Hacker News Reader

Comment by lovegrenoble | Hacker News Reader

Expressive Animator gives you the right to use the current version of the software (v1) in perpetuity and entitles you to receive free updates until version 2 becomes available (no planned release date currently).

So... is it the real lifetime license? What about the next versions?

View on HN

When version 2 is out, you will have the option to upgrade for a fee or to continue to use version 1 for free for as long as you like.

I think that this is a disingenuous use of the (legacy) term 'Lifetime license'. No-one who hasn't recently been screwed over by a software house like 4K Video Downloader [1] would think that 'lifetime' only covered the current lead version number.

A new term such as 'All version [n] updates included' (or something less clunky) needs to be found. At least one could Google it and understand the proposition, if its meaning was not clear - but 'lifetime license' is massively deceptive.

[1] https://reddit.com/r/4kdownloadapps/comments/1hbmdpn/really_...

It is not, because you do get a lifetime license. Of course you don't get free "lifetime updates", but you can keep using the version you have paid for as long as you want.

The fact that every single person that brings this up is met with a form of "we don't see a problem, you're just reading it wrong" is a bad sign for the future of this project.

The product's value is not given by its pricing model, and the future is bright.

That's a fine business model (similar to Jetbrains) but your ad copy is a bit misleading:

From the pricing page:

"Enjoy the benefits of our lifetime license and get access to all features and upcoming updates with a one-off payment"

It's not misleading, it's simply not factually correct or their intention.

So apparently it’s not your lifetime, it’s the lifetime of the software version. If you never upgrade then it could be your lifetime.

It's always the lifetime of the version or the lifetime of the software, never your lifetime.

By lifetime I mean you can use it as long as you like without having to pay again. So it depends on how you get the software, if it’s web based then yes there may be a lifetime of the software but if you install it on your machine then you will stop getting bug fixes or security updates at some point but software itself won’t stop working until your hardware dies.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com