Rumor has it...

[ataradov]

Did I miss the lie? What was the lie?

Q&A after the acquisition (now carefully scrubbed):

“Will I be required to pay ‘maintenance’?”
Answer: “Simply put, no. ”

I guess from marketing point of view maintenance is not a subscription. But that's also why people hate marketers.

[rx8pilot]

Q&A after the acquisition (now carefully scrubbed):

“Will I be required to pay ‘maintenance’?”
Answer: “Simply put, no. ”

I guess from marketing point of view maintenance is not a subscription. But that's also why people hate marketers.

A marketer calls that a 'soft' lie. Technically not lying, but perpetual payments to continue usage can easily be called 'maintenance'

At the end of the day - I am not guided by marketers. I want a tool that allows me to do my work as effectively as possible. If they keep the upgrades coming, I am will to overlook this kind of marketing crap.

[james_s]

IMHO, the dick move was lying about changing the model.  In itself, changing the model was just icing on the cake.

Once trust is gone, it's hard to restore.  Everyone who feels tempted to buy into all of the hot air and promises coming from Autodesk representatives would do well to remember how this started.

Did I miss the lie? What was the lie?

They explicitly said there were no plans to go subscription, around a month before they went subscription. They are either liars who knew darn well they planned to go subscription, or grossly incompetent. 

[technolomaniac]

Did I miss the lie? What was the lie?

Q&A after the acquisition (now carefully scrubbed):

“Will I be required to pay ‘maintenance’?”
Answer: “Simply put, no. ”

I guess from marketing point of view maintenance is not a subscription. But that's also why people hate marketers.

I never said that dude.  Nothing was scrubbed.  I didnt delete any Q&A with Dave.  I dont delete my views.  You're pushing a false narrative that fits your viewpoint...Sans content to back it up.  Here is exactly what I said from these very forums:

@Dave, it's not going subscription.  So there.    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.   

The fact is, we were two weeks into acquisition that took over a year to complete.  You wouldnt know this, but these things are neither simple nor straight forward.  When we completed that process we decided that until we were ready with a major release (version we wouldnt even entertain the move to subs.  We didnt.  We released...how you say?  Oh yeah, version 7.7.  Perpetual.  When we moved to the next major version (v8), we decided to go to subs. With neither apology nor regret.  I'm proud of what we're doing and you have a choice.  Use what you want and stop feeding the narrative that someone "did you wrong." 

[ataradov]

I never said that it was said by you. This was on the Eagle site, I have no idea who put it there.

[daqq]

Well that's confidence inducing... Can I assume that once I start a new project, the payment model change again?

Come on, you've changed an extremely important property of the tool you offer and people use and you expect people to be happy about it? In a subscription only-and-mandatory licensing model, the customer always holds the shitty end of the stick.

[Cerebus]

You wouldnt[sic] know this, but these things are neither simple nor straight forward.

Oh, well. That's put us little people in our place. A suggestion: when your company has been accused of arrogance, it's a little foolish to belittle your readers.

There are enough people in your audience that I can state with some certainty that some of us have had to live through more mergers and acquisition pain than you've had hot dinners. I know that I've been through enough that I could write a book about it and I'll hazard a guess that I'm not the only one here.

I'm proud of what we're doing and you have a choice.

Yup, "my way or the highway", we'd already figured that out.

  Use what you want and stop feeding the narrative that someone "did you wrong."

Most people aren't saying that, they are saying you (Autocad) have made a mistake by moving to a subscription model. You have compounded it by publicly giving the impression after the acquisition that Eagle would not be moving to a subscription model and, by your own admission, within a year moving to a subscription model. That doesn't mean that you (Autocad) were deliberately dishonest, but it does make it hard to rely on what you (Autocad) say. So any promises about things like future plans, future subscription pricing, future continued availability and so on have to be evaluated in light of that.

The story about the little boy makes it seem that you have to cry "Wolf!" repeatedly to become untrustworthy. That is not true. Do it once, loudly enough and publicly enough and you loose all future credibility in that moment.

If you've managed to convince me of one thing, it is that Autocad is a company that I would not currently risk doing business with, especially when it comes to tools that could make or break the business that uses them. Even if the tools were the very best available, the risk would be too great. The companies arrogance and inconstancy are exactly what I am looking to avoid in a business partner.

This isn't something I'm saying because "someone on the Internet is wrong", or because I want to score points in some argument with you. My CAD choices are made, for the time being, and I have no skin in this game. I think the subscription only model is wrong and have, previously, offered reasoned arguments for that position. My point of view is very much as a neutral observer looking in from the outside and I have to say you're making a complete pigs ear of it.

What I'm seeing here is a company that made a choice of business model, that many of their existing customers vocally didn't like, being intransigent for the sake of it and making a mess of talking at their customers instead of talking with their customers. If the subscription model is as good as claimed, then you could risk also having a conventional license model as well, retain the customers who will never 'go subscription', and prove your faith in the subscription model if indeed it does win in competition with conventional licensing. Offer a genuine choice instead of the pseudo-choice of "my way or the highway".

[edflycad]

I'm trying to migrate from an XP to 7 machine (kicking & screaming) I have many 7 machines but some tools only worked in XP. Now that they have "matured" I can get into the modern age completely. My problem is this, nobody answers the phone in Florida. Nobody. The "expert" via chat at Autodesk Pakistan say they cannot find my info after 20 minutes of back and forth babble. The license server no longer works for the secret codes given by email to authorize Eagle v7.
Fubar and screw Autodesk for anything especially THE CLOUD. I'm done with their bullshit.
Anybody have ideas about the v7 license on the 7 machine. Tried everything...

Hi, I hope you are doing well. Just wanted to inform that if you supply the Autodesk operator your EAGLE v(insert version here) Serial number, they will be able to create a case and funnel it to the appropiate team.  We usually respond to the license request the same day if not by the next day. If you have already contacted Autodesk and created a case, it is quite possible we have already responded to your request.  Make sure to check your Spam folders. We will respond to the email address used to create your account.
I hope this helps.
Ed

[nctnico]

Use what you want and stop feeding the narrative that someone "did you wrong."

Most people aren't saying that, they are saying you (Autocad) have made a mistake by moving to a subscription model.

I can imagine people wo are long time Eagle users and have upgraded a couple of times in the past decades feel cheated. They have made Eagle great and now they are missing out on the new features because they want a perpetual license just like they had before.

[ebastler]

Here is exactly what I said from these very forums:

@Dave, it's not going subscription.  So there.    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.
[...]
When we moved to the next major version (v8), we decided to go to subs. With neither apology nor regret. 

So, on a typical day, how far out does your "roadmap" extend?
Must be interesting to work at Autodesk. Living the wild, free-wheeling life...

 

[DerekG]

When we moved to the next major version (v8), we decided to go to subs. With neither apology nor regret.

Having had a chat yesterday with the DipTrace Design Team, I learn that the decision by Autodesk to move to a subscription model has been good news indeed.

"Several Hundred" EAGLE users have already taken up the special DipTrace cross-grade offer.

Hey, Autodesk, why not speed up the exodus by doubling your annual subscription price?

[janoc]

BTW, even the next stable version of Kicad due in a few weeks will have a fairly decent Eagle import too (has been demoed recently). I guess we should thank Autodesk for boosting the rest of the PCB CAD market with their subscription move 

But I am really sorry for the sales and marketing guys who need to push the official company line about how great this idea is.

And re Fusion 360 - for my personal stuff I have switched either to FreeCAD or OnShape (depending on what am I doing). Fusion doesn't work in Linux (and there is no support planned). I find OnShape a lot more logical and less glitchy to use than Fusion, even though it is a monster blob of Javascript (!) running in a browser.

And at work we actually do have a subscription for it, but it is a pretty buggy and slow piece of ... Fortunately our business doesn't depend on CAD so much outside of importing some client files, so we can deal with that. But it is very unlikely that more licenses will be bought ...

[Quarlo Klobrigney]

Exactly. Eagle from Autodesk stick a fork in it it's done. I've been migrating to Kicad for some time. This lack of support is the last straw. As I said I'm done. Not interested in anything more in rebuttal from tech support ghosts, talking via a chat session, cloud based or any other big brother things. I WILL be able to import my files in any software format I wish. I liked them when they were small. Farnell-> Autodesk
All hail Lord Doomcock. If only he could do an Autodesk video.

BTW, even the next stable version of Kicad due in a few weeks will have a fairly decent Eagle import too (has been demoed recently). I guess we should thank Autodesk for boosting the rest of the PCB CAD market with their subscription move 

[lundmar]

Exactly. Eagle from Autodesk stick a fork in it it's done. I've been migrating to Kicad for some time. This lack of support is the last straw. As I said I'm done. Not interested in anything more in rebuttal from tech support ghosts, talking via a chat session, cloud based or any other big brother things. I WILL be able to import my files in any software format I wish. I liked them when they were small. Farnell-> Autodesk
All hail Lord Doomcock. If only he could do an Autodesk video.

BTW, even the next stable version of Kicad due in a few weeks will have a fairly decent Eagle import too (has been demoed recently). I guess we should thank Autodesk for boosting the rest of the PCB CAD market with their subscription move 

It's an interesting discussion. As KiCad improves it becomes increasingly difficult for the likes of Autodesk to justify the high cost for their design software despite whatever silly payment model they offer. I mean, Autodesk etc. can only do so much to stay ahead of the curve - eventually KiCad will catch up on features and do so using open formats. Also, with KiCad you get almost instant support via the KiCad community and all the various information available online. Heck, if you want to improve and help the direction of KiCad you can even get involved in the project yourself if you wish.

[rx8pilot]

I have never used KiCAD so I cannot make any direct comments. I also support open development.

I will say that when I tried Open Office / Libre Office because it was supposed to be the same or better than MS.....I wanted to throw it out the window on any given day. Now, once again, MS gets my money for Excel, Word, etc.....

While Eagle is the worst software in my current arsenal - they are clearly highly motivated to make it better and more marketable. Autodesk really wants the market and has considerably more dev power than KiCad could ever hope for. One will develop much faster than the other.

[Gerhard_dk4xp]

Are you still using the same SW 10 years later on a later operating system?  That raises questions about whether the SW will generate the same outputs from the data sources given the change in OS / OS-specific libraries.  Are you archiving the OS as well?  And what about the HW?  Are you maintaining the legacy machine as well?  If not, you put all of that data at risk with any change at any level. Having worked as an engineer I never recall us keeping our legacy machines around to support 20 year old files.  We always imported legacy files into the new OS / new SW, updated them, validated they were the same and re-released to ensure we had a current, canonical copy of the data.  Otherwise we put ourselves at risk of one day not having access to the information *for good*.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine

But you knew that.

I was denied any help from Altium for running it on WIN7 on VMware.

I set up a native Win7 machine and the Altium crash remained.
I finally found out myself that loading a historic Protel99 library
crashes AD when it is renamed as .SchLib.

Also, if your 3D support is switched off / not good enough, there
are no complaints. It's just that some windows are not updated.

Hey, Orcad under DOS4 could display a layout without problems.

That coding practice of ignoring errors or simply not checking
for them seems to be everywhere in AD. I'm not sure if that
will be a big win for Eagle.

I have frozen in a machine that works with only some minor
quirks; it does what I need, and I ended the paid support.
It helped me never ever apart from new features invented
by marketing.

regards,
Gerhard

You need a helping hand?
You find it at the end of your right arm.

 

[janoc]

I have never used KiCAD so I cannot make any direct comments. I also support open development.

I will say that when I tried Open Office / Libre Office because it was supposed to be the same or better than MS.....I wanted to throw it out the window on any given day. Now, once again, MS gets my money for Excel, Word, etc.....

While Eagle is the worst software in my current arsenal - they are clearly highly motivated to make it better and more marketable. Autodesk really wants the market and has considerably more dev power than KiCad could ever hope for. One will develop much faster than the other.

That's certainly true. Kicad (and Open/Libre Office) can't compete with a team of high-paid engineers working on a product full time.

On the other hand - they don't really have to. Kicad is good enough for most things users of Eagle were doing already (not comparing with Altium or such - that's a different league). And is getting better every day. It doesn't need to be perfect, just good enough. If your choice is between a tool with an unpalatable business model and a tool that is not great but does the job, Kicad will still win, no matter what magical features they add to Eagle. Furthermore, most of the new stuff, like the MCAD integration is tied into Fusion 360 - which has a lot of its own issues.

Moreover, if the automatic updates for Eagle work the same as for Fusion 360, ooof ... Fusion has the updates forced on you and you never know what breaks after installing one. Wonderful if your job depends on such tool.



Re Open/Libre Office - if you need to exchange documents with people using MS Office then nothing but MS Office will work for you, sadly. There is simply no way for a 3rd party product to implement the various undocumented stuff those products do and rely on. It is actually a miracle that the Libre Office works with those documents as well as it does, given the history of active sabotage and obstruction from Microsoft.

On the other hand, if you mostly need those tools for your own use and can handle exchanging files with outside parties in neutral formats like PDF, I have found Libre Office pretty adequate for normal office use at work. Some things in MS Office are better, some are worse, but I wouldn't claim a clear winner there. Preparing major documents in both is a masochistic exercise with a lot of swearing and hair pulling. Give me LaTeX any day.

[rachaelp]

Moreover, if the automatic updates for Eagle work the same as for Fusion 360, ooof ...

They don't. There are no automatic updates in EAGLE. You get update notifications for new versions the same as you always did and you download and install a complete new version alongside your existing version(s), just as it's always worked.

Best Regards,

Rachael

[rx8pilot]

Moreover, if the automatic updates for Eagle work the same as for Fusion 360, ooof ...

They don't. There are no automatic updates in EAGLE. You get update notifications for new versions the same as you always did and you download and install a complete new version alongside your existing version(s), just as it's always worked.

I can confirm this. ON my latest project I got a notice that a new version is available but I am sitting on it until I complete what I am doing. If it has issues, I can revert.

In fact - I still have version 6.5 that still works as always. There is indeed some insurance in that approach.

[janoc]

At least that. In Fusion 360 you don't really get a choice - if there is an update it will autoinstall the next time you open the software. Just tried to open it now - and right away I got the "clock" icon in the menu bar indicating a background job running and it says "Installing update ...".

Worse than Windows 10 - there you can at least move the install and reboot to a more convenient time. In Fusion nope. And if it screws something up - "Tough luck, no warranty, we aren't responsible!"

[rx8pilot]

That is the scariest thing by far.....and the reason I waited as long as possible.

At the end of the day - it replaced my previous tools: SolidWorks with simulation, Mastercam for Solidworks, and Keyshot Rendering. All of which needed updates that were going to be a huge number. The last negotiated rate if I recall was about $15,000 for all 3 to be the latest version. Maintenance is >$3,000/year

Fusion360 does even more and includes Eagle for $600/yr. After 20 long and fantastic years with Solidworks - Fusion360 is a better solution both technically and financially. The cloud thing is a bit crazy, but less than a deal killer. I can read in any of my Solidworks libraries - even edit and modify the features although the build history is gone.

There were more than a few times over the years that SW left me high and dry with crashing bugs, inability to revert versions, graphics card sensitivity, etc. I am prepared for Fusion360 to have a moment or two as well. Right now - I have it setup on two PC's so that I have an immediate backup and it works fine being disconnected from the internet for quite a while.

Generally speaking, if the internet is down - Fusion360 is the least of my concerns. Nearly all of my work requires a persistent internet connection. Cloud security? Who knows - I don't do aerospace, medical, military, or any other stuff that has defined security requirements.

[saike]

and it works fine being disconnected from the internet for quite a while

I have done a lot of on site warranty work over the past few years and had a few very entertaining times  watching other guys walking around outside holding their laptops in the air trying to get a wifi connection. Once you start working on sites that are slightly away from the mainstream areas, cloud based stuff is one gamble too many.

[janoc]

Generally speaking, if the internet is down - Fusion360 is the least of my concerns. Nearly all of my work requires a persistent internet connection. Cloud security? Who knows - I don't do aerospace, medical, military, or any other stuff that has defined security requirements.

Careful, cloud can bite you in other ways too. E.g. if your client stipulates their data are confidential they often balk at the idea of uploading them into some cloud. E.g. using Dropbox for exchanging such files is a legal no-no at our place because of this, even though the data are never made public in any way.

And opening them in Fusion means you are uploading them into the AutoDesk's cloud. May or may not be a problem, depending on what you are doing and how your contracts are formulated. We had to put some weasel words in our contracts to be covered when using Fusion for client data.

[rx8pilot]

For sure, I have mixed feelings overall. Fortunately, I am the boss and my business owns all the IP. That keeps me from being liable for anyone's data. Not everyone is in this position though.

I like the 'automatic' backup and built in data management. In Solidworks / Mastercam I am truly on my own and it requires considerable effort to keep track of everything and keep it backed up locally and off site.

I also like that I can open up any files on any PC. That allows me to have a proper design workstation with huge monitors to accommodate the heavy lifting, then move to the PC attached to my CNC mill, or another one on my electronics bench.

Relative to my Solidworks / Mastercam experience..... Fusion 360 is easy and fast.

Short and misplld from my mobile......

[ehughes]

Altium user here but I used EAGLE for quite sometime.

I am generally for subscription models.   From a business cash flow perspective (on both ends) it is a good deal for organization who are growing and actively trying make money.

Engineers tend to whine.     I am not concerned about Autodesk's extistence in 20 years.   

If in 20 years it all goes south you have the production data as well as the most open and documented PCB format on the planet . (sorry, KiCAD is a disaster.    That file format seems to be as stable as a skyscraper on a fault line).   At that point you might want to consider why you are polishing the same turd and move on.           

While I will continue to use Altium/Solidworks, I wish the best for Autodesk and EAGLE.      Just look at the progress under the previous pricing model when it owned was Cadsoft.     It literally was not improved for 10 years.   There were minor bug fixes but users never saw any substantial improvements.          I have been impressed with progress Autodesk has made with the tool in the past to year.        Most Engineers don't understand the burn rate of an active engineering team.   The old 90's style pricing model seemed to be large part of the anemic development pace of the old EAGLE.

Sure there are a few users with a chip on their shoulder but I would be willing to bet a basket of chicken wings that the user base is larger than it has ever been and the balance sheet will reflect a solid business model.