New EAGLE licensing

[jorge_garcia2]

Hello Everyone,

In this post we will be briefly describing how the new subscription model for EAGLE works.

Firstly, the Autodesk licensing model is subscription based and the EAGLE paid license will require that you install the SW and then generate an account on accounts.autodesk.com to retrieve your license entitlement.   

If you lose your network connection, the SW has a 14-day heartbeat that will enable you to work offline for 14 days.

All of your data is stored locally, so you are in complete control of your data.

We will continue to provide the freeware version of EAGLE. In order to use it you will still need to register an account with Autodesk.

In an upcoming release we will be adjusting the software so in the worst case scenario, where internet is unavailable past 14 days, the software will revert to free mode. That way you can always review your designs.

You can review the current EAGLE pricing by visiting this page.

[bborun]

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@pawellatoszek wrote:

I bought 7.7 license in december. New license policy is just terrible. Cadsoft Computer promised me one-time payment and now they are gone... I feel cheated

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Right on! I am in the same boat as you. I bought a 3-user licence for Eagle Ultimate just 12 days before this fiasco started and neither party wants to do anything about this gross abuse of customer loyalty. Cadsoft just crawled into a hole and AutoDesk just wants me to upgrade to their subscription.

Its a crappy and unacceptable situation.

[pawellatoszek]

I have hope Autodesk will manage previous versions licenses support, they could block older users, or deny to help with registration issues - that will force us to buy new license, or switch to kicad.

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi @pawellatoszek

Thank you for participating. We are still taken care of any license requests by our legacy users. So if you misplace your keyfile or installation code we can get it to you. V7, V6, V5, and V4 releases are still available for download so no one has lost anything that they have already paid for.

If you need credentials resent then please let us know.

Best Regards,

[jorge_garcia2]

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@pawellatoszek wrote:

I bought 7.7 license in december. New license policy is just terrible. Cadsoft Computer promised me one-time payment and now they are gone... I feel cheated

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Hi @pawellatoszek

You did pay once for the version that you bought. Even under Cadsoft upgrades to new major versions were not free. When you purchased V7, you purchased access to V7 in perpetuity, if we were still Cadsoft then with this new release you would have had two options. 1) To continue to use V7 forever and never pay another cent or 2) Pay and upgrade fee to now bring your license into V8 and they cycle would have repeated.

Under the new arrangement option 1 is still available and Option two has changed to be a subscription model.

If by accident you were under the impression that purchasing V7 was going to entitle you to all future updates and upgrades for free, then we apologize for the misunderstanding but that was not the case under Cadsoft and as you already know it's not the case under Autodesk.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[latigidon]

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@jorge.garcia wrote:

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@pawellatoszek wrote:

I bought 7.7 license in december. New license policy is just terrible. Cadsoft Computer promised me one-time payment and now they are gone... I feel cheated

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Hi @pawellatoszek

You did pay once for the version that you bought. Even under Cadsoft upgrades to new major versions were not free. When you purchased V7, you purchased access to V7 in perpetuity, if we were still Cadsoft then with this new release you would have had two options. 1) To continue to use V7 forever and never pay another cent or 2) Pay and upgrade fee to now bring your license into V8 and they cycle would have repeated.

Under the new arrangement option 1 is still available and Option two has changed to be a subscription model.

If by accident you were under the impression that purchasing V7 was going to entitle you to all future updates and upgrades for free, then we apologize for the misunderstanding but that was not the case under Cadsoft and as you already know it's not the case under Autodesk.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

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Hmm, this is a bit disingenuous.

Part of the reason most users are not at all happy with the change is that they've invested not only their money, but years of work into a software product as well. This particularly burns for people like me who need the extra board space but don't have big sales to justify the expense.

It's fair to say, that this is the model of EAGLE: hook students and tinkerers with free software, and plan on them upgrading when they need it. It's actually quite an enviable market position IMO, and that's why EAGLE is (or at least was) a big player in this renaissance of makerism.

It's true that there was no guarantee (apart from a promise directly from Matt B. a few months ago) that the perpetual model would continue. To drop the new SaaS version without any discussion feels like a lot of goodwill instantly evaporated. How about customers of 20+ years?

As a customer, can you explain to me where my value is? Even a 50% discount for a year doesn't sell it for me as you're still asking for me to pay for features that don't exist yet, and I don't know if I need them. I know it's beating a dead horse, but if you developed things that would significantly improve my workflow, I would be happy to pay a one-time upgrade of $500 or so for a perpetual licence. No autorouter thanks! You can include that as an "up-sell".

Best,
Andy

[pawellatoszek]

That seems fair.
I have hope that new libraries will be compatible with older versions...

But I think that Autodesk aims for big projects and groups of designers ex. Fusion 360.
Programs can share project files for multiple people by network, remember previous versions of projects ect. so you have to pay for serverrooms - that why subscribtion is mandatory. That discriminates single users, such as me - I would pay for new features if the payment was one-time. Instead you offer me features that you have to pay to maintain and are usles for me. I mean these features are suitable for organised groups and big companies. Previous license aimed also for single engineers and DIY makers - people who make max. 10 small projects per year, sell meabe one project per year.
I need software that allows to design A5 max. size PCB, 1-2 layers on it, meabe commercial version.

And how does new licenses works? If I design something now on 1 month version can I sell the project next year?

Do you still sell 7.7 licenses if I want to upgrade?

[sven.ginka]

I love eagle. However the new license model is not company friendly regarding firewalls and subscription per year instead of one time only. Looks like one step back. 

[jorge_garcia2]

Hello @pawellatoszek,

I hope you're doing well. I've commented on your concerns below.

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@pawellatoszek wrote:

That seems fair.
1. I have hope that new libraries will be compatible with older versions...

2. And how does new licenses works? If I design something now on 1 month version can I sell the project next year?

3. Do you still sell 7.7 licenses if I want to upgrade?

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1. Currently nothing has been changed in the library structure in EAGLE. So libraries made in Autodesk EAGLE will work with V7 and V6. With that said, EAGLE has never attempted to be backwards compatible. With the switch to XML in V6 EAGLE has for the first time had some semblance of backward compatibility. If at some future point we add features to the library structure in EAGLE then V7 and prior won't know what to do with them and those files will not be backwards compatible. For now they are fully compatible.

2. You own the IP that is your design so you can do with it as you wish. If at some future date you needed to update the design, then you would just pay for a subscription for however long you need to work on your design.

3. At this point in time we no longer sell V7.7 licenses, so we wouldn't be able to sell you a V7 upgrade.

I hope this answers your concerns.

Please let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

Jorge Garcia

[vidar.vidnes]

Your passion and creativity should not be pushed around by anyone, especially your PCB tool.

EAGLE™ now forces its users to pay monthly for their tools and restricts accessibility to project data when an account is no longer active. The last thing you need is another deadline standing between you and your designs.

These are the bold words which you can read right --> HERE

Altium did the same mistake as Eagle now are doing when they switched to subscription based licensing. However, they where listening to their customers and reverted back to more human methods when they where starting to lose customers. One should believe that Eagle once learned that you do not mess with the license method last time they tried. But nope.

Sooner or later I will have to give up on Eagle 7.7 and go for something more modern.

Give me one good reason for why I should not switch to KiCAD or Altium?

[geukens.tom]

Well... there you have it.  We switched to KiCAD while some interns are looking to get gEDA up and running.  Bye bye Eagle.

[steeleymail]

Oh dear .... Autodesk are screwing/destroying another app that I use. THIS IS INSANE.!!!

I will be moving to KICAD and encouraging many other users of Eagle to do so too.

Cloud+software by subscription is the new model for many of theser greedy empires.

No doubt they will still produce buggy bloated software regardless.

[dougR6AS9]

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@prainsberry wrote:

I love the presence of Altium executives in this forum.

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They seem to be reaping quite the benefits for not much effort on their part...

[cdonato13]

lol - pls post as I guess I am longer allowed

[image: Inline image 1]

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Regards,

Chris



Sent with Mailtrack

[dougR6AS9]

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@cdonato13 wrote:
lol - pls post as I guess I am longer allowed

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I'm starting to wonder about this forum and what looks like some revisionist history.  I replied to what looked like an Autodesk employee named prainsberry, but now his message is gone and my message has a reference to someone named Boland1776.  The prainsberry message referred to a previous post of yours (you being cdonato13) which apparently is not available any more either.

Autodesk people, what is going on?

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi @dougR6AS9,

I hope you're doing well. The post received some moderation because cdonato violated one of the rules of the forum.

"These are support forums, not marketing forums. Feel free to promote your support blog and helpful websites, but we will delete any form of commercial advertisements."

See full guidelines here: https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/community-faq/etiquette-and-ground-rules/td-p/5384757

Chris Donato can post here all he wants just like any other forum user, as long as he follows the rules.

I hope this clears things up.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,

[dougR6AS9]

Thanks Jorge.  Did prainsberry violate any rules, or was his comment pulled purely as a side-effect of the moderation?  The "in reply to" part of my quote of his message still refers to someone else not related to the original message.  Should I delete my quote of his message?  Oh wait, I just looked and it seems that we can't edit or delete messages.  Hmm...

Regards,

Doug

[prainsberry]

Hey all I'm sorry and just wanted to clarify something.  I made that post about our friends from Altium posting in the forum, but decided to just take it down and let them have their fun.  I did it by simply "reporting" my own post and it seems in doing that there were some ripple effects.  I apologize.  I don't want to give the impression that we are moderating what can and can not be said here.  Even i don't have the ability to delete a post, even my own.  So it takes quite a bit to get something removed.

[spiritman50]

I agree, this is not a good solution, and some piracy do work like commercial, for free because a respected company do use original but see how good people like it and then buy.

[fayolumoses]

the website is saying that subscription is not allowed in my country. how can i subscribe

[jorge_garcia2]

Hi @fayolumoses,

I hope you're doing well. You are going to have to contact the sales department for this information. You can reach them by going here.

Let me know if there's anything else I can do for you.

Best Regards,