Slashdot Mirror
Sunset Clauses in Software
DaveAtFraud writes: "Ed Foster over at InfoWorld
has an interesting column on "sunset" clauses in commercial software. I don't have a problem with people who write, say, anti-virus software charging for a "subscription" to their virus signature update service. I am paying for something of value to me and it costs them something to maintain this data. I do have a problem with the same people extracting a little extra "squeeze" every couple of years and forcing me to learn yet another user interface just because they have decided that the old one looks little dated. Somehow, I don't buy (no pun intended) that their engine for scanning a byte stream has changed again."
I can't blame them. It takes effort to continually support old versions. This affects the bottom line. Companies(especially public ones) are all about making money. When it gets to a point where you are supporting people using old software and you are losing money, that's when you pull the cord. It's like Microsoft ending support for Win95. Can you blame them? It wasn't even that great when it first came out, 6 years ago. If I was them, I wouldn't have given people quite so long.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Is this trend to rent software actually a bad thing for companies? I work mostly in research/academia so a lot of our software is done in house and we dont have this problem (and the remainder's Linux etc) but I'd assume that both sides in business would benefit - the seller gets a constant revenue stream, no major bumps like the currently get with new releases (at least after Bug Fix 1 gets released *grin*) and the purchaser gets to see a fixed cost each quater rather than one off costs.
Ok, for the individual its not a good thing and don't get me started on the privacy issues of product activation but for a lot of things a continual rental model would be better and may stop quite the same level of boom & bust in the industry.
Well thats my $0.02 worth. Any opions from our corporate bretheran?
I am paying for something of value to me and it costs them something to maintain this data.
If companies support (even at a cost) older products (take Ed's example of partition magic), it *does* cost the company money to train their support staff, and often the number of (paid) calls coming through asking help aren't enough to warrant the extra education for staff...
Try using Autocad for a while.....i don't care if they no longer support older versons...but deciding when the older versions can no longer be upgraded is damn close to blackmail....unless you pay the upgrade price then and there....you'll have to buy complete versions and full price.
for a $25 piece of software?....fair enough
for $1000s of dollars worth of software...they have a responsibility to thier customers to retain the value of the software _especially_ when the licenses are non transferrable _and_ hardware/software locked.
The s/w vendors know we (and others like us):
Look at stuff like MS-Word/Exchange/Outlook/OE. Are there *really* many more features in each that warrant the massive recycling of s/w that most large institutions go through regularly?
It's getting just as bad with the app server markets as well. Vendors conveniently dropping support for older (their own) products (when the apps are running just fine for us) or for the OS level our stuff runs on just to have to buy new licenses (despite the fact that we do pay "maintenance" yearly).
When I compare those with personal programs like MusicMatch and Xmanager - both with lifetime licenses and very decent feature-rich updates - it's hard to let the others justify their practices.
Mind the gap...
It wouldn't be so bad if when you pruchased a license to use their product you were offered:
option a:
Pay more for the license NOW, support guarenteed for 10 years.
option b:
Pay less for the license NOW, support for 2 years, then subscrition support thereafter.
If they justify re-charging to cover support costs then this is a far more honest way of doing it.
If they wanna characge because their product license has expired, then tough.
After all nodoby buys a product 'software', just a license to use software. If the license has limited lifetime perhaps consumers in this market economy should shop elsewhere?
But what I'd also like to see is older versions being made free (as in beer) after a specfied time.
I agree with you here. I love Borland for releasing their old Turbo C and Pascal environments.
But with some software, such as the anti-virus software mentioned in the article, the old versions aren't really useful. If they released the source maybe, but that's pretty unlikely.
appended to the end of comments you post, 120 chars
Because, unless you've packed so much good stuff into your new version, people will use your old one and decide not to ever buy your current one.
It's sad but true.
There's no magic rule for this, though. I happily use an FTP client that's several years old. I also play C64 emulated games. I'm not going to get a new FTP client any time soon, but I still got Return 2 C Wolf because C64 games don't scratch the same itch (multiplayer eyecandy immersion).
"If you create user accounts, by default, they will have an account type of Administrator with no password." KB Q293834
Seems like they are using the auto industry model, where people upgrade their cars every 2 years(except for the poor who have to keep them til they fall apart). The problem with that is that cars are mechanical, and do tend to wear out. Software, on the other hand, is just electrons, that are good for as long as the medium that holds them isn't corrupted. It is a new type of product, and the companies need to find a new way of making money off of it, but most of them aren't looking, they are just using the old models. Suprising how conservitive this *cutting edge* industry is.
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
It is an problem of the business modell of selling software as a boxed product. This modell is only viable if you have a snowball market like MicroSoft enjoyed in previous years. But they are not typical for other vendors that have fixed market size. There are only so many people in the US that use Bookkeeping software. And it cannot be sold abroad.
While the support cost are something that acrues only after you have sold the software, there is also the next development cycle to pay for. The worst thing that could happen to a vendor of boxed software is that the old version is 'good enough' for the customer.
Why do I use a emacs, an editor that is 20 years old? Because with version 19 it was just good enough to support what I need. That was like 6-7 years ago. Yes I now have v21, because it came with my SuSE, but while I would have payed for the v19, I would never have upgraded.
Microsoft has realized this problem many years ago, and has been mellowing the customers with rumours about 'only-by-subscription' licenses, ever since it became apperent to them that their market is about to be saturated and that people will stop bying new licenses. And that even with the Redmond-Tax on new computers, which ensures that units are sold everytime somebody buys a new computer. But guess what. That market will soon be saturated as well. Apart from OC-Geeks and Hardcore Gamers today PCs are just 'fast enough' for most users.
Wellcome to the new world of subscription based Software. Did you realize that this will put OpenSource on a even more even footing with the proprietory kind, as the costs become easily comparable. Maybe that is why Microsoft fears OpenSource. Not because of the Windows-Linux comparison, but because of the ability to sell support for StarOffice cheaply.
my EUR 0.02
If that's their goal, they should just provide free upgrades. Then the customers would get better protection without spending a few more dollars. Lots of shareware programs do this, like WinZip and mIRC. I'd be much more willing to buy a program if I would get free upgrades for life, or at least for a few years (and if I didn't have to give up all my rights in the EULA).
It would also be nice to have the old versions made free. In my 8086 Assembly programming class, lots of people found the old Borland C compiler (2.0) very useful, which is available for free in Borland's "software museum". We only needed it for one assignment (linking ASM and C code into one program), and nobody is going to buy a C compiler for that (newer compilers make writing 16-bit code difficult anyway).
Most decent pieces of software should evolve and improve. Normally, if you are a serious user, you will want to have the latest version. The year's old source of GhostScript used to be free - but I was prepared to pay for this year's when I was doing something complex.
However, occasionally, the software does not evolve in the way you want. I know one image processing product that was lean and efficient, if a little dull. It was bought by another company, who bloated the code, stuck in all sorts of unwanted features, and slowed the thing to a crawl. The dedicated users are still using a version from about 5 years ago. Okay, shit happens, but they still had a working program. A 'sunset' clause would force these users to abandon their working product or fear litigation, but would not supply a workable alternative. Ten years or more ago, you used to get a lot of booby-trapped software, dongled code, and stuff like that, because it was sold by people who did not really understand software, what it cost, and why it was worth it.
We don't want to go back to those days. My gut feeling is that there ought to be a legal challenge to 'sunset' clauses. Whether you read them or not when you open the product packaging or click on the 'install' button, you ought to expect the one-machine use of the product in its supplied state, unless there are clearly explained exceptional reasons. Anything else would be a breach of the normal balance of trust between the user and the supplier. In the US, this sort of thing ought to attract federal anti-trust suits.
ahem, we still use SQL6.5 corperate wide and told microsoft to bugger off on an upgrade. 7.0 and 2000 offer NOTHING to us.
:-)
when told it was unsupported, we made the salesman mad with the obligratory , "cince when has microsoft offered any useable support? we have had to support all microsoft products In house with people and firms that are not a part of the microsoft empire. Microsoft doesnt offer support."
with that I'm sure he marked us as trouble makers and scheduled an audit.... and my boss will not let them in without a warrant from a judge
You might not be able to get the support direct from Ford, but some guy might be able to do something on the side.
You might not be able to get the support direct from Microsoft, but some guy might be able to do something on the side.
Hmmm. But if you buy a piece of software that depends on the internet, how long should a company support it? Let's say interest for battle.net fell off dramatically in four years, so that only a few hundred people were playing it. Should the company continue to support the service? Should they support it after twenty years? I'm not trying to nix your point, which is valid, it just got me thinking.
This is just my opinion as a software developer.
;) ) costs money, but hopefully the sale of the product makes up for that. The product will, most likely, change (hopefully for the better) over time but free support for the product should last no less than 6 months. 6 months should give a customer plenty of time to get familiar with the installation and use of the software.
I have never, nor will I willingly place a time bomb in software I create that forces a customer to buy another version of said software needlessly.
Having said that though, there is one approach along these lines that I don't necessarily disagree with. When the customer buys the product, part of what they, the customer, is expecting is support. Employing support people (What, you don't expect me to do this myself do you? I'm a programmer.
After the predesignated length of time - which, by the way, the customer should be made aware of from the start - support should cost money. Keeping your tech support knowledge base going, keeping knowledgeable, experienced people on your tech support staff and supporting older versions of your software all cost money. The more versions of your software you support, the more it will wind up costing you. Since these old versions don't reflect new sales, the costs have to be made up with charging for support.
Of course, you could go to another extreme and offer either free or significantly reduced-cost upgrades for life for your customers. That's always nice.
My sigs always suck.
-- Some people say they can tell the time by looking at the Sun, but I have trouble seeing the numbers.
"This guy was very insistent that if we did not buy renewals we would be sued [because] our current licenses would be expiring after two years,"
This example isn't a case of getting charged for tech support, or a company ending its support. Its a having software "expire" right from under you. And a long as software is "licensed" the customer is at the mercy of the vendor and that license. There was a similar attempted 'expiration' when a certain freeware video conferencing program was finally bought out by a company that had been licensing the technology. Problem is not long before this the buyout, the freewarwe guys released an upgraded program that was on par in key ways with the what the new company was planning to release.
Heres the rub. The new company tried to declare the freeware software that had already been released, "expired". They then began to try to pressure folks to delete, and pull from their websites software that was packaged with a freeware license.
Who know's whats lurking down in the bottom of those EULA's - I figure the big boys have inserted a legal ace or two in there EULA's for just such an thing, "This license may be terminated when we say so, and you must quit using it and burn your hard drive" and are just figuring out to keep Joe Customer from blowing chunks when they try to push it down his throat.
Releasing old versions for free is probably the *worst* thing they could possibly do. If you don't use antivirus software, you're either unaware of the risks you're running, or willingly know you're unprotected
If you use outdated (free!) antiviral software, you mistakenly believe you're protected, and won't take actual precaution (like buying modern antival software).
GoZilla used to be a really slick download manager. Then they were bought out by Radiate, which prompty installed spyware. Okay, I thought, I'll just use OptOut to remove the spyware and continue using it. Well, then I learned that the new version requires you to pay extra $$. Apparently the new company doesn't honor the "free upgrades" policy of the original company with which I purchased the software...
I led a small, innovative Internet software company for six years -- long enough for several of our older products to be superceded by newer, different, or competing ones, and to ultimately be retired.
In most cases, when we finally discontinued all support for a product, especially a potentially mission-critical server product, we made a fully-functional perpetually-licensed version of the software available for free to anyone who wanted it, and who acknowledged that there was no warranty or support.
Our logic was simple: once there was no more money for us to make with a product, if people found it useful (in its completely unsupported state), then at least we were doing something good for our customer community, and hopefully generating a little goodwill.
I think for some kinds of software, making "retired" products available (unsupported) for free has the potential to be good for everyone involved.
-Mark Kriegsman
my mother has an IBM laptop with norton antivirus preinstalled. Thats good. You've paid for the software once. That was one of the motivators for her to buy the laptop. All she now need to do is to upgrade her access to the virus definition updates. Thats good. Now just recently her last subscription ran out and she wanted to renew this. She couldn't. There were nolonger an option to update order a new subscription to that version of Norton Antivirus. She have to upgrade the whole software package though all she need is the antivirus definition subscription to be updated. Something they did not say wasn't possible in the marketing. Now she can't and is running without antivirus.
She has lost her trust in the Antivirus company who's most important issue is trust in their service.
Similar cases are seen with small business clients of mine who were promised the same from the marketing of Norton.
They have been left out in the open as well.
Fact is that eg. the marketing of Norton antivirus have not lived up to its promises = false marketing in my book, and in law in Europe/Denmark it means a crime.
So I'm now wondering if we will see class action suits in America sooner or later knowing this is going on.
And just to finish it off.. Where are the companies strategy? it definately do not seem to be in quality when quality is defined by:
what is delivered / what is expected = 1
if the result is not 1, quality is questionable.