Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jeroenhd | Hacker News Reader

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I disagree. Hosting licensed copies of software is the norm. Steam does it, Google does it, Apple does it, EA and Ubisoft do it, and all of them host much larger software (including free updates) than FileZilla. Maybe hosting 5GiB image downloads on a dedicated web portal the same way Microsoft does is a bit much to ask, but this is nothing.

We're talking 50 megabytes of storage here, per version. They can save themselves a lot of hosting money by letting lifetime subscribers download the latest version, but that'll cut into their profit margins of course. Even if they don't want to host the setup on their website, providing a 50MiB installer file on request has to be the bare minimum customer support I'd expect.

My experience is that some people do confuse FileZilla with Mozilla. That said, everyone I know just uses the free version, despite the spyware that's bundled with the installer.

Based on this post, I wouldn't buy their professional subscription.

> Hosting licensed copies of software is the norm. Steam does it, Google does it, Apple does it, EA and Ubisoft do it

Correct me if I'm wrong, but they do not store previous versions for you to choose, only the current version.

If you have an iphone on an old version of ios, you can install the latest version of some software you bought/downloaded for free compatible with that ios version.

Or you get an error and can't do that despite the popup prompting you to do so

Steam often provides every version of a product. (The ui has no option to download them, but you can fetch them via the builtin console)

This is irrelevant since your steam game license applies to all subsequent versions. The argument is it's immoral sell version specific licenses with no way to get to said specific version.

This is a little tangent, but up until somewhat recently Apple hosted ftp servers with old versions of Mac OS available. So you could get system 7.6 (released 1997) straight from them for a new install on your old machine. I think that is no longer the case, but within the last decade you still could. (I think, idk, time flies)

Amusingly, download.info.apple.com still appears to serve all the files that used to be on the old FTP site, including a small and somewhat random subset of old system software versions for Mac and Apple II, Newton firmware updates, etc., but directory browsing isn't enabled, so you need direct links, which you can get from the Wayback machine[1].

But once you have the links, you can download the actual files directly from Apple, e.g., if you're ready to upgrade your Mac Plus to the latest and greatest version of System 6, download

https://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Sof...

https://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Sof...

https://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Sof...

https://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Sof...

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20141025043714/http://www.info.a...

That's because they allow you to download new updates with your existing license.

In this case, the existing license is only valid up to a certain point, after which you need to buy a subscription (because the perpetual license wasn't quite so perpetual).

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