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315. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
drkirkby Feb 24, 2017 12:16 PM (in response to CadSoft Guest)CadSoft Guest wrote:
One of the nice things about the EAGLE file format (since version 6 at
least) is that it is easy to read. I've already written a program that
opens an EAGLE file, reads it and can parse the XML. (I even posted a
couple of my early experiments
If anything happens to EAGLE or Autodesk, we'll still be able to access
our EAGLE files, if only to convert them to some other package.
--
EAGLE support forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca :: Where the EAGLE community meets.
Yes, that's a valid point. I see there are a number of Eagle to $other_PCB_package around, but all seem to have some issues, and not do a perfect translation.
I've met this problem many times with other software. Mathematica had some significant changes in version 6, and had a converter to convert files from versions 5 or lower to version 6. In practice it was only partially successful. It would be nice if OpenOffice was 100% compatible with Word files, but in practice it is not.
Dave
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316. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
drkirkby Feb 24, 2017 1:07 PM (in response to technolomaniac)A suggestion that want to get the license of Eagle changed
1) Make a donation to KiCad, via CERN (European Organization for Nuclear Research), The minimum donation is 20 Swiss Francs, which is just under $20.
https://giving.web.cern.ch/civicrm/contribute/transact?reset=1&id=6
2) Leave your name - don't make the donation anonymous.
3) Write to the CEO of Autodesk, saying you are thinking of switching to KiCad, and show you have donated to the KiCad project, but say will stick with Eagle if the license decision is reversed.
Whilst I can see some attractions for a company in having one license model for all products, it is too simplistic to assume that the same model is fit for all, especially if those products are aimed at different market sectors. A license model that is appropriate for software that's going to be sold to large corporations, may well be inappropriate for software that's going to be used by the hobbyist/small business market.
Personally I can't see how this sort of license model is good for anything other than videos, music, games software, or anything else where loss of access is not going to have a major impact.
BTW, if you run Eagle >= 8 in a virtual machine, I suspect you can stop it "phoning home" indefinitely. The program is not going to know what the date is, as long as the clock in the machine is set back before you start the program.
Dave
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317. Re: Eagle v8 licensing.. .
CadSoft GuestFeb 24, 2017 1:47 PM (in response to drkirkby)
David Kirkby wrote on Fri, 24 February 2017 12:07
A suggestion that want to get the license of Eagle changed
Look at the direction Autodesk is going in as a corporation. EAGLE is only
a (small) part of that corporation...
If this was EEVBlog, I'd insert "beating a dead horse".
--
EAGLE support forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca :: Where the EAGLE community meets.
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318. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
Jan CumpsFeb 24, 2017 2:09 PM (in response to drkirkby)
Are you going to work with unlicensed software as a professional designer? You make your own customers liable in that case.
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319. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
levafreidin Feb 24, 2017 3:39 PM (in response to CadSoft Guest)Just make my opinion stronger: they bought the EAGLE to kill the competitions.
How many products disappear after another BIG company, "Microsoft", bought them?
Lev Freidin.
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320. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
technolomaniac Feb 24, 2017 4:05 PM (in response to drkirkby)@David Kirkby: Are you advocating breaking the license & stealing the software? Just curious.
Best regards,
Matt - Autodesk. -
321. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
rbtx99 Feb 24, 2017 4:41 PM (in response to technolomaniac)Matt Berggren wrote:
@David Kirkby: Are you advocating breaking the license & stealing the software? Just curious.
Best regards,
Matt - Autodesk.Actually I am hopping that someone will manage to break the license. Not because I want to use the unlicensed copy, but because only when I can install it and run without online activation I will have confidence to use EAGLE for my work. It would be my fallback plan if you like for when you lose interest and abandon us unable to access our work.
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322. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
levafreidin Feb 24, 2017 5:10 PM (in response to technolomaniac)Next phrase does not belong to me:
" Actually I am hoping that someone will do it. Not because I want to use the unlicensed copy, but because only when I can install it and run without online activation I will have confidence to use EAGLE for my work. It would be my fall-back plan if you like for when you lose interest and abandon us unable to access out work."
Again, I did not say it (sentence above). Why you sent the e-mail to me?
But I have another solution of the problem:
I already bought AuloTRAX" (it imports "EAGLE" library and projects) ($49);
I installed "KiCAD" (free);
I installed "PCB Artist" (free);
I install demo version of "DipTrace" (full cost $1200 about).
Next step is to check and select more suitable for me software.
I think "KiCAD" would be most stable and growing, but I have to try.
Best regards,
Lev Freidin, Electronics Engineer.
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323. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
geralds Feb 24, 2017 6:07 PM (in response to technolomaniac)Hi Matt,
have you ever read my posts here?
1) Autodesk sells something Eagle does not yet have, but Autodesk is pushing us to pay a year before it will be developed later in the year.
2) Autodesk pushes us to buy a toy software, because at the end of the license the Eagle falls back to a a toy version called "free version".
3) Some employees (previously also of Cadsoft) of Autodesk seem to be a liar because they have said something last year,
but now have a complete 180 ° rotated statement, appeased to urge them what Autodesk prescribes.
Matt, did you read my suggestions, the 4 points I posted here in this thread?
I have to take Eagle at the time because a change is much more expensive.
But the software of the competition has already advanced over 15 - 20 years advanced software, which Autodesk wants to catch up in the 21st century.
All extra tools that Eagle provides, such as 3D view, component database, router quality, must be paid in advance at Autodesk, which are already installed as standard in the software.But.... Eagle has nice functions, but......
I appeal to think seriously about customer-friendliness.
It's YOUR - Autodesk risk if you can't write a well software.
If i like to buy a software, not just Eagle, i look for functions that it have right now, not sometime in the future!!!! "hopefully" !!!??!!
We can also reckon, also understand business mathematics.I look forward to Eagle V9, V10, V???..... can it be happen?
Best Regards,
Gerald
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324. Re: Eagle v8 licensing.. .
CadSoft GuestFeb 24, 2017 6:22 PM (in response to technolomaniac)
Matt Berggren wrote on Fri, 24 February 2017 15:05
Best regards,
Matt - Autodesk.
Nice of you to pop back in Matt. Are you going to answer my questions
about your claim that Autodesk operates all of these servers?
https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/eagle-forum/matt-please-substantiate-your-claim/td-p/6888773
We've had a reply from Element 14 already...
--
EAGLE support forums at http://www.eaglecentral.ca :: Where the EAGLE community meets.
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325. Re: Eagle v8 licensing.. .
drkirkby Feb 24, 2017 7:03 PM (in response to technolomaniac)Matt Berggren wrote:
@David Kirkby: Are you advocating breaking the license & stealing the software? Just curious.
Best regards,
Matt - Autodesk.Matt,
Given the VERY real risks with the licensing scheme, I would not wish to put any effort into using a product I know could stop working at any minute. I would want a "plan B", if Autodesk folded (less likely), or dropped support for the product (much more likely), I'd want a way out. For what it is worth, there's a huge list of obsoleted Autodesk products at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autodesk#Discontinued_products
So why should I have confidence Eagle would not go the same way?
rbtx99 sums it up with
"Actually I am hopping that someone will manage to break the license. Not because I want to use the unlicensed copy, but because only when I can install it and run without online activation I will have confidence to use EAGLE for my work. It would be my fallback plan if you like for when you lose interest and abandon us unable to access our work."
I would feel exactly the same myself.
Luckily I don't have time invested in Eagle, so unlike some I am less bothered about this license. It just strikes me as a crazy one, and I feel very sorry for the people caught up in it all.
For me, KiCad is much more attractive. No vendor lock-in.
Quite honestly Matt, I'm fairly certain IF I wanted to, (which I do not), I could get a free trial of Eagle and use the program indefinitely without paying a penny. But the truth is even if Autodesk offered me 50 years of support on the product, without paying another penny, I would not invest any time in it. It is simply too risky.
If you want to offer me £10.000 if I can prove it could be hacked, then I'd take up the challenge, but otherwise I am not interested. Even if I hacked it, collected the £10,000, I would still not use it.
Dave
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326. Re: Eagle v8 licensing.. .
drkirkby Feb 24, 2017 7:13 PM (in response to Jan Cumps)Jan Cumps wrote:
Are you going to work with unlicensed software as a professional designer? You make your own customers liable in that case.
No I am not going to work with unlicensed software. KiCad is much more attractive to me.
But if I did use software that could stop working, I'd want a backup, in just the same way as I have a backup in case my hard disk fails.
The expression "Don't put all ones eggs in one basket" comes tom mind.
Dave
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327. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
clem57Feb 24, 2017 8:42 PM (in response to technolomaniac)
The storm I said was coming has turned into a full fledged hurricane.
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328. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
drkirkby Feb 24, 2017 9:06 PM (in response to geralds)Gerald Schwarz wrote:
3) Some employees (previously also of Cadsoft) of Autodesk seem to be a liar because they have said something last year,
but now have a complete 180 ° rotated statement, appeased to urge them what Autodesk prescribes.
Best Regards,
Gerald
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It is unreasonable to say someone is a liar over this. They probably said it with the best intentions in the world, believing it to be true, but later someone else made a decision different to what they expected.
Dave
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329. Re: Eagle v8 licensing...
macegr Feb 26, 2017 2:02 AM (in response to clem57)I wonder how long it will take them to realize the truth:
- Yes, the people who actively post on forums about Eagle, and care about licensing, are greatly in the minority.
- Yes, there are many people who will just not care, and buy the subscription.
- However, those people WERE TOLD ABOUT EAGLE by us, the vocal minority. We have a disproportionate impact on the market.
Eagle, and Autodesk, do not have the momentum necessary to succeed without the support of the users, like myself, who recommended Eagle to their colleagues and invested valuable time helping those people learn to use Eagle.
Hi All --
Moving this to a separate thread so it doesn't get lost in the ether. Here's my two cents on licensing and I'd love your feedback:
Firstly, the Autodesk licensing model is subscription and the EAGLE paid license will require that you install the SW and then generate an account to retrieve your license entitlement. Once you have this, you are good to go and the SW will run as expected. If you lose your network connection, the SW has a 14-day heartbeat that will enable you to work offline for 14 days. I know that some folks would prefer to never have to connect, but this is required to support a monthly subscription model that can be selectively enabled and disabled when you use the SW (so you only pay when you use it). The total cost of ownership for those folks using it less than a few weeks a year will thus be substantially lower and still enables you to access the full software for less money. <Insert revolt here>
WRT to "what happens if autodesk decides to one day just shut off the license server?" ...ok, sure, that's possible, but so is a reality TV star becoming President of the..cough...nevermind, bad example.
Point is, that's a pretty remote possibility (think: time travel and alien invasions) and it wouldn't benefit us *at all* to upset the users we just spent real money hoping to bring into autodesk and earn their business. As the guy with both development and P&L for the product, I can tell you that it's counterintuitive and wouldn't benefit us at all. We know this. We make SW used by governments, movie studios, game developers, MEs, Civil Engineers, machinists, etc. and you can bet that shutting down a license server is not to our benefit in any of these categories. To demonstrate this behavior in one category, without a path for user SW and data, calls into question ALL of our tools' viability under this model. Not helpful.
Now...a question was raised about "but what if I drop my subscription and I want my data". Awesome, the data is yours and lives on your machine. And for SW that stores data in the cloud (we have some of these) we always provide a path to your data. If this again fails with one product, it puts all of the others up for discussion. Again, not helpful. (Read: strategy = doomed).
"So what about needing an entitlement for the freeware to open the data I created in another version (a *paid* version) and reading it? What if I want access and I dont want the 14-day time out?"
So here's the deal...We can do better here. So we will. Here's my commitment to the group here for freeware that ensures you always have a license that you can fall back on without need of internet connection *except when you first install it* (which after all, you would have had to get it in the first place): in version 8.1 or 8.0.1 or whathaveyou (let's call it 'a future release'), if you install the SW and authenticate once, we'll remove the timer req. So what I'm saying another way is, the freeware will require you to login the first time to get your license, but if you log out beyond that, you're good. You got your entitlement and you can use it freely without connection.
Caveat: to install an update, you will need to login. The update server (which issues the new version...e.g. 8.1 or 8.2. or 8.0.1, etc.) requires that you login and get the update, but beyond that, logout. Thus if you want to go off-grid in a mountain cabin somewhere, get your license at Starbucks (blagh! I understand they have 'free' wifi, but no frappucinos! ...that stuff is bad for you) then get your license and go on your merry way up to the snow drenched peaks. When you hear from the other mountaineers or your local yodeler that a new version of EAGLE is available...download, login, get your license, get your 'decaf double-pump vanilla non-fat latte macchiato' and head back up the slopes.
Point being, we can do the freeware better. So we will.
Hope this is clear. Let us know if you have questions!
Best regards,
Matt Berggren
Director - Autodesk
@technolomaniac
hackaday.io/matt