Subscription questions...

[Fairlight]

On Mon, Mar 14, 2016 at 02:21:56PM -0400, Kenneth Brody thus spoke:
> On 3/14/2016 12:42 PM, Fairlight via Filepro-list wrote:
> [...]
> >What's the deal with the subscriptions they moved to?  Say you buy in at
> >5.8 right now.  Say there's a bug in 5.8, and they release 5.8.1 in a few
> >months.  Are you stuck with that buggy 5.8 without a subscription, or are
> >you good through all of 5.8.  What I've seen so far in the past leads me to
> >believe you're screwed without a subscription.
> [...]
> 
> No, you'll get all the bugfix updates without the subscription, but
> you won't get the new features of later interim releases.
> 
> For example, you bought 5.8.00, and there are bugs that are fixed.
> You'll be able to download the 5.8.00.01 bugfix update, but not the
> 5.8.01 (or later) interim releases with new features.  You will
> continue to be able to get 5.8.00.xx bugfixes as long as 5.8 is
> still being updated.

Thanks for the answer, Ken.

This makes it clear that I'm not comfortable with the current release
practises.  You have bugs left in 5.0.14/5.0.15 yet, and the only thing you
do is point people towards the purchase page for the latest version.  It's
not like the last 5.0 or even 5.6 were without bugs - sometimes even major
ones.  I know of at least one major one to do with record locking and
lookups.  Don't start me on blobs.

I went, "No Sale," right about, "[...] as long as x.x is still being
updated."  I do stop support on my own product's own major versions after a
certain point.  But I also have -zero- credible bug reports for five plus
years prior, generally.

filePro is a bit closer to Serif's practises, and I dropped Serif for
-exactly- this reason.  They'd sneeze on the guts, revamp the UI, and stop
supporting the last version before it was even stable.  I hate that.

So you're not immediately screwed, you're just deferred screwed whenever
someone decides, "Ah, that's enough for that version."  And all trust and
goodwill on that point went out the window when a security update was
withheld for fPcgi 2.0 instead of rolling it into 1.x, as I recall the way
things went.  I always disagreed with that move, and it just reinforces my
feelings now.

Well, I appreciate the answer.  Thanks.

mark->
-- 
Audio panton, cogito singularis.