KapaaIan

What CD said. You can't sell perpetual licenses WITH baked in upgrades forever. Back in the day, you would buy "Productivity Software '92" and get upgrades to '92 until '92 was dropped from support. At that point, you could either a. Continue using it as it drifted further from current software and became more insecure. b. Pay to upgrade to Productivity Software '95 and start the cycle over again. or c. (usually in enterprise) pay for a perpetual license and then pay for maintenance which authorized you to upgrade and get more support. Moment you stop paying, you're stuck on the major version you're on. Eventually option d. Subscription came out and gradually became the standard. Why? Lower upfront costs gets more people in the door, the cost can be better calculated and budgeted for and the companies themselves don't need to "sell" all the time. The model being implemented here is 100% NOT a subscription model. It is option C. A perpetual license with a year of maintenance. This does allow users to make their own judgements on when to pay. Year is up, nothing new on horizon I need, wait to pay for maintenance until I have a compelling reason to upgrade, then get year of updates to catch up. This would be like having Photoshop 2, skipping 3 and upgrading to 4. We'd all love to get everything forever for free, but that's not how it works. This is the best (or least worst if you prefer) option that provides revenue to Lime, while taking care of everyone. And as long as it isn't 10 times the price for a pro license, you can still pay to not have to think about it. And many companies will because of the difference between capitalized vs. expense. Obviously ALL of this goes out the Window if the grandfathering and new Pro Licenses go out the Window, but the fact that LT is planning to continue to sell new Pro licenses indicates that such a change is not coming anytime soon. Doing that would open one up to litigation.