I don’t think that selling a ‘lifetime’ license is the same as offering lifetime support and bug fixes. Your license would be for a version of the software and I’d expect a year or two of support from that, just as the standard guarantee consumers have when buying physical goods.
I don’t think it’d be that controversial to release a new version of the app with a different pricing model while offering a fair upgrade path to existing users. Only this version would be available on the App Store.
They can choose not to upgrade and the old app will still work just fine. Keeping the servers up for that would be the cost of doing business.
This is more or less what 1Password have done. All their old versions are still usable, you still have the license for an old version because you bought it. Each upgrade is basically an entirely different release that you can subscribe to or pay for.
Cerberus have fucked up by pulling the rug from underneath everyone and revoking their licenses, making the software they bought unusable.
And as a word to the wise, maybe don’t think about making lifetime or ‘free forever’ promises. They’re totally unrealistic.
You received this message because your 1Password subscription has lapsed. While your account is frozen, you can still view all your items, copy your passwords, and even copy items to vaults outside your account. But you won’t be able to:
Add new items to vaults
Edit items
Invite people to your family or team
Fill items in your browser
It becomes a read-only list of your passwords, instead of providing ongoing service at a fixed version of the software (unlike JetBrains IDEs, where you actually keep fully operational version of the IDE at the latest version you qualified for).
I think they're referring to the switch from a one time payment to a subscription. Everyone who bought at the one-time price got to keep their desktop application forever. You're apparently asking for a web application to keep working after you stop paying, which I find different.
I don’t think it’d be that controversial to release a new version of the app with a different pricing model while offering a fair upgrade path to existing users. Only this version would be available on the App Store.
They can choose not to upgrade and the old app will still work just fine. Keeping the servers up for that would be the cost of doing business.
This is more or less what 1Password have done. All their old versions are still usable, you still have the license for an old version because you bought it. Each upgrade is basically an entirely different release that you can subscribe to or pay for.
Cerberus have fucked up by pulling the rug from underneath everyone and revoking their licenses, making the software they bought unusable.
And as a word to the wise, maybe don’t think about making lifetime or ‘free forever’ promises. They’re totally unrealistic.