No perpetual licenses for Max?

[w4terlemon]

Hi, I've got a quick question. There is a note on the audodesk webpage that they will stop selling perpetual licenses since january 2016. Does that mean that I would have no chance to get one after that? I'm so scared. But if it's true.. We'll go to blender 

[spacefrog_]

Yes - official info from Autodesk says it's true.
Except if you are on maintainance subscription, which would keep to work like it has before: you get a perpetual license for the current version plus 3 versions back. If a new version is released you get the perpetual license for it. And currently Autodesk says they will allow you to renew the maintainance subscription ( but that can change quickly too )
But again, that is only true if you own a valid maintainance subscription and AFAIK you can only get onto one when you buy a new full Max seat.
So if you are not on mainainance subscription, you might try to convince your reseller to let you buy into maintainance subscription or buy a new full license + maintainance subscription as long this still is poosible ( which would be until somewhen end january 2016 AFAIK)

[felice.s · Accepted solution]

HI @spacefrog_  thanks for asking about the end of sale of perpetual.  Everything that @w4terlemon mentions below is correct, with a couple of clarifying points...

- We are ending the sale of perpetual licenses for new seats, either on Jan. 31 (most individual products), or July 31 (Suite products).  However, any perpetual license that you currently own, can continue to be used for as long as you like.  Additionally, if that perpetual license is on Maintenance Subscription, then you will continue to receive support and product updates as long as the Maintenance Subscription is active.. We are not ending the Maintenance Subscription program... you can continue to renew your Maintenance Subscription contracts for as long as you wish.  Between now and those two dates mentioned above, you should not have to convince a reseller to sell you a new perpetual license + Maintenance Subscription.   These offerings are available until the their appropriate end-of-sale date.  Check out the end of sale dates for the products you're interested in here.  I hope this helps.

Regards,

Felice

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi Felice,

>> We are not ending the Maintenance Subscription program... you can continue to renew

>> your Maintenance Subscription contracts for as long as you wish

May I ask what timeframe this promise will hold? >20 years?

I have not seen any statement like that in the current published material discussing the license changes.

- alfred -

[felice.s]

Hi @Alfred.NESWADBA,  I can refer you to this interview article and followup .  See the section dated Sept. 11, 2015 with title "Question/Comment: Will you ever end maintenance subscriptions, yes or no?"

Hope that helps a bit.

Regards,
Felice

[Alfred.NESWADBA]

Hi Felice,

thank you for your response!

I'm wondering why such statements are not published on any (official) Autodesk-sites as I can understand opinions like the above one "But if it's true.. We'll go to ...". It's a risk (and results in worries) to make a product to a strategic one within a company. Every data you create depends on the continuity of that product (development, updates, possibility to get additional licenses in the future, ...). Nothing is more critical than having a lot of data, a lot of libraries and customizations for one special product and then you can't continue using this data/libs/customizations/.... I'm wondering when Autodesk see's these arguments.

In the past we heard (and I agreed to a high level to: "use software from a solid, calculable company to make sure the product will be continued, it's a bit of risk to trust free software for the future as you don't know how it's going on with them". Now I'm not sure what's more risk as I can't see how much the products (or the usage) will cost in 5 years.

- alfred -

PS: It's great how you answer these critical/sensible threads and posts, thank you! 😉

[spacefrog_]

And exactly in this discussion, Mr. Anagnost makes a statement which is not really true at the current time: that users who stopped paying the desktop subscription fee/rent will be able to open (but not modify) their data and that Autodesk does NOT hold the customers data hostage until the customer again pays into the desktop subscription. In Fact, desktop subscription exactly means that: If you are stop paying your monthly/yearly rent, you CAN'T launch the application in question at all and in turn CAN NOT open your original projects in ANY WAY- period.

At least this is the current state of Autodesk licensing. And i can't see Autodesk being that quick in introducing readonly operation modes (eg. to be able to export without existing license ) into all of their appplications.

If he meant to say users who want to stop subscription could export their data to non-proprietary formats BEFORE stop paying the rent, well, that would work. But this simply neglects the fact that exporting to those formats strips projects down to minimum information only.

This exactly means you have to rent back your original data to keep working with it if you don't own at least one perpetual license.
In essence: - rental ONLY is simply the worst option of all, at least for the customers