this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2024
966 points (98.7% liked)

Memes

45739 readers
454 users here now

Rules:

  1. Be civil and nice.
  2. Try not to excessively repost, as a rule of thumb, wait at least 2 months to do it if you have to.

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 
top 50 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 194 points 8 months ago (5 children)

When licenses MEAN nothing I PAY for nothing yarrrr

[–] [email protected] 54 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Do what you want cuz a pirate is free

[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

You are a pirate! Yar har fiddle dee dee! Being a pirate is alright with me!

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 127 points 8 months ago (2 children)

To the people in this thread saying “don’t buy lifetime”, how is that any different than a perpetual license? Your alternative is subscription based… I’d definitely prefer perpetual to subscription.

[–] [email protected] 148 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Software companies don't want you to know this, but the open-source licenses on the internet are free. You can just take them home. I have 458 apps.

[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago

Rookie numbers, I have 307336924 cloned repos

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

There is always another way

🏴‍☠️

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Yeah but for software you want it to work and sometimes need help, when you steal that software you are often on your own. In open source, there is nearly always an open alternative that comes with community support!

load more comments (6 replies)
[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago

But they were all decieved, for another license was made. Forged in secret.

[–] [email protected] 112 points 8 months ago (13 children)

The only time I ever fell for a "lifetime" software purchase was back when Trillian (the IM client) was popular. That lasted less than 5 years. Then they released "Astas", which was just a UI refresh, but they treated it like it was a whole new company and product. "Lifetime" is always a scam.

[–] [email protected] 55 points 8 months ago (11 children)

I'm enjoying my Plex one and Nexus Mods. The latter one was in 2013 and cost me $40. Today the yearly subscription is $70.

[–] [email protected] 43 points 8 months ago (6 children)

I got a Plex lifetime sub back in the day. They never got rid of it, but they did enshittify the product out from under me.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I tried it, but not only does the experience not feel nearly as polished, the performance is much worse than Plex in my experience.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

What do you mean? It was lifetime - lasted for the lifetime of the product.

Ohhh you thought they meant YOUR lifetime! Ooopsies

[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

If you read the fine print, many "lifetime" warranties are like this too. They mean the "lifetime of the product" which is usually defined in the same fine print as like, 5 years or some other bullshit timespan.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Honestly the way I always look at it is just take the lifetime cost and divide it by the yearly cost and if I think the product/license deal will exist for that long (and I’ll use it for that long) it’s worth it otherwise not. Like, I have lifetime Plex and frankly I don’t expect the, to exist forever but I like the premium features and I’ve had lifetime for long enough that I’ve saved money.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (10 replies)
[–] [email protected] 81 points 8 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 71 points 8 months ago (5 children)

GIMP or Krita might not be up to the standard as Affinity and Photoshop are, but at least while perfecting my skills in GIMP, I don't have to worry about having to find a different software because a random company purchases it.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 8 months ago (5 children)

I really wish I liked gimp but I hate it so much. It's so unintuitive it actually hurts every time I use it

[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (3 children)

That's what I used to think as well actually. I opened it, saw the airplane control center, and closed it. But then I volunteered for editing a photo for my school, and I had to learn how to effectively create borders around the text, as I would have to makes a lot of changes to them. So I searched and came across this video. And then I understood that GIMP is actually a really powerful tool, you just have to learn how the developers intended you to work with it. Admittedly, having to use the drop shadow feature for text borders is pretty retarded, but it lets you fine tune the how the end result will look.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Yea, people don't like it simply because they're not used to it.

For instance, Cntrl-A, select all. Cntrl-Shift-A is a way more intuitive way to deselect all.

It's the same reason people complain about OnlyOffice, which is stellar.

load more comments (8 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 71 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Nah, your lifetime license will be fine. They'll just slightly rename the products, release them as "entirely new, unrelated products" and cease updating it under the old name. You can still use the old, never updated product in perpetuity, if you want...

The first time this happened to me was a MUD client of all things. zMUD discontinued, check out the new cMUD! Also available with a lifetime license just like zMUD was!

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It's not uncommon to do what you said, but to also kill the old product so that they're not available any more. Sometimes it's the exact same product, but with a different name.

load more comments (1 replies)
load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 55 points 8 months ago (3 children)

I'm still crazy salty about when I invested ~$250 to get the Substance Painter + Designer suite, and got the "We'Re JoInInG tHe AdObE fAMiLy wooo!" Email....

Followed by the "Don't worry we'll still let you get indie licenses" email...

Followed by the "It's gonna be subscription only but you can still keep the never-will-be-upgraded indie version we're discontinuing."

How can the likes of Adobe and Autodesk be so garbage and yet everything they taint with their miasmal existence is or becomes "InDuStRy StAnDaRd"? At this point I refuse to touch Adobe stuff partly because their membership is harder to quit than a gym, and the rest is just out of sheer spite.

I just refuse to use commercial creative software at this point. The blatant rug pulling is just expected now.

load more comments (3 replies)
[–] [email protected] 48 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I bought a lifetime license for Malwarebytes back in 2012 and I'm shocked that they still honor it to this day. I feel like it's only a matter of time before I lose it.

[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago

Hell, I bought a hex editor with lifetime lic back in 1996. The fucking guy answered my email and sent me an upgrade almost 30 years later. Hats off to you.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I see so many ads for malware bytes that it almost looks like malware itself lol. I'm pretty sure they have a lot of money.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I'm pretty sure they have a lot of money.

Yes but not all of the monies. - Every single MBA ever to curse the earth with their presence.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 45 points 8 months ago

Canva's UI is somehow more fiddly than Word for making edits, but they've always seemed like a pretty decent company to me.

...of course that only holds true until it doesn't - I'm looking at you, Google.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

I learned my lesson about 'lifetime' updates with a Tom Tom GPS unit, from the late '90s, maybe early 2000s. After about 4 or 5 years I couldn't install the latest map updates, so I contacted CS. They said, "Oh yeah, lifetime means the time of the expected life of the unit, which is 4.5 years. We don't support that model anymore. Any other questions?"

[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago (13 children)

That's why open source rules

load more comments (13 replies)
[–] [email protected] 37 points 8 months ago (8 children)

What amazes me are the number of companies selling "lifetime" VPN service or "lifetime" cloud storage service with a straight face.

Like... that is TRANSPARENTLY a scam. You're literally gonna sell lifetime licenses to people with more money than common sense, until the entire system is overloaded, then just go out of business.

load more comments (8 replies)
[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (6 children)

Not only software license, I believe any products "lifetime" comes with a lot of caveates.

Case in point, I purchased a fountain pen a decade ago, and started to leak (a crack around the threads) a few year back. The company is known for its lifetime warranty and good customer service, as per the warranty, it said if the product is defective (which I believe leaking pen body is), I am entilted for a replacement part or a new model of the same price if the pen is no longer in production. I reached out to customer service and was told, they can't supply a replacement part because the pen is no longer in production and I'm not entitled to a new model because they doesn't deem a leaking body a defect.

[–] [email protected] 32 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Why would you not name the company? If they won't protect you, you are not obligated to protect them.

[–] [email protected] 24 points 8 months ago (2 children)

You are absolutely right.

The company is "Franklin-Christoph"

load more comments (2 replies)
load more comments (3 replies)
load more comments (5 replies)
[–] [email protected] 26 points 8 months ago

Whelp... the Affinity Suite was pretty awesome and robust. Too bad they never did a proper linux port.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Buying a lifetime license, also known as... buying.

Products aren't services.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago

I am so sick of the new age of zero ownership or protections. Instead of greedy companies losing customers, other companies just see it like “oh shit we can do that too?” and consumers are the only ones losing.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago

Subscriptions, here we come! You can't trust any commercial software company.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 8 months ago (9 children)

I remember Pocket Casts tried to take away lifetime purchases until people complained about it and they went 'fuck it' and gave people memberships that lasted 100 years or something. They did it before they had time to rebrand it as a 'Lifetime Member' in the GUI so good on them for fixing it so fast I guess.

I love it as an app but I'm not sure what it's like for new users that can't get lifetime memberships.

load more comments (9 replies)
[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

even if they keep lifetime licenses for now, it's blatantly obvious how Canva plans to use Embrace, Extend, Extinguish to move people to a subscription service for newer releases.

If adobe can do it with Photoshop et al. without losing its brand reputation, then Affinity will follow suit in due course.

load more comments (2 replies)
[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I've bought VPN lifetime several times, 2 of them have disappeared, 2 are still running. On the other hand, just think about it from the company point of view, lifetime support is not a sustainable business model, so it necessarily must be a scam.

load more comments (4 replies)
[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Ah damnit I love affinity. Can Someone fix Gimp already??

[–] [email protected] 31 points 8 months ago (6 children)

It's worth mentioning that GIMP is mainly developed by two developers. If you wish for the development to be faster, you should consider donating.

load more comments (6 replies)
load more comments (1 replies)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

It's so great we have foss to compete with this wave of companies trying to make everything a subscription.

load more comments
view more: next ›