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".