Thanks for the post, clearly you’re passionate about your concerns however I’d like to stress that there’s a lot of misinformation here that needs some attention and I want to break down this post a bit. Let’s take this apart one piece at a time:
->>Do not make the mistake of attributing the additions to Eagle by Autodesk to the licensing scheme. The additions came from the engineers and the company, not the licensing model. The additions would have and will come regardless of the licensing model.<<-
Any development demands commercial viability. Plain and simple. And that requires that we create a business model that affords us the ability to pay for the development we’re doing. And as others have said, we’ve ramped up development extensively to ensure we deliver the best capability at the lowest price we can. I wont dive into the detailed economics of this (rest assured I live the details every day) but let’s do a bit of a thought experiment for a moment…
Consider the scale of Autodesk (~20B$ market cap). Now ask yourself, how many $100 / yr licenses of EAGLE would we need to sell to make anything like a significant impact to the company’s bottom line? Now consider, how big is the entire EDA market space? Just guess. (You can look this up…Some great detail on Gary Smith EDA or other sites). Not chip design. Let’s look only at board level design. There are 4 major competitors (Cadence, Mentor, Altium, Zuken); have a look at competitor revenues for PCB tools alone (Cadence, Mentor have a number of revenue streams but Altium revenue is public…have a look). By today’s measure, you can buy a commercial EAGLE license and use it for the next 10 years for $1000. You could buy the premium license and have it for the next 10 years for $5000. Half the cost of a competitor tool sans maintenance, which almost invariably you would upgrade in that time frame. In fact, less than the cost of your maintenance alone.
Now let me add another layer to the discussion: what do you think a developer in the US, Europe, Asia costs with specialist skills in EDA? Fully loaded? Consider this for a moment. And how many people do you think we need on Schematic? PCB? CAM? Website? …You see, very few developers can ‘do it all’, so web is generally Front End, Design, UX, Back End, etc. PCB routing is highly specialized. Spatial trees, r-trees, graphs…A heavy algorithms problem with some crazy geometry challenges (fun stuff!). And how about graphics systems? Another specialization that requires substantial effort to make that performant. Make a polygon algorithm fast on a 12 layer PCB with 4 mil tracks and 4 mil spacing? The schematic team has real engineers on it with a real EE background working *today* on integrating simulation (amongst other awesomeness), handling complex issues like reuse, hierarchy, etc in the tools.
So that out of the way, let’s again talk licensing model…
What do you think our licensing model would need to be to get to commercial viability? And what if we want competitive differentiation?
Your argument hinges the notion that engineers are idle, whiling away at their leisure, building what they feel is useful irrespective of business model. However the availability of engineers depends 100% on business model. To decouple these is simply impossible and the argument is unfair to my team that work SO hard to deliver amazing new features in EAGLE for everyone, even the freeware users.
And let’s unpack what we’ve done (Autodesk) in 6 months with EAGLE:
Completely new interactive router
Completely new and novel design reuse system
New Library System to support 3D data alongside CAD part information
Vastly improved PCB editing driven by graphics improvements and better workflows
True, ECAD<>MCAD workflow (bidirectional!)
A new cloud platform to enable editing ECAD <> MCAD data across geo’s
New selection and editing tools
Productivity enhancements like alignment tools
…to name only a few.
Oh, and we fixed a ton of bugs…Oh, and this has been in the freeware as well as the paid version.
To the next point:
->>If perpetual licences for the version at the time of purchase were given, people would be happy to pay. This is how Pycharm licensing is done. Once you pay for a version in their subscription model, the functionality of the software you purchased never changes. If you don't continue paying, you only miss out on new features. <<-
Ok, but that’s not how Autodesk sells software. If the model doesn’t serve your needs, then that’s ok. However we commit to deliver new capability to the software on a regular basis or our business model dissolves from underneath us. And as a long-time EAGLE user, it’s my job to see that never happens.
->>
I believe that licensing in a way that cripples if you don't continue paying is morally wrong [in this instance] and here's why:
AS IN ANY RELATIONSHIP, IF ONE TRIES TO CONTROL THE
OTHER, THEY ARE NOT CONFIDENT IN THEMSELVES OR WHAT
THEY OFFER ENOUGH TO BELIEVE THE OTHER WILL STAY IF GIVEN
THE FREEDOM TO LEAVE. <<-
On the contrary, we are 100% confident in our strategy. And you have every right to leave the relationship with your data in tact and continue to even generate outputs whenever you desire. But again there’s a flaw here…The license isn’t crippled in a way you can’t use it to gain access to everything you’ve created. In fact, you can even edit those designs you’ve done, constrained only to the area and layer restrictions of the free version. So go ahead, add text, add dimensions, print files, generate gerber files, NC drill, etc. It’s all possible with a free license. THIS is where I take issue most, because it’s simply not correct.
And I would footnote that with another thought experiment: EAGLE uses an XML file format that is human readable and which is fully documented. In fact, we even let you save files to your previous version (v7) to ensure that if you try it and hate it, you don’t lose data. Contrast that to a binary file from a competitor tool. Below is a snippet. Can you guess what type of file this is? What tool is this? What editor (Sch, PCB, CAM) does this come from?
-snip-
00 00 00 05 56 44 44 41 33 02 34 33 00 03 7C 26
7C 00 29 00 00 01 02 00 00 00 00 01 00 00 00 00
00 00 00 01 07 3B 1E 00 46 00 C0 FE 00 00 00 00
-snip-
Full disclosure, it’s a library. Probably one of the more essential pieces of IP you’ve come to depend on. Contrast this to:
-snip-
-symbol name="LM4876"-
-wire x1="0" y1="0" x2="0" y2="22.86" width="0.254" layer="94"/-
-wire x1="0" y1="22.86" x2="15.24" y2="22.86" width="0.254" layer="94"/-
-wire x1="15.24" y1="22.86" x2="15.24" y2="0" width="0.254" layer="94"/-
-wire x1="15.24" y1="0" x2="0" y2="0" width="0.254" layer="94"/-
-pin name="P$1" x="-5.08" y="17.78" length="middle"/-
-pin name="P$2" x="-5.08" y="15.24" length="middle"/-
-pin name="P$3" x="-5.08" y="12.7" length="middle"/-
-pin name="P$4" x="-5.08" y="10.16" length="middle"/-
-pin name="P$5" x="20.32" y="10.16" length="middle" rot="R180"/-
-pin name="P$6" x="20.32" y="12.7" length="middle" rot="R180"/-
-pin name="P$7" x="20.32" y="15.24" length="middle" rot="R180"/-
-pin name="P$8" x="20.32" y="17.78" length="middle" rot="R180"/-
-text x="0" y="23.368" size="1.778" layer="95"->NAME-/text-
-text x="0.254" y="-2.54" size="1.778" layer="96"->VALUE-/text-
-/symbol-
-snip- (FYI, couldnt inline the XML directly so had to drop the angle brackets)
More details? The previous snip was actually ‘related’ to a pin. What pin? Dump into a decent hex editing / RE tool like 010 Editor (my fav) and have a look at what you end up with. It’s still not very clear, I promise. But this is what we need to use when creating translators from these god-awful formats.
->>Autodesk is controlling you by saying, if you don't pay, we'll take things away from you. It is a tactic used by controlling individuals to curry loyalty, by abusive husbands to control wives, by inept bosses to control employees ,etc. It's unhealthy and creates an environment of mistrust and anger.
If Autodesk believes in its products; if they believe that by what they bring to the table alone that customers will voluntarily stay, they they should show that through their agreements with their customers.<<-
You always own our data with EAGLE. The same cant be said industry-wide. And the only thing you can’t do in the free version with the designs you built is add new things, outside of the limits of the application. Everything else? Works just as it would in your paid tools.
->>It's obvious here that Autodesk does NOT believe the products they offer will stand on their own and provide enough value that their customers would be loyal if given the opportunity to leave.<<-
If you believe this, then we’re sorry we couldn’t convince you and we hope to part as friends. But when you’re shopping for other tools, remember, there’s nothing open source about a “vault”. And there’s a serious passion amongst this development team to make significant improvements to EAGLE. In fact, we’re on a mission. Come to San Francisco. Hang out with us at Pier 9. We’ll show your our workshop. It’s a marvel to behold! We want to invite you personally to chat with us and we’ll show you we’re in this to win users’ hearts. Anything else is counterproductive.
In fact, we want to make something – very deliberately – which exceeds even the best, most powerful tools out there, but make that available to everyone. This IS the strategy. Otherwise, we end up building the same tool as everyone else and selling it at the same price. The bet is on the lower cost eventually delivering a large enough user base to offset that risk. (Users * Cost = Billings…Billings / Time = Revenue)
And yes, subscription helps that, but locking users in does not. In fact, the switching cost with EAGLE is SO low (not your biggest investment) that if we don’t deliver, we should expect to lose you. It is a LOT harder to leave a tool you convinced your boss to spend $10K on than it is $100. That’s what we term “switching cost” in addition to converting your data to another format. So with every other tool easily supporting reading the EAGLE file format and every other tool costing more than EAGLE, we would say the cost to switch is very low and comes with very low risk. (Much harder to write a clean translation for the format you saw earlier…believe me, there is no manual on how to read that garbage.)
Lastly, we wont apologize for subscription because it actually makes the software affordable / accessible to a larger user base at a lower cost. I’d rather this than the alternative. The facts are not often clear so I understand your concerns, but this is something that once the emotion drains out of it, is factually a better situation all-around. I’m 100% convinced of this or I wouldn’t be in it. Autodesk is an amazing place and this team is committed to challenging every standard set by the old-guard of the EDA / ECAD industry. You can see we’ve touched a nerve, just see how their marketing has changed. Come on in, the water’s fine! 🙂
Best Regards,
Matt
Matt Berggren
Director – Fusion Electronics
Autodesk EAGLE
