ManyCam dishonored my lifetime license
amazingcto.com
amazingcto.com
That being said; I dislike both full subscription (i.e. breaks on expiration) and lifetime licenses. Subscriptions are too expensive for software that rarely gets major investment and lifetime licenses are dishonest (e.g. company cannot work for free, so their funded is based on unlimited growth, which isn't realistic for most).
My current favorite business model is the "You're buying the current version and [years] of updates." Then typically you'll get some discount to renew your "[years] more of updates." This incentivizes them to deliver value, or you'll just stick with whatever version you purchased. Your software keeps working no matter what ("lifetime"). One example of someone who does this well is Jetbrains, but there are several companies.
Obviously subscription is the only option if they're delivering most of the value via a web-service of some kind (e.g. ChatGPT Plus).
It’s more reasonable if there’s an end product at the end. But you don’t want to discourage people using your 3D printing service because your bundling software access that people might not need.
Most of the other vendors also don't clearly indicate how long a new device will be supported for.
In a sane world, I could just install AOSP on any phone without a customization step, and download drivers from the manufacturer's website if it has any weird hardware.
Most of Android's own software updates are little more than window dressing these days.
One trickynes is with the "This incentivizes them to deliver value" part. The problem is that if the software just "works" and there are no compelling new features the user will quite rationally stop buying new updates. Which incentivises the developer to make sure that either the software never really "just works" or that they hype up new features to create FOMO. They will probably do both.
I guess they could also let go a portion of their developers and keep a skeleton crew around to maintain the product at current But that is not a realistic prospect for many reasons.
People talked about this regarding Photoshop. They said the new features are cool, but far from necessary, which made users stick with "old" but perfectly fine versions. The rumour was that that forced Adobe to change to a subscription model. But of course I don't have any first hand knowledge so it might be false.
Nowadays, there's also the security scare. If you don't immediately update to the latest and greatest release, hackers will invade your system, destroy your data, and eat all the food on your fridge.
Also, I think it's safe to assume that any system can be compromised at some point in one way or another, the best way is to focus on backups, monitoring and alerting.
Myself, I upgraded only Affinity Photo to v2, because I wanted to play with non-destructive workflow that's enabled by some of the new features. I studied their product page extensively, and couldn't find anything else particularly compelling, at least not for my limited (and non-professional) use cases. v1 is still a fine product.
(OK, I admit, 50% of the reason I upgraded, and 100% of the reason I bought the whole v1 suite in the first place, is because it's nice to do business with someone who isn't abusing their customers with subscriptions for a change.)
My wife, has a MacBook Pro M1. She brought version 2.
New we have the problem, that version 1 cannot work with the files of version 2.
Oh yes, that surprised me recently. I have both installed on my machine, and some file associations in the OS still link to version 1. I didn't expect v1 to flat out refuse to work with a file saved from v2.
In fact, I seem to be developing apprehension towards any kind of domain-specific "library managers". I tolerate game launchers/library managers like Steam or Origin or whatever, but that's only because it's the blessed way to legally buy games without having to purchase physical objects (CDs, DVDs, ...). But other than that?
For images, in the past I used ACDSee; these days, I use IrfanView. Both have some library management capabilities. I don't use them. Same is the case for music - it's fine of the player wants to provide virtual collections based on metadata, but if it tries to use them to abstract away the file system, I'll throw it out and look for a replacement. To date, I don't use Calibre for dealing with my Kindle, because every time I checked, the app was 90% about library management - meanwhile, all I actually want from it is the ability to convert between ebook formats.
Photos don't have a natural band/album/song taxonomy like music, or author/series (maybe)/book like books. Cameras just give you a date/sequence number structure, which is great for the purpose of incremental backups (just add folders for the last calendar day to the backup). That's almost completely useless for browsing photos, though. When you have several hundred gigs of photos, you need something better.
In lightroom I have photos catalogued by location, by event, and by subject, and a few ad hoc collections. E.g. I really like nature photography, so "by subject" means I have them grouped up by species, and "by location" also covers parks, zoos, etc.
The reject/star rating workflow makes it easy to get rid of out of focus/blurry/otherwise inadequate photos and flag keepers for developing. I don't bother going for a fine-grained rating, but five-stars means photos I'm developing right away, four-stars are photos that are good but not amazing. I often end up revisiting these and finding something that makes me change my mind once I put in the work to develop them.
You just have to actually feel the pain of not having a tool like that, and then buy into the workflow, I guess.
But of course it didn't do any such thing. Adobe could have produced software that people wanted to buy, instead.
If they are deliberately limiting their current product, that just makes it easier for a competitor to come in and steal their business. Every upgrade season people are going to be asking themselves "do I stick with this janky product or do I look to see if there's something better out there?"
Similarly if a company overhypes an update, it will make customers more skeptical of updates in the future. Generally it's pretty easy to wait a few months after a new release is out to see if it's positively received.
There are more nefarious antipatterns, like putting in bugs that don't crop up until around when the next upgrade becomes available, or breaking compatibility between versions so once a critical mass switches voluntarily, everyone else is pretty much forced. But really there's no system immune to abuse by sufficiently motivated bad actors.
[0] Also everyone please name the invoice file YYMMDD-<company>-<no>.pdf ;-) and send them via email, don't make me log in
Fully agree, I think this fair for the customer as well as the supplier.
I know enterprise customers demand guarantees for [years] of updates, but I think in the B2C world "You're buying the current version and updates as long as we provide them." is also a fair alternative. A good example for this kind of offering is the Reaper DAW.
This model is not as good for the customer as your version but as an indy developer I'd rather not promise [years] of support even if it is highly likely that I will provide it.
I don't know. I think that model is better for the customer.
After selling a desktop app with a license like that for a little while though, I’ve also unfortunately realized that not everyone understands it. I had a number of customers referring to it as a “subscription” (which it wasn’t, because it didn’t auto-renew and you could keep using the last version forever) or “lifetime” (which it wasn’t, because the updates were a paid option after a year).
Plus it’s hard to adequately explain how it works in few words.
For better or worse I think the majority of people understand 2 buckets: “subscription” and “lifetime”. So I went back to selling a lifetime license, with a caveat that any new features that incur ongoing costs might need to be an optional add-on subscription/pay-as-you-go/etc plan to cover those costs.
There was a time when it was expected that you bought a copy of Widgetmaker 2, and you could use it for as long as you liked, there might be some patches, there might not, but you own (or something close to it) the software and can use it whenever you want.
When Widgetmaker 3 comes out, it's a new product with new features, and you'd have to buy it separately if you want the new goodies. Simple. It worked well enough to build behemoths like 1990's Microsoft.
There are some companies that claim to offer this, but are very sneaky in their approach (NitroPDF is one I'm familiar with), they will offer a one-off purchase, but after a release or two, will no longer provide downloads for your version's installer, and in some cases won't activate it if you reinstall using your own copy of the installation media.
Bring back the days of installing your software, typing in your product key, then using it for as long as you wish.
Your cash flow for the software now becomes a big bang with then drawing on it until you run out and need some more.
Subscriptions offer a more measured approach. "I have 10,000 people with subscriptions of $10/month - each month I'll bring in $100k which is then used for these expenses."
There's no push to release a build because AWS changed their pricing or that you want to hire a new developer.
But they can be used to build anticipation for the future release.
One of the many downsides of "continuous release" is that it's changed the mindset about software in customer's minds. It used to be that a new release was a highly anticipated event. Now, when people think about updates at all, it's usually with dread.
Unfortunately, it is evident that the pay-once monetization model has been corrupted too. Many AAA game companies sell pre-orders and otherwise bet on people buying their games mostly on marketing and promises. Over the last decade in the AAA industry, marketing has steadily pushed out quality game production as means to make money. The games are hyped beyond what publishers know will be delivered, and in some cases, far beyond what's possible to deliver within the release schedule.
Now it's common for AAA publishers to mostly show "pre-alpha" footage (often this is a lie and at least beta footage is shown) or "not in-engine" cinematics before release. Demos are a thing of the past and gameplay from reviewers is embargoed until just before release. Sometimes embargo terms don't allow showing bugs.
So, overall, everything related to monetization of software seems to be corrupted by psychological manipulation and greed. And not just in games or sold software packages, also with SaaS subscriptions and social media. It's not impossible that more and more consumers will give up dealing with this nonsense in the future. We already see large numbers of people choosing not to engage in social media due to the emotional manipulation and echo chambering to squeeze out more advertising revenue out of them. And because I am in the games industry, I see signs of players simply abandoning AAA games for these manipulative practices and returning to indies. Time will come for SaaS and manipulative software licenses.
If consumer trust is further tarnished, the future will either involve returning to where we've been — clear and simple one time software fees and clear trial/demo periods, or it will involve something more insidious than what we have. In either case, the pricing models we have now are starting to tire consumers out.
"Tell 'em what's behind tab number 3, Johnny! Johnny: More gated features!"
There's probably a tipping point somewhere.
Then you are selling Lifetime licenses to a specific version (like 2023.04), which incudes free cost licenses to any versions released in the next X months. Advertised as "Lifetime license to 2023.04, and free updates for X months" (or X years, etc as applicable).
You can also choose to sell paid upgrade licenses which are identical to the main offering, except less expensive, and require the purchaser to own a license to some older version. The discount could potentially even scale depending on how old the old version is, but that usually makes more sense when no new releases were provided for free.
Note that this isn't what Jetbrains does. You only have a perpetual license to the version released when the subscription started. Thus, you'll have to downgrade and say good-bye to any features and fixes released over the term of your subscription.
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...
See here in particular
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203511589...
> If paying on a monthly basis, as soon as you pay for 12 consecutive months, you will receive this perpetual fallback license providing you with access to the exact product version for when your 12 consecutive months subscription started. You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for. (emphasis added)
What did I get wrong?
>access to the exact product version for when your 12 consecutive months subscription started.
(my emphasis)
As for the rest of the quote from Jetbrains:
>You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for.
In a one year subscription, the only version you will have paid 12 consecutive months for is the version that existed at the beginning of the 12 months. If a new version was released with only three months left in your subscription. Then it's impossible to have "paid 12 consecutive months for" it when your subscription is up.
Here's a screenshot[0] I just took of my account. The subscription started about 6 weeks ago when 2022.3 was the latest version. Thus, as shown in the screenshot it's the version I have perpetual license to. Even though 2023.1 was just released two weeks ago (roughly three weeks into my subscription) [1].
It's all worded terribly (probably intentionally so) so I don't fault anyone for getting the wrong interpretation. The whole thing gives me a bad impression even I though I love JB otherwise.
[0] https://imgur.com/a/SSLPijk [1] https://blog.jetbrains.com/webstorm/tag/webstorm-2023-1/
At that point you get the most recent version you've paid twelve months for.
If you cancel a monthly subscription after paying three months you get nothing, because you haven't paid for any version for 13 months.
You paid for a yearly subscription. So you've paid for 12 months already.
I showed you screenshot proof that even though 2023.1 is the current version. I only have a perpetual ("fallback") license for 2022.3. What, do you think I faked the screenshot?
This is such a weird exchange.
Here's another link to their site. After you realize you're wrong, I hope you're a little bit bothered by JetBrains antics. All this confusion is entirely on purpose.
Link: https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/206544479-Subs...
Quote from that page:
>If purchasing annually: You will immediately get a perpetual fallback license for the exact version available at the time of purchase. This license will allow you to use that exact version of the software should you decide to discontinue the subscription after the year is up.
I wish I found that page to begin with, but like I said - JetBrains has made it difficult to get a clear answer. So here we are.
Surely that's just a regular sale, not a "lifetime license". I mean, technically, it's a nonrevocable perpetual license, but that's what has traditionally been considered a "sale" in software. Saying "lifetime license" implies something else entirely.
Also specifically like how they remind me many times, and many months in advance that they are going to charge my credit card on my renewal date - unlike the scumbag companies that never want to draw attention to your upcoming renewal, so you don't have a chance to think about not renewing - and then they make it difficult to get a refund. Jetbrains has earned my loyalty - other companies could learn something from them.
Users have a perpetual license to the version released when the subscription started and not when it ended. Thus, if you let your subscription expire, you need to downgrade the software you already have installed on your system.
On the surface, it's not that big of a deal. But there's no guarantee that your downgrade will occur gracefully. It could break existing projects which is kinda scary.
Still, you're right that they did walk back some of their initially proposed changed after customers complained. All in all, I like Jetbrains and am happy to support them.
"You will receive perpetual fallback licenses for every version you’ve paid 12 consecutive months for."
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/en-gb/articles/207240845-What...
https://sales.jetbrains.com/hc/article_attachments/203511589...
>in the example you link if I continue the subscription for another 4 month I will be able to keep v2.
Well, I never claimed otherwise. But perhaps we can agree to summarize it all in a different way:
At the end of any twelve month (or more) subscription you are are forced to downgrade to a one year old version, regardless of what's been released since.
Agree?
If you want to cancel your subscription you need to pay for an additional year if you want to keep using the version you're currently using.
I'm not sure why JetBrains gets so much praise. Their licensing is objectively worse than when it used to be perpetual licenses with upgrade pricing. It's going to get worse too. I think JetBrains Space is going to get pushed more and it's a subscription lock-in nightmare.
It's very sad to see JetBrains locking their solution for dev environments behind a subscription.
Seemed a customer-friendly way of handling a subscription price increase.
What I thought I was buying was stop paying after a year and keep the current version.
I don’t really know what you mean by “dishonest”, that seems like a slightly hyperbolic word here. If someone pays for a lifetime license the company isn’t working for free nor necessarily assuming unlimited growth, they just have to understand and correctly price the average value of their contract, and there are many established successful businesses doing exactly already. And it’s common to price the lifetime license below the predicted average total costs, because money in the bank today is more valuable than later (it’s an investment, and the money can be used as such.) If there’s something I really know I’m going to use for years, and I can get a discount by paying up front, I’m totally in favor of doing so when it’ll cost me less and support the company as well.
At the end of the day, companies usually go out of business or else sell themselves to another company within a certain number of years. And a new company (like in this case) may change their mind about lifetime licenses, because it's a totally different set of owners with different priorities. "Everybody" knows this, but company management knows it even more than consumers, hence the dishonesty.
As a rule of thumb for consumers, anything supposedly perpeutal or "lifetime" for consumers in the business world is probably not even going to last 10 years. It's effectively always a lie.
They clearly didn't. They either didn't care, or it would have decreased the sale price of the company (or the ability to sell it at all) and they preferred the money.
So I absolutely hold the original owners equally responsible. They made the promise and they created the conditions for it to be broken. Which was an entirely predictable outcome, which is why calling it a "lie" doesn't seem inappropriate.
I guess you can decide to blame whoever you want, but the legal responsibility for upholding a contract lies with the company, and a change of ownership doesn’t change that from a legal perspective. It also doesn’t change or help anything to make wild assumptions about what the previous owners cared about. You simply cannot control what a new owner does with your company once you sell it, that’s what selling it means.
Using words like “lying” when people may have had every intention to meet the contract is just an exaggeratory drain on having reasonable conversation.
There are a million and one promises companies have made to customers and other companies by the time they are acquired. Installing clauses like you suggest for all of them is wildly unrealistic, would be very expensive in billable lawyer hours, may delay or subvert the sale, and above all may be unnecessary/unhelpful/confusing if the existing customer contract is already legally binding.
That companies find it inconvenient for their pocketbook and deal flow to actually bind themselves in a effective way to the terms of their promises to the legally unsophisticated public is ethically repugnant. If they do no want to do so then they can just not promise or imply such terms, nothing is forcing them to make promises that they have no intention to be bound by.
If a court believed the liquidated damages were punitive, they would reject the value specified by the contract and substitute a more reasonable estimate of the actual damages.
That is not the case here as this is the clearly strong party, being the entity drafting the contract of adhesion, uniformly adding it to contracts where they have complete control over the terms where it harms themselves for the benefit of the weaker party. I find it highly unlikely that a clause with such facts would be struck down in existing precedent or in the future, though I could be wrong. If I am wrong, then I need to come up with a new idea.
The company has the responsibility to honor its contracts before and after a sale, legally.
The relationship sounds more complicated for the article at the top, but since this sub thread detoured into abstract generalizations, and we’re now talking about responsibility categorically, a change of ownership of a company is transparent to the company’s legal responsibilities to its customers and contracts.
And yes, that’s what a sale legally means for the previous owner, generally speaking. They are transferring all control, profits, obligations, and debts to the new owner. It would be bad if that weren’t the case, because then company owners could weasel out of the company obligations by blaming someone else who no longer has any control.
Sure there is, there’s an entire thread here of people mentioning their faves.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35538466
It’s not proof or even true to claim that some examples mean all lifetime licenses will be voided. Like most things in life, it’s a distribution where some people behave well and some people don’t.
It’s valid to worry about whether a lifetime license will survive the future, whether you think any specific company is lying to you, and it’s worth estimating the risks of your purchase. But it’s not valid to conclude that the whole concept of this kind of license is a lie just because it doesn’t always work out.
If you actually buy software, there is no possibility that the company can take it away from you.
Naw, by that logic any sale of any kind is “deceptive”. You’re conflating sometimes with always. The existence of dishonest people doesn’t make you a dishonest person, right?
How so? Nobody is going to repossess something I've actually purchased. That's the whole point of a purchase.
A "lifetime license" is not like that.
It is not possible for the late-night Mexican drive-through joint (which I am about to patronize) to force me to "un-eat" the bacon breakfast burrito, chicken torta, and large horchata I have ordered and am prepared to consume.
> The existence of dishonest people doesn’t make you a dishonest person, right?
If I'm engaging in a behavior which dishonest people typically do and honest people typically don't, then it's entirely reasonable to scrutinize whether I'm being honest.
When companies that have offered lifetime licenses don’t fail, they inevitably kill the lifetime part of the license by pulling different tricks like, creating a cloud version which now becomes their future version, while the desktop version is no longer maintained, or rebranding the same app as a new app where actual development continues while the old app gets minimal updates at most, or not updating the app with the lifetime license so it works on modern OSes and platforms.
If you’re lucky, you may have snagged a lifetime license the company offered early in its life, which it then stopped offering once it started getting successful, so it continues letting you use the lifetime license because the owners of such licenses are few enough that any marginal revenue they may earn by pulling the above tricks is not worth the reputational damage.
You could also sell mission-critical software with a lifetime license. It just has to be bad enough that it can outlive the user.
If the product can run standalone on the client's computer, make it a license for that specific major version, and sell the upgrade to the next major versions for a fraction of the price. Those who wants the latest features can buy the upgrade and sustain the business, and those who are happy with the current version can keep using their version without feeling wronged.
But the implication is that it's for your lifetime.
How does your lifetime license save you money over just engaging in a straight-up purchase?
When I purchased the Plex lifetime license 6 years ago, I asked myself how many years to break even vs if I purchased yearly. The answer was 2.5 years.
I also asked myself if Plex was going to last at least that long, and I thought they were, and they did, and I wanted to support them.
The problem is that the industry has largely decided to combine security and feature updates into an inseparable whole, which I think is a bad thing both from the customer's point of view and from a security point of view.
The default license for almost everything, including software, is lifetime. I do not pay Ford an annual fee to advance the timing of the ignition sequence when I need to accelerate into traffic. I do not renew a subscription for the thermostat on my wall every winter when I need to put it in heating mode. When I was young, I bought a license for Epic pinball from then Epic MegaGames. I still have a license to that & can still enjoy it.
Agree on services but not if it is merely a service to justify a subscription
There's two "lifetime" models, as you noted:
1. the good old way, provide someone an installer and a license key valid for this version and optionally older versions and N years of patches. Adobe used to do this with the Creative Suite, Microsoft did it for Office and does it for Windows, Atlassian does so for their datacenter and not-yet-expired self-hosting licenses and JetBrains does it for their IDEs as well.
2. "lifetime" as in "buy once, get upgrades in perpetuity". That one entirely depends on the business model of the developer. If it's just some hobbyist developing a piece of software because they want to solve a problem they have (e.g. Hyperswitch, SizeUp for Mac) or open-source developers, that's just fine - they do the work anyway for themselves but get a ton of coffee. If it's something MANY MANY MANY people want but the maintenance effort is low, something like the Slysoft/Redfox suite of DRM removal tooling, it can work out as well. The critical thing is something that needs a ton of ongoing maintenance... and most of these fail spectacularly or do rug pulls on their users.
It is not difficult to calculate the net present value of such products so that you can charge the correct price. It is incompetent management that gets into these situations. The correct response from consumers is to file a small claims suit for a refund. And/Or apparently to blast to company loudly on social media :)
IE years ago I got a vmware workstation license, I bought it at v15, got a v16 update, and I still have access to v16 which works perfectly fine for my use cases.
* lifetime is __ years
Band in a Box has managed to make this model work for them for several decades now. Each version you buy does not expire, but only gets updates for about a year, and entitles you to an upgrade discount (slightly higher if you buy the next years' version, a little bit lower if you wait longer). The annual updates have both some new features and some new content, so there is always a bit of an incentive to upgrade, but no extreme pressure.
Neither the software nor the business model are perfect, but both are reasonable enough to retain a loyal customer base.
After working on UXWizz (self-hosted analytics) for thirteen years and trying to find the right pricing model, I ended up to the same conclusion. For downloadable products, it makes most sense for both the buyer and the seller.
Instead of going the "hey, here is a new version of the app, you need to subscribe now", they explicitly included a thank-you note directed at everyone that bought the "Premium In-App Purchase" at the beginning, stating that nothing will change for existing Premium Users, that invested in the app right from the start.
I definitely share the tone of the article, and cannot understand the reasoning behind such a decision. The fact that I read "MandyCam" instead of "ManyCam" at first, and was wondering what that kind of article is doing here, is just the anecdotal cherry on top.
Now, because I have the “Blink Classic Plan”, I won’t get every new feature they introduce, but I won’t lose access for my original use case, which is great.
Definitely a nice touch from companies looking to build a community.
Overall that worked out pretty well for me, because the new model includes a ton more than what I paid for initially.
Sadly, for larger companies loyalty to the customer base doesn't make financial sense, when you can make $$$ from new users, and your old users just cost you money to support.
You're potentially converting your customer into an evangelist for your competitor.
I don't understand why someone buying a high end e-reader like this one should be charged for basic cloud connectivity, so I'm really happy to have it for free.
Originally it was an ad-free freemium app. A one-time IAP unlocked premium features (£2.99).
Then all features we made free for all users. (People who already paid were no worse off.)
Then ads were added, even for people who had paid the one-off £2.99 early on. The only way to get rid of them is to pay an annual subscription fee.
The amounts are small, and the app is great. It's not easy to keep everyone happy and build a sustainable business at the same time.
(Similarly, in a much better world a politician who had changed their mind or did not have an informed opinion would need to say that out loud; but when I teach—smart, motivated young adults!—I have to make them unlearn so much fear of being wrong and shame of not understanding things that I can’t see admitting ignorance working out in real-world politics.)
In narrower circles, this could probably work. Amazon is already forced to pay newly-hired programmers above market rate, I hear,—would a former Amazon executive need to?
Your idea sounds like something that independent journalism can pick up or some non profit organization that exposes these kinds of things. Of course I'm sure someone will go after them sooner or later.
Individuals and companies knowing more information about the professional history of the people they're doing business with is always better.
I get your point though - I'm just more inclined to believe this would be used for good, rather than evil. I also agree that people should have a chance at redemption.
I think you might be over-stating the effect this would have. Most people won't care. And if Elon Musk is any indication, having a bad reputation only hurts so much if the offering is compelling (eg. Space-X, Tesla). Both of those are huge successes despite Elon having a questionable reputation personally and professionally.
Note - I'm making no judgement here - I'm just talking about the consensus opinion on Elon as I see it.
2. Most startups fail, they tend to abandon their customers with little or no warning, and then write a boastful blog post like it's okay and normal to throw away what could've been a business to someone else if they tried to find a home for it. To me, that's disrespectful of both investors' and customers' time and money.
3. Most "brands" on Amazon tend to be meaningless nonsense because a reseller overseas decided to satisfy the need to call it something and just pick whatever because they don't intend to stick around. As soon as people find out they're selling junk or they have a problem, they throw it away and pull another brand from the disposable brand box.
> Upgrade now to ManyCam Studio Lifetime for only $39 and get access to all the future versions and updates, forever!
What they presented to the user was unequivocal. In a just world, the company who sold ManyCam (Visicom Media) should not be able to get away with this.
> On June 30, 2022, we entered into a License Agreement with Visicom (the "License Agreement"), pursuant to which we agreed to distribute, at the discretion and direction of Visicom, a specified number of ManyCam software updates to certain license holders to whom Visicom has previously granted a "lifetime" license to ManyCam software. As consideration for distributing the software updates, Visicom paid us an initial upfront nonrefundable payment of $65,000. The License Agreement provides that Visicom may purchase additional licenses at prices specified therein. Other than providing a one-time, limited license to Visicom for the distribution of ManyCam software updates pursuant to the terms of the License Agreement, we do not have any obligation to provide support or service to the licensee end users.
I archived the email's "view in browser" link here: https://archive.is/y23DN
I personally couldn't stomach that & I'm definitely no paragon of virtue.
However, he seems to have ignored his own advice and not understood the ManyCam EULA.
“… This license is in effect until one of the parties terminates the license. You may terminate the license by no longer using the ManyCam software or web services. Visicom Media Inc may terminate the license at any time for any reason. Visicom Media Inc may change this software license agreement at any time. The license agreement may also be terminated if you violate any of the terms and conditions of this agreement.”
“… ManyCam may change from a free service to a pay service at any time and vice versa, and may change its pricing structure at any time in any way. ManyCam may discontinue its service at any time for any reason. ManyCam may charge for any support. ManyCam may limit software features or access to certain parts of the ManyCam website with no warning or notice and with no liability. ManyCam may stop service either temporarily or finally any time for any reason with no warning or notice and with no liability.“
https://web.archive.org/web/20220517072603/https://manycam.c...
“ManyCam is now under new ownership. […] Visicom Media stands by the Lifetime customers and will continue to support them by arranging with the new owner for a total of two years of free subscription."
Lifetime perpetual licence!*
*but we can cancel any time without any penalty lol teehee
is not enforceable? I don't think it would fly in court where I live, it doesn't matter if it was in a signed contract if it's preposterously unfair.
edit: and I don't even necessarily think a lifetime licence is something a company should offer, they are quite unfair on the developer. It's a big commitment to say you'll support some software in perpetuity. But the solution to that is to not offer a lifetime licence. It's not to just outright lie and say you are when you aren't. And if you're one company looking to buy another, you buy those contracts along with it and should take that into account in your due diligence.
Liars surrounded by a sea of liars, but still liars.
"You agree any legal dispute involving ManyCam services and software must take place in the state or federal courts in Montreal, Quebec."
and
"You consent to exclusive jurisdiction and venue in Montreal, Quebec and waive the defense of forum non convenience."
and yet
"If a U.S. court finds any part of this license agreement unenforceable then the remainder of the agreement will continue intact and in full force and effect."
Basically, it's your typical "We have rights, you have no rights" kind of contract. If the OP had even briefly scanned that "agreement" (and let's face it, most of us don't) I'm sure they would have realised that their "lifetime" license had no legs.
It's kind of like if you buy a car as-is but the seller goes out of their way to knowingly lie about the condition of the car -- saying it's fit to drive when the brake lines have a leak or something. If there's any evidence then the courts will usually side with the buyer.
The question is, will you step up and fight for your fair portion? If the company has 100 diehard customers affected by this and 99 of them don't fight it, then it's easy to appease the 1 while still coming out ahead.
Minitab's solution was to offer me a 10% discount on a new pay by month license.
No thanks, I'm off to pandas and for quick investigations I'm using Wizard for OSX which is absolutely blow your socks off amazing the first time you slice and dice a record set and do comparative analysis with them looking over your shoulder. https://www.wizardmac.com
https://forum.manycam.com/uploads/default/optimized/2X/0/0da...
But the wording allows for many options.
A lifetime license, to a specific version. With no updates. A lifetime license for upgrades.
The only recourse is taking them to court which will end up costing your time, money, and sanity.
Time used so far: 4 years
Time remaining with new license: 2 years
Time lost due to license change: 20 years
Damages awarded to the plaintiff: $30
Plus the opportunity cost of your lost time.
https://web.archive.org/web/20190508161003/https://manycam.c...
I like the jetbrains model well enough.
In all seriousness though, I think the only lifetime licenses that come to mind are probably ones like JetBrains and old software where you had the install medium on a disk and a key to install it with and it required no software updates, assuming the software doesn't need the internet to verify, you're pretty much guaranteed what you paid for. Don't you miss lifetime ownership of software licenses? :)
And how would they help in this situation?
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decentralized_application
What is a real scam is lifetime services (storage/backups/emails/...).
But if I pay a few bucks and get 2-3 years of use I'm probably going to be pretty happy. If I spend tons of bucks then I'll probably be less than happy.
There have been countless big updates, all for free. It can now edit 360° and multicam footage and many more features like object tracking and HDR support have been added for free. Just browse the long list of release notes at https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT201237 and you'll get the idea.
It's still updated regularly, and all upgrades are free.
(Total Commander is a dual-pane file manager for Windows)
They switched to annual accounts in 2015 and have been encouraging people to move but I'm not convinced of the value-for-money if I do so.
This seems like an exercise a CTO should have down pat.
We all know it's technically impossible. Once your typical-day WordPress weighs more than 5 GB, they'll be calling you urgently to split it up or increase the supposedly unlimited plan.
Wasn't it unlimited? We all know unlimited server resources don't exist, especially not for $3/month.
So I don’t understand the value add - is it used for more than is being described, or if there’s legitimately a piece of software that does something so trivial yet people are actually paying for it.
I'm not saying this as a lawyer or having scrutinized the license terms. It's more of a life lesson. Before you fork over your one-time fee, ask yourself: are they offering a great deal because they're a great company with a great product and a great business model? Or are they trying to hoover up money because they're on life support and the bills are coming due?
Side note: one company seems to have gotten this balance right. There's a music product called FL Studio that sells lifetime licenses. I've had mine for over 20 years, and it's still updated. The license was expensive (good to keep the company going), they sell DLC (good incentive to keep the product fresh), and the product itself is inherently a platform around which a strong community has formed (good because the company knows their product effort translates directly into word-of-mouth advertising).
When I was in high school I had an opportunity to learn customer service from one of the greatest businessmen that lived. My grandpa, the produce farmer and peach orchardist. He owned and operated the largest peach orchard in Oregon at the time and had customers that had been returning to his orchard for a lifetime.
Why, would they keep coming back?
Because he made a produced a final product that was so sweet and juicy the flavors would explode in your mouth and the juice would run down you arm and drip off your elbow.
Because they wanted to support a family man that was dedicated to providing a good living for his family, who also worked for him.
Because they wanted to get out of the city and see, for the briefest of moments, what is was like in the fresh air and sunshine of the Oregon countryside.
Because they wanted the opportunity to harvest the food they were going to eat and choose what they wanted for themselves.
and many other reasons... He would talk with customers he would see only once or twice a year and discuss the topics of the day in a down to earth way that only a farmer can express. And they would keep coming back...
Don't run off your customers. They are a business' most valuable asset.
If you want to know more about customer service and how it used to be, read Les Schwab's book, "Pride in Performance: Keep It Going".
If you want to give someone money based on whether they deserve it, rather than in a market transaction based on the value of the goods they are selling, I'm pretty sure there are better charities around than "pick the nearest produce farmer".
With the trend of new business models, my best expectation is that I could 'own' everything up to the time I made the purchase. I am not expecting more, but please don't take away what I have paid for.
I've had other lifetime licenses that have been honoured even after those companies shifted to subscriptions. I always feel bad using the Transit app because of that experience. Wouldn't recommend.
On the other hand, if you strip the existing software for parts, and put out something substantially different under new branding, at least you're giving something up.
Lifetime of bug fixes and back ports, that is ridiculous. He is still free to use his software in a VM. Maintaining old versions like this is super expensive and is generally only done for customers that are paying a lot of money for that service. You basically need a whole second dev team for back-ports. Usually this is only done for government or industrial type stuff where the software is certified for a particular version. They pay a lot of money for that service, people who don’t need pinned versions are far better off with a subscription.
As far as I can tell no licenses were revoked, the author is still able to use his old versions and thus this is a total non issue.
I’ve personally been through the process of shifting customers from a perpetual license to a subscription model. Some did ask us to maintain old versions indefinitely for them but to explained to them that wouldn’t be viable without charging for that and since so few people wanted old versions maintained that cost would be amortized over fewer customers and would be much more expensive that simply updating. It’s not just one old version that needs updating it’s N, and if the fix depends on a new feature, well that would have to back-ported as well, it’s a total insane mess. I would ask the customer what their reasons for pinning to a version and make sure we didn’t break those reasons in new versions.
I have some customers still using V1 from 14 years ago and they’re still happy with it.
Don't trust any lifetime agreement. And conversely, anyone that sells lifetime licenses to me sounds really naive and that they have no idea what they're doing. It's not a sign of a mature business.
Square Enix screwed over android users who'd paid 20/game for the Final Fantasy series (I had purchased them all at one point), and for no reason deprecated the 'old versions' and released new ones (with zero updates/changes to the apps) and charged the full price again.
They never updated the original apps, the same bugs persisted for years, they finally update just to charge again.
I forget the publisher but Titan Quest on Android did the same thing. Shifted to a 'legendary edition' and screwed all original purchasers. Enough people complained that they released the add-ons for the old version at a higher price.
Now I just buy games on Switch or steam. Can't even re-buy the games on switch as after the SE screwing FF7 remake and then android apps I'm done giving them money.
So back to emulators to play the classics before IAPs.
Feel like everything just gets worse instead of the better I'd always imagined =(
Plex could renege tomorrow, but they've absolutely earned the benefit of the doubt in my opinion.
Twonky currently is the only one I'm using, but all of them seem to respect the lifetime licenses! They've moved on to newer versions which use subscription models, so I don't get new features. Twonky still offers old version downloads (which is nice), but I'm not sure the others do.
Honestly, I'm not sure I need any of this software anymore now that VLC is available on Android, Xbox, etc. and supports reading off SMB shares.
Twonky (running on a WRT350n in ~2010) was the first media server that got me on the path to Plex. Glad to hear it’s still kicking.
If that is successful you might just see them scrap charging entirely.
Extremely scummy move, they changed those terms in 2017 if I recall and got a ton of flak for it.
Its infinitely worse than never having done it at all.
The bigger issue is that they degraded the game because of the free players and subjected those who paid to the same ads and noise that you wouldn't expect from a free game.
For example I paid for TF2 and don't really care that it is free now. They do give me an occasional crate to tempt me to buy a key but it is fairly unobtrusive (and I think they had that before it went free anyways). If I was asked to buy stuff after every game I would be quite upset and would like my money back.
I think that's a materially different situation to selling lifetime licences and then reneging on that.
Realistically, this is fraud.
But in software, so often there's no significant cost to lifetime subscriptions. Then it's just bastardy to revoke them.