I am seeing lots of good arguments! I love this forum!
Thank you Dave for including my posts in the video
I would like to make a couple of things clear from my viewpoint:
1) Like Tandy said, ownership is maybe a culturally preferred thing. I for sure want a perpetual license. But I could be persuaded for subscription if there are many benefits and the price is right. but the price is not right if you have many users
2) Can people not accept that the product has its own market position and use cases? we do not need big upgrades and more features. We are working with it now and are happy
3) For some people, ET phone home is NOT acceptable
4) I have been doing professional development with EAGLE. we do not use many BGAs and nothing else fancy, but 6 layer PCBs are quite common for us. We do not use an autorouter (saves on the perpetual license)
One important point regarding the definition of professional use. NONE of our users have PCB designer in their job titles. All engineers working with electronic designs are supposed to understand board lay-out. We have some experts obviously, but none of our users are not full time lay-outers. This may be less efficient time-wise, but it ensures everything is done according to the intent of the designer. And everything is peer-reviewed any way.
5) If all companies are going to subscription models, that does not mean you should accept it. Just do not buy from those vendors.
So for all of those fanboys that are talking about the tool getting better using subscriptions et cetera: we do not need the tool to be better, but we want it to be priced in the same market segment. Obviously, there are improvements we would like. I have nothing against the model or the way that Autodesk wants to develop it. Some features seem really useful. I will just not buy it. Fine there is no doubt the product will be improved. But we do not want to increase out cost tenfold just to get a better tool. The old one worked for us.
I can not stretch enough that the whole feature vs development vs subscription argument is interesting, and a good discussion to have. but what is at the heart of the issue is that EAGLE is changing their market position and license model, and existing users are pissed off because they want to keep the tool they know and love and can afford. How do I explain a 10x price increase to my management? I could explain a 2x difference maybe, if there are enough features we need that are in an upgrade.
Personally, perpetual is the only way for me, but that does not necessarily reflect my companies view.
If I want something more capable and modern, I will damn well get something else! Maybe in a few years time, EAGLE will be up there with the big players, but they have quite some work to do in that case. They have then left their market segment, and can expect all existing users to have switched to something else. That is fine too if Autodesk wants that. But they leave the existing customer base behind. I am sad that I have to switch, but we can not demand that Autodesk keeps EAGLE the way it is. We can not demand they keep their promises, we can only call them out as liars ("we are not going to subscription") and give them no business.
And finally: there is indeed the issue of migration. But when a company pisses you off just enough, you will do anything to get away. We have 30 licenses of version 7 like I mentioned, and there is no way that Autodesk gets any money. Even if they make the subscruiptions a lot cheaper, they have pissed us off and ruined their opportunities. The only thing that would help is undo everything and offer perpetual licenses again. With the old CadSoft EULA mind you.
At least CadSoft listened to the users when they backtracked on the FlexLM model. But I do not trust and will not trust Autodesk anymore. They have been such incompetent idiots in handling this change, I have been in touch with support a couple of times already. They have proven to not be worhty my custom.
Edits: fixed typo's, added clarification on professional use