Hi XFDDesign,
How does Autodesk not have any responsibility? It's a sincere question, not picking a fight.
Responsibility means to have a consequence for a chosen act. Suppose I were to go with the subscription system and the servers go down for a long period of time. It is highly doubtful that there will be a monetary cost to Autodesk which compensates a company for down time. Or, suppose Autodesk axes Eagle and it just goes EOL. There are no mechanisms which prevent them from repeating the Softimage event, which leaves the customers high and dry. No form of compensation to be had because that would be suicidal for any business to be bound to a customer by product. If the product was making the business tank, there is no 'win' situation. That kind of awful dependence is toxic to a business' health, which is why it's just as toxic to any customer. The customer is being made to be dependent on Autodesk, but there is no longer a consequence for them producing a crap product. "Don't like it? Better migrate to some other package." No accountability at all in the subscription model. This isn't producing the best product possible, that I
want to keep buying. It is making a product that I
have to keep buying. I've had my fill of that with the ACA. Eagle's biggest change to version 7 was new icons. That didn't help me, so I stopped upgrading at v 6.6. If they did something additionally beneficial in version 8 (supposing it stayed cadsoft), I could then pay for an upgrade. If version 8 had some improvements, but it became as stable as Altium, they bear responsibility to themselves by having the consequence if my not paying for it. A healthy risk-reward system. The new model is only a reward system. Autodesk spits out version 8 and it has 1 bug. 9 comes out and it has 2. 10 and it's 4, and so on. Each version presents the dilemma: Suck it up, or move. The longer you stay hooked, and the worse the package gets, the more you've spent into a product that you're constantly evaluating whether or not you should abandon it. The essence of the matter is, really, Autodesk doesn't
have to do anything. Any choice they do which might impact me, they can do without concern. My option is to go to another package, or keep paying. Now it's the same kind of issue a junkie has: they can either keep going with the addiction, or they try to come clean and deal with the withdrawals. The example may be dramatic, but it is to the point.
When it's a standalone product, "this is what I have." If there is a bug, "this is what I have." If the company who sold the product wants to maintain a customer base, they fix those bugs and the mutual relationship continues. But further, when it's a standalone product and the supplier goes out of business entirely or just terminates the product line completely, "this is what I have." I still have it. It is a clear exchange and trade.
I'm not trying to pick a fight either, but the burden of proof is on you, not us. I can't help thinking: "go tell that to Softimage users". The fact is that there is absolutely nothing that guarantees Autodesk is going to follow through on any of the promises you just made just like there wasn't anything that guaranteed Autodesk's promise that Eagle wasn't going to go to a subscription model or that the future was "bright" for Softimage.
In short: your words aren't good enough. Unless Autodesk is willing to commit to a legally binding, long term service contract, there actually isn't anything that says you "have to fix it". You might fix it, sure, but you are only going to do that if it benefits you. We don't actually enter the equation.
Your points about KiCad support aren't wrong, but the issue is more about completely losing access to the tool. If KiCad's servers go down, the software I have on my personal machine continues to function; the installer that I backed up to my file server can still get me up and running on a new machine. With KiCad, I have the power to ensure my tool continues to function. That is what we are looking for, and that is exactly what your licensing scheme denies us.
If that article on softimage is anything to go on, the guy is being put into a shitty situation to be chewed up and eventually spat out. I don't think there is a way for him to win here.