting problem for them. AT least in our case.
Best,
G
hi nathan,
my comments weren’t directed at anyone in particular. i’m not sure if my first post, replied to your post or not. i thought i was replying to all posts. i was talking about any subscription or cloud based service. regarding your other questions. i didn’t realize my profile here wasn’t filled out. i have two other discourse accounts and they are filled out. not sure why this one wasn’t. anyways i fixed it.
The Guides for the Cloud Zoo (developer.rhino3d.com) are great for the technical information. They also have a code sample at github (flask/python) for the vendor server end.
I just went through the process of implementing Cloud Zoo licensing and would be happy to help others up the learning curve. There are two administrative steps with McNeel (api credentials and signing key) which you’d want to leave time for.
The technical docs are good; I had some things about how the actual vendor and user process worked to figure out. I wrote up a few and will write up a few more guides for this.
Noting @gustavo’s comment about making it easy for the end user:
There’s one hurdle that I have a request out to McNeel for which would make the user experience much easier: giving the userid to plugins so they can register a license in-program rather than forcing a new user to separately log into the McNeel site with their user account and figure out how to add a license.
WISH: Cloud Zoo Plugin, Provide User’s EntityID from RhinoCommon - Rhino Developer - McNeel Forum
True, you seem to have a ‘rolling year from purchase’ model which has advantages.
One advantage of what you call the ‘major release hype’ model or subscription model over what you seem to do is that it’s really easy for clients (including large businesses) to be synced up on versions and to plan for purchases.
Rhino: Do you have V8? Great, we can work together. (or, “guess I need to upgrade but I’ve known that was coming for a long time now”- a clear, well defined decision) In the general case, users with V8 have good confidence that they’ll be in sync for 2-3 years.
Subscription model: are we both up to date? Great, we can collaborate.
Your model: I bought in a year and 1 month ago. Bob bought in a year and 4 months ago, so we’re on different versions. To what extent can we collaborate? I guess we’d need to read the fine print for release updates and check.
If I were a business or a consulting engineer using your software, I might consider your model to be effectively an annual subscription if I want to be able to tell clients and collaborators that I can work with them on the latest version with no uncertainties.
that’s a reasonable characterization; I think it operates somewhat like a typical open source project, but where you either have a current license to be “in the club” and on the latest release, or you are happy with your current version and you work with that, and then re-up later if you want or need to
as far as collaborating, we are back & forward compatible file-wise so you can render bob’s files and he can render yours, except where one of you lacks actual features the other is using; with the versioning itself being simple & easy to grasp I think it should not be difficult for the two of you to know where you stand
for us, we are small, so can’t spend all our time messing with license systems, so I chose this (zoo is a no-go as rhino is just one plugin) “diy subscription except the license is permanent” type of model, which is simple & solid and will never leave a customer in a bad spot due to issues that inevitably arise with more complex systems – and that is my main reason for using it
It seems like this branch of the original “VSR -end of life” thread is more about the pros and cons of subscriptions than it is of the Cyberstrak plug-in. Maybe the subscription discussion needs to be it’s own topic? As a former VSR user this topic is of great interest, so it would be nice to keep the thread on topic.
Just my opinion of course, for whatever that’s worth. 
yeah this is unfortunate. not what i intended. not sure how to fix it. i don’t need to be in this thread at all. however, i do want to be in the original thread. as far as the sub stuff. yeah a whole new thread for that would be good. including the stuff prior to my post, which is what i was commenting on.
I was having a nightmare trying to get my degree changes nicely on the EV car I am passively modelling.
Using Cyberstrak, it was incredibly easy. No more staring at colours, forgetting what arbitrary orientation the surface has, and mistakes with _changedegree.
I’ve been wanting to do a better model of the Star Trek ship in the gallery, and I think I can go with it much more confidently with this tool. Even with the bugs, the tools that work are more than worth it. Not quite used to the undo flow, but it’s a small thing.
I agree- unfortunately a split’s hard because the original fork was a strenuous objection to Peter’s plans for Cyberstrak.
I think the most effective way to get what you want at this point is, if you have any questions, a new “Hey Peter, how were you planning to address X ?” thread which avoids trying to roll everyone’s thoughts back 20 posts.
I agree too. Let’s split this thread again! Sorry @DanBayn for adding fuel to the subscription fire. I just felt bad that some people went crazy against “ThE eVil pEtEr GmbH’s gReeD” trying to make a living for more than just year-1 and making advanced surfacing more affordable and accessible than ever in history.
The whole mindset of “Autodesk is BAD, they stole our cheap toys, and they charge subscription. Therefore anyone trying to make a living via subscription is bad too”
G
(PS: sorry moderators, please split this message into the subscription thread too 
wooooow!
I know it’s a boring question but wouldn’t the soul have a mac port?
Sure, here is the 3d model from my other example:
Match surface to curve on surface fails.3dm (301.7 KB)
Peter, have you seen this topic about the performance impact?
Yes, noticed yesterday late evening, but was not on my desk. Will have a look.
Thanks
Peter
I’m reading this thread now, but I might stop here. The reason I’m using Rhino is to get away from subscription models!
Because the moment you stop paying for a subscription, you can no longer use the software? I’m fine with paying for updates, but if you don’t update it or I don’t like the update, I’m not going to use it and I’m not going to pay you.
There’s people still using Rhino 5 with VSR because it’s stable and one of those companies don’t even exist anymore.
Also, unique DRM which is difficult to manage is why we don’t use XNurbs at work, for example.
This did not get off to a good start.