> But what I want to point out is that revoking something that was once promised to users [with] ridiculous explanations..
How do you back out of a bad promise made in good faith?
How do you back out of a bad promise made in good faith?
If you didn't promise free updates/upgrades, you then can sell additional premium services only available to people who voluntarily upgrade to a package that pays more.
The very least that a company that wants to go back on the promise would have to do would be full refunds. It would still be wrong, but the fact that they aren't even giving those out (automatically on cancellation, without asking) shows the lack of good faith.
I don’t think it’d be that controversial to release a new version of the app with a different pricing model while offering a fair upgrade path to existing users. Only this version would be available on the App Store.
They can choose not to upgrade and the old app will still work just fine. Keeping the servers up for that would be the cost of doing business.
This is more or less what 1Password have done. All their old versions are still usable, you still have the license for an old version because you bought it. Each upgrade is basically an entirely different release that you can subscribe to or pay for.
Cerberus have fucked up by pulling the rug from underneath everyone and revoking their licenses, making the software they bought unusable.
And as a word to the wise, maybe don’t think about making lifetime or ‘free forever’ promises. They’re totally unrealistic.
You received this message because your 1Password subscription has lapsed. While your account is frozen, you can still view all your items, copy your passwords, and even copy items to vaults outside your account. But you won’t be able to:
Add new items to vaults
Edit items
Invite people to your family or team
Fill items in your browser
It becomes a read-only list of your passwords, instead of providing ongoing service at a fixed version of the software (unlike JetBrains IDEs, where you actually keep fully operational version of the IDE at the latest version you qualified for).
That upholds the promise (you still get whatever you paid for at some point) better than the other legal alternative (shutting down the app entirely, which ends the "lifetime"). If you want to get rid of the dead weight, and it doesn't happen organically, periodically offer specials for customers of the old app to transition to the new one.
What you should never do: take something that is "lifetime" and make it expire. That only demonstrates that you're not trustworthy.
The only valid thing to do is to refund the purchase price. Either all of it, or at the very least the difference between price paid and how much is would have cost to buy the pay as you go license up til now, plus a consolation bonus.
Yes, the app will be functional on Android 8 in 2039 - if you can still find a functional Android 8 device then (after the epoch roll-over).
Basic maintenance helps the app move forward to Android 30 (or whatever is current then), letting you enjoy precisely the features you've bought back in 2017, so to me that seems to be strictly better.
(I exaggerated version numbers and dates to take in the epoch roll-over issue as an outside-anybody's-responsibility issue with an ancient base OS: https://www.quora.com/What-will-happen-to-a-64-bit-Android-d..., but the same scenario also applies when talking about supporting whatever base OS of 2022 and the ways it will or will not be compatible to today's apps)
Of course you could also have made a promise with a provision for what happens in case you want to back out (typically with some sort of compensation if appropriate).