I think there are a lot of customers that share both sentiments. And I think many people would welcome a subscription approach.
My gut tells me that we’d need to offer both a permanent license option and a subscription option. JetBrains has a “subscription with perpetual permanent fallback” which seems like a potential option, but also very confusing. It means you have to subscribe, but when you stop subscribing, the product you last had keeps running indefinitely.
From https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb: From November 2, 2015, JetBrains has adopted subscription-based licensing model for selected products, allowing our customers to purchase monthly and yearly subscriptions for one or more products.
An All Products option is also available providing our customers with access to all our desktop products (IDEs, utilities and extensions).
In our case we think both our company and your company will be around for a long time, so we are not concerned to what happens with licenses in the event that either of us is out of business. In either of those cases we’ll find the licenses useless. Same if you sell the company to Carl (one more can of worms opened! )
Sorry, I don’t fully understand.
Yes, you need a valid V5 for Windows license key to participate in the Rhino WIP process.
Using the tool to get the download link asks for your email address and V5 license key, then it generates a V6 license key and download link.
Yes, when you upgrade from Rhino 5 to Rhino 6, you would by a Rhino 6 upgrade license key. That license key would be used to install Rhino 6, and would be associated with your Rhino 5 license key.
The cloud is fragile as newborn kitten. If it happened here Silicon Valley, then whatever bean-cans and strings people use for communication would be even more vulnerable. Think of what a war would do to the cloud.
Don’t often come to Serengeti but after reading this thread, I’m a little worried. I purchased 1.1 and got a free upgrade to 2 but I have discovered I only have upgrade licenses for 3, 4 and 5 and nothing for 1.1 and 2. Does this mean I will have to purchase a full Rhino 6 license when it comes out?
You can always upgrade any earlier version to the most current version. There is not need to upgrade to the in between versions. Of course, you can only upgrade any version once.
Back to some of the earlier questions. I need to have DevSrf available and currently it is not available for Rhino 6 WIP.
I’m a single user with a single Rhino 5 license which was upgraded from Rhino 4.
I currently have Rhino 5 and the Rhino 6 WIP on a desktop which is my primary machine and on a laptop for use when traveling.
When Rhino 6 is released will I be able to purchase an upgrade license which permits Rhino 5 and Rhino 6 on both my desktop and my laptop? After that will I be able to move Rhino 5 to a replacement for either the desktop or laptop?
Well, I personally think that the problem you try to solve with this policy change is slightly different from what you will actually achieve with #2.
Like many others here, I often need to open older projects which may only work with older plugins. So if for instance I need to re-install all my software on a new laptop because the old one broke, with that new policy I see a problem coming my way.
If that can be solved on a case-by-case basis via support, I’d be okay with it, but if it would be no longer possible at all to install a new v.5 on that said laptop after I upgraded to v.6 I could be in trouble.
That companies get confused about what licenses they have bought is better solved with a customer portal where they can log in and see what they have (I actually was surprised that nothing like that seems to exist for Rhino, even the smallest shops nowadays often have customer areas). Since you already have plans for that, I’d say that should work better for that scenario (other than that some people simply don’t get how software licensing works, that often is a permanent condition ).
If the company in question is “confused” the “other way”, and uses all five versions of Rhino at the same time on different machines, the intended change may or may not work for that. People suffering from this kind of “confusion” may also search for downloads on Google and “confuse” legitimate and illegitimate downloads.
So like always with copy protection, it’s a fine balance between preventing misuse and annoying legitimate users.
Same here! For instance I don’t plan to update TSplines for V6 (if there ever will be an update). The native SubD tools should be sufficient for my needs in this area. However, I’d need to be able to open/edit these old files.
Not to mention a bunch of other custom plugins for our pretty complex BIM solution… Even if it would be possible to re-compile these against V6, This would be a nightmare…
I think it would be a bad idea to let us pay for the dishevelment of other users not keeping track about their licenses.
I’m getting confused-
i’m single user, working either on my desktop or laptop. Rhino 5 is intalled on both, including same plugins. Rhino 6 WIP is intalled on one computer, along with Rh5. I would like to retain use of Rh5 plugins, till (if at all) plugin vendor ports these to Rh6.
So, does change no.2 impliy:
That if i try to install Rh5, on a new computer, after i have upgraded to Rh6 on old computer - Rh5 will not validate anymore?
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