Hi Al, (& hopefully Autodesk Executive Management),
I happened to run across this thread today searching for something else and wanted to contribute my perspective. Hopefully an exec high up at Autodesk will read this outreach by your customers and see that long-term the path Autodesk is on is untenable and it's in the best interest of Autodesk & Autodesk investors to change policy direction.
Who am I? I'm a software developer, but been an Inventor user on & off since 2000 I think (?) - a very long time. The product used to be very bad, very buggy. It nearly killed me when I tried to develop a product to build a business around. Inventor failures was a primary reason I gave up on that. Later, 2012-ish, I worked with the Inventor API as a contractor to develop some custom vertical software and ended up with a perpetual license seat 'gifted' by my employer. When I use Inventor, it's as a casual amateur. I'm also a generally inactive Autodesk beta tester and love seeing all the new features & improvements in the software.
But I'm stuck on Inventor 2014. I'm missing out on all the features & bug fixes I see in the betas that I'd love to take advantage of. Why? Several reasons, many of which are alluded to here. I think 2014 was the last year perpetual licenses were offered (?). First off I just can't justify the cost of a subscription - I'm not generating income from the product. Second, it's just a huge negative that "my" work product I generate with my sweat, blood & tears in the Autodesk product isn't in plain-text form. My understanding is that the data files are basically encrypted, and the encryption key is tied to the license, everything is digitally watermarked and tracked by Autodesk at some level. And it's all time-bombed. I won't be able to open the product of my pain & effort in the future. I'm simply unwilling to be unable to open a CAD file I worked on last year unless I pay a fee to unlock it. In effect my files are time-bombed.
When I write software, the files are saved as text files I can open in any application. If I decided to switch platforms, I may have to port the code, but that's on me and there are no artificial restrictions imposed by my software development platform involved. I'm not trapped by the vendor. If Microsoft were to 'improve' VisualStudio by encrypting source-code files and potentially locking developers away from their hard-earned digital assets, very quickly there would be online riots & mass migration away from the product. They know this, so they would never do it.
It's also a philosophical thing. Who's the product here? Us, your customers? I reject buying into the razor-blade model, where I get trapped & thoroughly locked-in to vendor's pay-as-you-go revenue model. Yes, I'm aware I could export & import aspects to other CAD systems, but at a 90% loss (losing parametric relationships for example) that make it easier to just re-create my digital assets from ground-up on the new platform.
I think I probably speak for the silent majority; we all know these things. And please don't bring up Fusion360, although the barrier to entry is low, I feel even more strongly about having my work captured in the cloud. "The first hit or crack" is certainly anything but free! Not only are the above issues magnified but now the software platform itself is dynamic & out of my control - if the software evolves / changes / bug-fixes in a way that breaks my work, I don't even have the option of sticking with a platform that works, I'm forced to migrate. Making that leap would take a lot of trust, as would the commitment to perpetual fixed reoccurring costs just to access the product of my labor in the future. I'm simply not willing to cross this line, and I bet many, many of my fellow users are smart enough to strongly resist buying into the value vs. lock-in proposition being discussed here. Thus I'm stuck on 2014, although I haven't really even used it seriously in several years.
Furthermore, and here's where I hope to add something new & hopefully interesting to the conversation, there's the general trend of technical evolution and taking advantage of that. I'm a big proponent of open-source software. Even Microsoft sees the writing on the wall and is changing direction to take advantage and even contribute to things like Linux. Azure is built on Linux, for example, and Microsoft is now actively and enthusiastically contributing to many open-source projects. They see that open, actively developed products by the community eventually evolve to become better products than their DRM-locked, closed-source competition.
Specifically speaking of relevance to Autodesk's future and to specific interest to senior management & investors:
I'm a game developer working with the Unreal Engine; a few years ago, in their "If you love something, set it free" campaign, Epic decided to open-source their entire game engine development platform. A move that initially sounds crazy. They historically charged millions to license their engine to game studios. But Epic was recently valued at $17 BILLION dollars in their most recent financing round. How can that be? The effect of open-source, smart visionary management, the herd-effect of people like me, and the best developers in the world, similar to your customers seeing the advantages of lock-in avoidance and the result of best-practices like open-source adoption. Etc.
Here's the thing. Epic is actively working on projects (currently in semi-stealth branches) to revolutionize 3D design software, including open-source (non-DRM-locked) file formats. Their adoption of OpenSubDiv is just the start. Take a look at the related recent announcement by Pixar. This stuff has been in the works for years:
https://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/Open-Source-Announcement.html
It may take a few more years, but Epic has and is able to recruit the very best developer talent in the world, bar none. Their engine, which is already impressive, is evolving fast and it is guaranteed to become the next-gen graphics engine kernel that will become the foundation for if not direct CAD/CAM/CAE use-case support, it will become the platform plugins & mods that will target this market. I expect in a decade Autodesk will be moving your tech to re-platform on UnrealEngine. I'd bet money on it.
To summarize, "the trend is your friend": I hope that Autodesk gets on the right side of these trends proactively, before it's too late. I understand that the company has enormous overhead and executives like to protect their salaries & tenure in another form of lock-in. But Autodesk needs to pivot with a smart migration strategy before other vendors and get the first-mover advantage they missed in the early 3D CAD days. Doing so will lead to an open road into the future, not the cul-de-sac they (and many vendors) are barreling down now. Yes, customers can be milked for a few more years, but that play is ending.
I hope this post is seen in the light it's offered, as openly given advice by a long-time (if inactive amateur) user who would like to see Autodesk prosper. By putting its customers interests ahead of even it's own short-term quarterly profit. And reaping the benefits of free-development contribution, community-lead development, and good will that philosophical paradigm shift would generate. Before it happens elsewhere.
Lastly, I have no interest in discussing this in private. I'm happy to discuss / debate, but only in a public forum where others can consider the arguments & judge for themselves.