Is it possible to own a perpetual license newer than 2016?

[Kyudos]

This page: Perpetual License Changes doesn't quite make it clear. If I have a 2016 perpetual license and a maintenance plan, does that entitle me to run 2017, 2018 etc. as long as I pay maintenance?

And if I stop paying does my entitlement revert to owning 2016 perpetually, or the version I had when I stopped paying?

In short is there currently any way to own a perpetual license of 2017, or 2018 etc?

I need to know this to support my ARX development. If there is a bug in 2017 that is fixed in 2018, do I need to fix it in 2017? If you cannot own 2017 without also being entitled to 2018 (through subscription) I don't need to address the bug in 2017 I can just tell me users to upgrade.

[Mark.Lancaster · Accepted solution]

@Kyudos

The sale of individual Autodesk product perpetual licenses ended as of Feb 2016.  The sale of Autodesk suite product perpetual license end Aug 2016.  From that point on, you can only subscribe (purchase) to commercial license based on a single user or multi-user subscription (term) based license.  Subscription rules allow for the user to use the current release (at this time would be 2018) and 3 legacy versions (2015-2017).

For those who have an active maintenance plan (meaning continuous paying per requirements) for perpetual licenses, the same rules apply (2015-2018).  Around the April/May time frame for 2018, Autodesk would be releasing the 2019 product line.  If you still have an active maintenance plan at that time.  You would then be entitled to 2019-2016.  The 2015 product line would be obsoleted by Autodesk and no longer supported and thus you wouldn't be entitled to it unless you get an exception for Autodesk.  Now at some point in time (in the future), the same thing would happen to 2016, 2017, and etc.

Ok now that I've rambled on..  Let me answer your question... 

When you drop your maintenance plan the rule is..  You are only entitled to the current release that Autodesk has.  Meaning if you dropped it tomorrow, you would be only entitled to the 2018 product line.   However it also states its based the last activated version.  So it you activated 2017 and drop maintenance tomorrow, you would only be entitled to use the 2017 product line.  But I've seen cases where Autodesk just deactivates all the legacy versions and you're only entitled to the current release like I already pointed out.  In the end when you drop your maintenance plan you lose the ability to legacy versions of the product.  If you want to come active again you would have to move over to subscription based type of license.

But I guess I have to ask if you are developing ARX programs, are you making money of these programs?  If you are, why would you jeopardize your business by dropping your maintenance plan?  Wouldn't you want to support you end users?  Not sure what you are developing, but have you every consider the Autodesk Development Network?   I don't know all the licensing aspect of the ADN, but you may have more control over your license since you are developing programs that are for Autodesk products.

Not sure if I helped you out or not..  Perhaps you have more questions now because of my reply.  

[Kyudos]

Hi Mark, thanks for your reply. Perhaps I wasn't entirely clear.

We are developing as part of ADN - and we (will) support each release of AutoCAD as it arrives. The situation I've come across is this:

1) There is a bug in A2017 that stops one of my ARX functions from working.

2) Said bug is fixed in A2018.

If I can be confident that my users using A2017 are also always entitled to use A2018, I will be less inclined to address the issue with any kind of bug-fix / workaround in our 2017 release - I would just say, "that's a AutoCAD bug, upgrade to fix it".

However, if users have bought A2017 and our (2017) product and are allowed (in theory) to continue using A2017 in perpetuity, I may have to do something in our 2017 release to alleviate the issue.

Ultimately, the size of our team means we won't be able to support older AutoCAD versions indefinitely, so we have to choose where to expend efforts wisely.

[Mark.Lancaster]

@Kyudos

Thanks for the update..

Well I would answer your concern as..

You could end up having "X" number of customers who dropped their maintenance plan at the right time and are only entitled to use the 2017 product line going forward.  I guess it all depends on what Autodesk does regarding their account at that time.  It may end up being a large percentage of your customers and perhaps just a small percentage.  In the end I don't really have a yes or no answer for you...

But no customer would've been able to purchase new 2017 perpetual license of a single Autodesk product due to the license change that occurred in Feb 2016.  Meaning the 2017 product line release was still a few months away.  However customers would've been able to purchase new perpetual license of Autodesk suite products for 2017 until Aug 2016.  And certain customers are now moving over to subscription and dropping their perpetual license with maintenance plan or upgrading to subscription based which allows that back to 2015 version (at this time).  At some point, the 2017 product will fall off the radar and no longer supported. 

One final thing..  Just because a customer of yours is entitled to the latest..  Even 2 or 3 years down the road..  Customers may not advanced to the latest and use the 2017 version for a few years.  So if they need your interface and depend on it, they may not be happy with you if you don't end up supported it.

Too many variables here, am I right?    But like anything you can't please everybody..

[Kyudos]

Well, of course we'd be more inclined to do something if the problem was stemming from our code and/or was a critical function. In this instance though, its trying to decide whether to do anything to work around / alleviate an AutoCAD bug that causes one of our minor functions to misbehave.

In general though we need to know if we have potential customers who can perpetually 'stick' at any given AutoCAD version, despite the current subscription model.