[SML] Autodesk subscription?

[Joe D]

I first heard that Autodesk was going to stop selling any more perpetual licenses when I called a local dealer to inquire about some of their upscale products. I am not a person that will normally laugh out loud, but I laughed when the salesman told me.  It means that if you end your subscription, and want to do anything other than view a file you created with that software, you are out of luck. And there are a few ways for a subscription to end.  You might just decide to stop paying for it, Autodesk might discontinue the product, or they may even go out of business.  If you owned a perpetual license, you can simply continue to use the software you own.  Though perhaps in the event of Autodesk's bankruptcy, you might not be able to authorize (i.e. phone home) a new install.

There is one plus side to subscription.  You have the option of paying to just get the software for a single month. But, both subscription and maintenance contracts remove any motivation for the company to make its upgrades actually valuable. It motivates them to create useless new features, and more software bloat.

For my company, I immediately removed all Autodesk software from consideration. The only possible exception would be to rent a particular piece of software for a month to get something specific done, that I could not do any other way.  And then, assume that a PDF of what I created is all I will ever use in the future.

There are too many other alternatives out there to tolerate a company like Autodesk.

-Joe