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Apps that shouldn't be Subscriptions
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this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
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Piracy: ꜱᴀɪʟ ᴛʜᴇ ʜɪɢʜ ꜱᴇᴀꜱ
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I do use JetBrains software. If subscriptions all agreed that when you cancel the subscription you can continue to use the latest version before you cancelled, I'd be prepared to consider them. Any software ought to be able to do this except software that uses significant server resources. I'd even consider rent-to-own where you get to keep the software after a certain number of payments. (Splice offers some music software like this.)
Roland have a ton of good software synthesizers but I will never subscribe to them because the moment you stop they take the whole lot away. Even their "lifetime license" requires an active Roland account and the software disappears if you ever close the account or they change their minds. Similarly I haven't used any Adobe software since they went subscription only.
Yeah that was basically the sentiment of the developer community when JetBrains announced the change. Thankfully they heeded the screaming and fixed their model. I've been using JetBrains tools for around 10 years now and they continue to impress. I can't recommend them enough.
If you want a worse example than Roland, let me tell you about my solitary experience with IK Multimedia. I bought a secondhand hardware synth of theirs off marketplace. Get it home and try to download the software tool to control and update it. It tells me to set up an account, and then lets me download it, awesome. Plug it in and fire up the software, and it tells me I’m not licensed. Wait, what? Search through their support site and it turns out that to transfer the “license” for this piece of hardware you have to pay them $49. Sunk cost fallacy got the better of me at this point and I sent an email through to support asking if I could pay the transfer fee. Nope, only the original owner can transfer the license. I was so immediately turned off it that it sat around as a paperweight for a few months. Ended up selling it to a pawn shop.
Meanwhile, Arturia are the exact opposite. When you buy a digital license of the Arturia V Collection, you own that license. Which includes being able to sell it to someone else, and transfer it to their account for free. I bought a secondhand MIDI controller of theirs, which had some bonus licenses for their software originally included. They transferred the license to me with just a picture of the serial number label. But I could still download and use the software for setting up macros and updating it without doing that.
I hope Arturia don't change. They are one of the most reasonable companies out there when it comes to licensing and pricing.
Licenses for hardware are a concerning trend, because it's unnecessary, and because the terms are never made clear before purchase. I suspect it's mainly there to sabotage the second hand market.
Yeah, I hope they don’t change either. I wouldn’t have been surprised, or particularly disappointed, if they said they wouldn’t transfer the bonus licenses. These weren’t needed to use the device at all. The license was originally for Analog Lab 3, this was a Minilab Mk1, but they’d given free upgrades so the license I got was for Analog Lab V. Having that license meant getting a cheaper upgrade to the V Collection 8. I got a 50% off upgrade to 9 as well, and I just checked now that X is out and they’re offering me the same deal again until late January.
They did deactivate my license for 8 because I’d used it to upgrade to 9, but I think that’s pretty reasonable. You can also absolutely choose to pay the full price and keep the previous version. You can still sell and transfer it too though, and their system will happily let the new owner re-download it. They’ll let you activate the license on an offline computer too, and as far as I can tell, it’s indefinite. You could absolutely take advantage of that, but they don’t punish all of their users because there’s a chance a few are bad actors.
Honestly, in my opinion, they are the platinum standard that software companies across the entire industry should strive to be.
Oh I just remembered another thing. You can buy individual V Collection instruments without ever being worse off. The price of it will be discounted off the full collection. Then, after 4-6 instruments, they’ll just upgrade you to the full ~39 for free. I don’t think even when you could still buy the Creative Suite from Adobe, that they would let you upgrade like that.
(Sorry for the lengthy reply. Arturia is just one of the few companies out there that I will legitimately praise.)