Wrote: Jorge, the link is broken. I need to upgrade for the last time my 7.6 to 7.7 and say good buy to an old friend. Please provide a working link. I am affraid Eagle is dead and as you see you can hardly find helt at Autodesk, who killed it.
I have already got the backup installation files on Thursday from: You can try, perhaps it was not removed. Now I am going to purchase DipTrace, which looks well and could be a good alternative, imo. Of course, I will continue with my 7.7 as long as necessary.
I 'm currently reading through the new EULA as found here: And I will comment on some points her, and FYI IANAL so I might misunderstand some of this stuff: 1.2.1 Effect of Upgrades. If Autodesk or a Reseller provides Licensee with an Upgrade to other Licensed Materials previously licensed to Licensee, the Licensed Materials previously licensed to Licensee and any other Autodesk Materials relating thereto will thereafter be deemed to be a “Previous Version.” Except as set forth in Section 1.2.2 (Exception for Relationship Program Licensees), the license grant and other rights with respect to any Previous Version will terminate one hundred twenty (120) days after Installation of the Upgrade. Within such one hundred twenty (120) day period, except as set forth in Section 1.2.2 (Exception for Relationship Program Licensees), (a) Licensee must cease all use of any Previous Version and Uninstall all copies of the Previous Version, and (b) upon expiration of such period, such Previous Version will no longer constitute Licensed Materials but rather will be deemed to be Excluded Materials and Licensee will no longer have a license for any such Previous Version. At Autodesk’s request, Licensee agrees to destroy or return to Autodesk or the Reseller from which they were acquired all copies of the Previous Version. Autodesk reserves the right to require Licensee to show satisfactory proof that all copies of any Previous Version have been Uninstalled and, if so requested by Autodesk, destroyed or returned to Autodesk or the Reseller from which they were acquired.
So you are telling people that accept the EULA to stop using older versions of the software, even though they have a perpetual license to it, or? 1.6 Third-Party Licensed Materials. The Autodesk Materials may contain or be accompanied by third-party software, data or other materials that are subject to and provided in accordance with terms that are in addition to or different from the terms set forth in this Agreement. Such terms may be included or referenced in or with such third-party software, data or other materials (e.g., in the “About box”) or a web page specified by Autodesk (the URL for which may be obtained on Autodesk’s website or on request to Autodesk). Licensee agrees to comply with such terms. In addition, Licensee will take sole responsibility for obtaining and complying with any licenses that may be necessary to use third-party software, data or other materials that Licensee uses or obtains for use in conjunction with the Licensed Materials. Licensee acknowledges and agrees that Autodesk has no responsibility for, and makes no representations or warranties regarding, such third-party software, data or other materials or Licensee’s use of such third-party software, data or other materials.
Sure I'll respect thrid-party licensed materials, but when is AutoDesk planning on doing the same? 1.9 Archival Copy.
Thanks for pointing the EULA out. I've only had a quick look at 1.2.1 (and it so happens IAAL) - indeed that clause (if valid) kills your right to use any 'Previous Version' after 120 days(!). However, what a Previous Version is refers to 'Licensed Material' and the tricky question is, what falls in here - any existing Eagle license was with Cadsoft (GmbH I believe) - not Autodesk - and I'm not familiar with how the takeover was technically done, i.e. whether Autodesk (validly) entered into the existing license contracts by acquiring all the shares of Cadsoft or by assumption / assignment or similar.
So both the situation re the existing licenses and the EULA is quite unclear. I very much doubt that under European regulation (e.g. Directives 93/13/EEC, 2011/83/EC) and the national codifications 1.2.1 would hold if tested in court as it is rather impossible to determine the (intended) scope of that clause. However, to me it looks like Autodesk did not really contemplate the fallout the switch to subscription could create, let alone bother about reflecting that step adequately in the EULA. For a stock listed company, all of that feels surprisingly amateurish. Well I guess that CadSoft GmbH can't do anything regarding Eagle any more, it's out of there hands, and so the monkey falls onto AutoDesk which is next in lile now to honore the existing licences, and the existing license servers for v7.7, which apparently fail to run if they can't contact a license server, or something like that, see other thread here in the forum for an example of that the other day. But the decision makers at Autodesk, might have kept Cadsoft GmbH around as a subsidary of some sort, but all of that is just my guess work.
I'm looking forward to some clarification to my comments when Autodesk wakes up again af the weekend, although it might take some time, as there have been a lot of trafic around the launch of v8 over the weekend, so it's gonna be a busy time for Jorge & Co. The whole subscription model could be made significantly less evil, if you do what does. In short, the main one is Purchasing a year, or maintaining a monthly subscription for 12 consecutive months gets you a perpetual fallback license to the version that was current at the time the subscription was started. (maintaining the subscription for longer than a year rolls the fallback license version it will work with forward to the version that was available a year ago.) This has a benefit that those who prefer to have a perpetual license can still get one.
If they can afford to pay for the year up front, then they get it right then and there, but only for the version that was out at that time with no further updates. If they can pay for more than one year up front, then the added on years extends their update cycle that much on the perpetual fallback. Likewise, those that can't afford a year, could still get it, if they can afford the monthly price, and can maintain that for a year. And finally, those that only need to use the product maybe once or twice a year, could just do a month on the times it is needed. (Copied from Eagle Central Forum) Matt Berggren appears to be ignoring this thread after being called out for his comments on EEV Blogg.
'Quote from EEVblog '@Dave, it's not going subscription. Smile At this stage, that isn't anywhere on my roadmap. Thought about it. Decided against it. Can I say that we will never in the life of any product do that? No, of course not.
That would be at best unfair, at worst dishonest. But I have so many things that are more pressing.'
. He is also ignoring my question regarding the make version of Eagle. Matt Berggren said in his own blog: 'What about the $169, 6-Layer Make License? The $169 non-commercial Maker license lives on and will continue to live on for the foreseeable future. This is a great tool for people requiring that extra bit of horsepower for their personal projects!'
. I wrote in a previous post: 'I purchased this last year with the expectation of upgrading to the next major version, but I see no mention of it on the Autodesk website.
Nov 1, 2016 - CadSoft EAGLE recently released an update to their PCB design suite that. X or later, you will no longer be able to edit that file using version 6.0 or below. This is a commercial version and costs $69 per license per user. CadSoft EAGLE 9.1.1 Key. CadSoft EAGLE 9.1.1 enables users to move, copy or delete the selected objects, insert Clipboard content, select from various components which can be added to the working environment, and use the route function for converting connections into routed wires. Furthermore, you can join wire segments, bend lines, rotate.
Details please.' . Matt: Your refusal to address these points is disturbing. I feel that at the very least, current license owners should be grandfathered in under the old license terms and upgrade costs to version 8 plus all minor upgrades. New purchasers going forward know what the existing terms are before buying. Grandfathered upgrades to version 8 would have the choice of staying with version 8 or subscribing to go forward.
You have done more to boost the ranks of KiCad users than you realize. Hi and thanks for the lengthy reply. I'm glad you took the time to express your concerns and I'll do my best to address a number of them below. Please do me a favor and read thru it because I may have buried the lead a bit later on.:) Apologies but I preferred inlining this so everyone had the context right there in front of them. I’m also going to be a bit testy here as the CAD software is akin to religion and the reason for that is that it takes a huge investment of time (not to mention money) to get across the various packages so, that when a vendor starts changing stuff in that software, the users are generally going to get very, very irritable very quickly. Never fear, not my first rodeo with ECAD customers (started all the way back at Accel which made PCAD!) and having been an EAGLE user long before I took over the product, I have a bit of background in the forum trenches!
So let’s start What the hell is it with Eagle that is so hard regarding the licensing? You would have thought that after the V5-V6 licensing debacle, that others would have learnt, bit appears no. That is not the case.:( Not to be critical Matt, but this whole issue has NOT been handled well at all, and the issue here at play isn't the software.
It's the licensing. You know that there is a problem when the topic of focus isn't actually the software - and really it should be. Ok, lets' start off. There are three effective means of implementing subscription software: 1. Pay money to turn it on and get any data.
No money (i.e. No subscription) = no data. The user is held hostage. This can be implemented in a number of ways. 100% online services. Or software activated via time locked license key (e.g.
That absolutely EVIL pile of crap called LMGRD). This by far the most.EVIL. of all SaaS models and any company who still does this.NEEDS TO DIE. Any company that does this these days, needs to go bankrupt and the people responsible for said decisions need to suffer. I say this as a person who has had to deal with supporting old devices when software for programming PLD devices was either no longer available, or could no longer be 'activated' in order to implement a safety fix in a product. Can you image being told that you can't look at a picture of your wife and kids without paying someone money? Outrageous yes, but you get the idea.
This is a hillarious description but doesnt really apply to EAGLE. We aren't 'owning' anyone's data and you still have your files, in XML, to work with as you always have. Likewise, you can always generate outputs from any license tier, as you've always been able to. So you can always fall back to Freeware and access your files, print, generate Gerbers, etc. Regardless of the version you have and regardless of the complexity of the file. Rental type subscriptions. The user data, stays the control of the user.
It is always accessible by the user, and the software will always allow the user to retrieve his/her data. Exporting/printing/viewing is always possible even if changing isn’t due to a lack of valid subscription. It’s not completely EVIL, but it does demand that the user keep paying for “features” that they may not actually want if they want to keep using the software. In other words, the user wants X, Y and Z but that is all they want. They don’t want the bills and whistles, of A, B and C but in order to keep using X, Y and Z, they still have to keep paying, so it is still EVIL, just not as much so as the 1st type.
Hopefully, if we're transparent about what you get in subsequent releases and keep the price low enough, then we might just change your viewpoint. To the $100 Standard license, which is a commercial license (unlike Make Personal) and which, if you look at the total cost of ownership versus the EAGLE Standard of yore, comes at a pretty competitive price point. What's more, if & when you put it down and don't use it, you have the flexibility not to pay for it until you need it again. So if you spend 6 months working on conceptualizing a product, sw design, mockups, mfg, burn-in, test fixtures and test plans, supply chain stuff, etc. You needn't pay for that period.
I know for some this is viewed as suboptimal but we're hoping this additional flexibility will be something some people would benefit from. Feature subscriptions.
I say feature vs fix as there.IS. a difference, and that is fixes are for something that is known to be broken (for example. A library has the 'wrong' pin assignment, or using a specific feature causes the application to crash or it eats your data).
That is a bug. That needs a fix, and.anyone. who has at least paid for the software, in any form, is entitled to a product that does what it says it does (if it cooks your eggs, then it should cook your eggs without burning them). A feature subscription is where enhancements are added, and for this, this is definitely a chargeable extension. You want the newest features, supply a credit card. You want eggs.and.
bacon, then you pay a bit and you are entitled to get the 'bacon' module as an add-on. 'Improvements' are feature extensions, so a major re-write of the auto-router is a feature enhancement compared to say a fix to the auto router where it attempts to lay a track across the middle of a drill hole (that would be called a bug). Ok, so those are the models. Fair and easy enough. So what do we have? We have a model that is something hybrid of #2. Something that is inherently EVIL, but at least you allow people to look at their designs if they choose/unable to keep paying the subscription.
Of course with EAGLE freeware, you arent limited in your ability to either open a file or even generate outputs from ANY version or layer / area configuration. And my hope would be to expand these capabilities to include some additional functionality, whether locally or thru some other means, to share and socialize content, enable markup, etc. All of this is in the cards and just how this plays out, both at the free and the paid tiers, is open for discussion on this forum. Your opinions in how best to do this would be welcome. (Hopefully my conflating those two items doesn't sound evasive.I'm only pointing out that the freeware version will a) continue, b) enable you to work with designs that are beyond the scope of the freeware license, and c) we intend to introduce more in the way of markup and documentation to both the free and paid tiers.) But herein lies a problem. In order for “rental” to work, it has to be online.
Now for 99% of the user base, this will probably be fine. 99% of the time, a user will be connected. What happens when you aren't? According to your own FAQs/support responses, a connection needs to be re-established after 14 days. What the hell happens if after 14 days, you still aren't online and you work?
According to you as the vendor, the software stops working. You've spent a bit of time in AU, so on a map of AU, draw a circle around those areas that have mobile coverage. Jump on the AU Telstra site, and look at their coverage map.
![Eagle Eagle](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_WlScTibQRPI/TSF9waO5rUI/AAAAAAAAAHs/cb2ekLVlSY4/s1600/Untitled-3.jpg)
Good coverage on the east cost, round Tassie a few spots on the western edge. But bugger all in the middle. Not real good is it.
But hey, this is AU, so we can expect that. So what happens if you are working for say a month or so in a location where there is.no. coverage and no internet. Beyond belief? That's what I do for a living (typically 40+ days at a time).
Now according to you, that means I'm only able to use the software for 14 of the fist 40 days - in other words. It unusable for on average. 16 days out of 40 (on average). And this.assuming. that the user can actually “activate” the software.
What happens to software on a workstation that.only. lives in a internet free environment (i.e. There isn’t any internet)? According to you well you can’t. So I.do.
know Oz:) (oy oy!) and I've experienced Telstra, Optus, etc, in good times and bad. I guess I'd never had an issue that lasted more than a day or two but I didn't tread much beyond the Great Dividing Range; so you're in places I only dreamed I would've visited. What it sounds like is a) you have a pretty unique situation in how you travel and what sort of coverage you have (are you mining or something?) and b) this view of the 14 day limit isn't quite the case. I'll comment on the latter point and hopefully, I can provide a little more color / confidence to this (though I'm not sure this addresses exactly your issue and I'd love to take this up offline and try and understand your situation more). In the next build, the way this'll work is a bit different than it does today, but that's only a few weeks away so I'll conflate the two a bit. The software doesn't poll to check whether you've been online for 14 days. It only polls at startup.
If at startup, it's been 14 days since your last login, then it requires you login. If you neglect to do this, it reverts to freeware and you'll be able to use it as freeware (but in a commercial capacity) for this period. If you have content which exceeds the freeware limits, you're right, you will not be able to edit this content. Outputs, prints, etc are all available, but you wont be able to create new, multilayer content with this license. But once the software is open, it's open.
We won't be shutting you down, nor will we be forcing you to pray your laptop doesnt die and then recover 10 days worth of lost work. It isn't actively pinging our server each day saying 'is this 14 days yet?' If you restart the SW and you havent logged in for 14 days, then it checks. Otherwise, we're not actively checking at some polling interval. What the hell are people smoking there.
Because whatever it is. They should be sharing. Look, I really can understand the rental software model - honestly I can, but this online connection requirement is complete and utter bollocks and while it will work for.most. of your user base, it is going to cause a huge problem for some.
In short, the Eagle v8 licensing is a huge shamozzle - no. Really it is. It has been made even worse, by the hap-hazzard way that it has just been pushed out.
Add to this the fact that little or “no” migration information has been sent to the existing users. Rule #1 don’t alienate your existing customer base – they are why you are still here.
Rule #2 make sure you provide a clear and concise migration path for the existing user base. What happens for those who have already paid you large sums of money (thanks for the ride but get lost unless you can give us some more?) The only thing I could find from anyone in terms of a migration path for existing users was a message from you that basically said “watch this space” well hang on, this needs to have been sorted out already – not after the fact. Rule #3 What happens to those customers where the new licensing model just does NOT work. There will always be some, so what options do you provide for them?
“Stay with V7.7 for now?” I can find no other viable alternative. I can only speak from my own experience and how Eagle is used in my own organisation, and that is the 'Feature' subscription would be right for us. Pay the $$$ and get the various feature updates for a fixed amount of time for the seat count that we have - for us.it's easy. Two are workstations, one is mobile, I can only use a maximum of two license at a time because I haven't been able to be in more than one place at a time, and I only have one guy working for me.
Offline update. Works a treat.
Up until now that is. Two are 'disconnected' 99% of the time. One (my laptop) is connected and then disconnected when I'm on-site. So what do I do? I have been able to find absolutely nothing, and this should have been thought out well in advance.
Finally, and this is something that you personally really need to take to heart. It is ok to change your mind, or change your stance if have to, but when you do, then you need to communicate that this has happened and as to why. What I mean by this is that you went on record as saying: “Eagle will, of course, be integrated with other Autodesk products – the entire point of Autodesk buying Eagle is for full-stack hardware development, from mechanical design to electronic. Whether this means Eagle will become a subscription-only model is still up in the air, but from the casual observer’s position it’s doubtful; there are still perpetual licenses of Eagle out there, and right now that’s what Autodesk is selling”.
Yup, we made that decision when we looked at what would be necessary for integration with the whole of Autodesk. Autodesk had gone subscription with every other SW package we provide. This change - sooner than some probably expected - came with the intent of building much tighter integration with these other tools and of course out backend systems. So at the risk of tipping our hand a bit, we build MCAD tools, MFG tools, mill/route tools, 3D printing tools, etc.And integrating with the larger Autodesk SW portfolio is happening.
That, to some, can seem like a good thing or a bad thing, but it'll happen and it'll hit EAGLE in a big way as we get tighter ECADMCAD integration, better mill/route integration, better interfaces to mfg, supply chain, PDM, etc. Should I wear the egg on my face for perhaps being a bit to cavalier in how I stated that? But this is where we're focused and this is why this changed.
You need to “fess up” and say that: a) it changed b) why the previous decision had to be revoked. People (and specifically your customers) are not abject about a supply vendor having to change their terms if circumstances change, but they should NOT be finding out about it AFTER the fact. Be honest and up front. Hopefully that last statement gives you a sense of where our heads are at. EAGLE is a great product with an amazing community.
And to let this be about financials is a little absurd. Without diving into the details (anyone can reverse engineer the financials from the market announcement), this was never about the revenue from EAGLE. This was about building a comprehensive solution for product development and making that available at a price point so absurd, that you'd have to be crazy not to own a copy. That's what's motivated this from the start and hopefully, with time, that'll be more clear. I'm your customer. I should not be finding out about the license changes, and how it affects me AFTER the fact - that just isn't on, and NO.
Burying it in 20 pages of legalese does NOT count. Best regards, Matt. Wrote: Sorry, you lost me. I recently upgraded to the professional edition, which will help me out for a while.
It was a larger investment for my small business. 500.- EUR/year?
Are you kidding me? Even if you granted me discount for a while, this is not what i wanted. I don't needed to update to the newest versions in the past, and i don't need or want the newest version today. I don't want to be forced to do that. I just want to use the version i paid for as long as i want. So for me the price skyrocketed. Now i will have to learn another software (I will try KiCad or DipTrace).
I mean, 2 years of your description buys me a Diptrace version that will last for years. (BTW it is sad to see what happened to Cadsoft Eagle. Once a small local company, it is now sold out and will be monetarized by Autodesk. I hope that either you will revert the licensing model or that you offended enough users and you lose the money you paid for Eagle) FWIW, we just upped Standard (a commercial license) to 4 layers.
This is for $100/yr. Hopefully this is where you're 'break even' point was and you'll be able to give it a shot! Best regards, Matt.