[nirava]

This is a deletion.

- they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace won't be coming to it. You might have paid for perpetual access to it 2 months ago, but it has completely stopped. As the world moves on (new chips, new OS features, just general software movement) this will increasingly feel like a second-class experience.

- the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-class" feeling as new pro-only things are added to it. it is also practically guaranteed to feed your work into AI unless you buy pro sometime in the next 5 years

In short, something secure, top class, the "best the company offers" product doesn't exist anymore. What was once there isn't.

[ezfe]

Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.

Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates.

Note: I own a license to V2 of the Serif suite.

[chemotaxis]

> Isn't this EXACTLY what subscriptions fix, though? That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.

How? First, by that time, you've usually spent many times more than it would have cost you to own the software outright, so the vendor is already better off. Second, if you stop paying, you lose access to the software, possibly with no other way to open existing files, etc. You're the one who's being held hostage - not the vendor.

As a hobbyist, I shudder to think that my total annual bill would be if all the software I use every now and then had a subscription model. It would be well in excess of $5,000/year.

[jkaplowitz]

Subscriptions often don’t allow continuing use of even existing versions of the product after you stop paying - it’s not just about access to future updates.

The main exceptions are subscriptions that are explicitly for support and maintenance contracts on top of a perpetual license. There are also a few unusual business models, like JetBrains offer for subscriptions that last at least 12 months which grants a perpetual fallback license of the major versions (including future minor versions) that were current during any part of the subscription up through 12 months before cancellation.

[paulhebert]

I’d prefer to have them release a new version every X years and let me buy that for a fixed cost. (This is how Adobe used to work)

[maccard]

> Everyone wanted a one time license, you aren't allowed to complain when that one-time licensed product stops getting updates.

A one time license is sold on the promise of future updates perpetually to this version. If serif said “we’re not adding AI tools to v2, we’re going to go to v3 instead” I’d be fine with it. But instead they’re taking the updates they were providing to us anyway and packaging them up under a new revenue stream.

If they didn’t want this backlash they shouldn’t have sold perpetual licenses, they should have sold licenses with 1 year of updates.

[dataflow]

I think people want either (a) a subscription that lets them keep the latest version perpetually, or (b) a perpetual license that provides some predictable amount of updates (this could be zero).

What people don't want is to pay for updates that they were led to believe they would get, but that they never got. Or to lose access to software that they paid a lot for, or that they got locked into (even free).

I don't think these are particularly difficult expectations to understand or meet.

[kiicia]

It’s other way around, issue exists because of subscriptions and everyone rushing to subscription bandwagon

[ludicrousdispla]

Back in the day, a one time license bought you a specific version with maybe a year of updates. That worked well for practically all users, and no one complained if they had to pay some nominal upgrade fee to get the next version.

[politelemon]

Quite the opposite, unfortunately. They are designed so that you cannot stop paying without substantial loss rendering it practically impossible.

[nirava]

why are you redirecting the conversation to subscriptions?

you know what would fix this? releasing a v3. that was the whole sell with affinity suite. that i could buy the new v3 for whatever price they set, it will contain all the new features. and i will own v3 for whatever that product lifecycle is.

THAT is why people invested in affinity. money is almost immaterial but that's why i spent time learning the thing and making it a part of my workflow.

affinity/canva can release free software all they want, but the whole reason affinity was popular was that people could pay 160 or whatever dollars for it to not nag, never nag. that has disappeared under the misdirection of "hey look its free for everyone now"

[donmcronald]

> That you can stop paying if the product stops getting updates.

You also lose the ability to access your data in a lot of cases. That's the problem. I also own a v1 and v2 license for the Affinity stuff. I've used it to design myself exactly one logo, so I would have been way better off subscribing to Adobe's stuff for a month, right?

Wrong, at least in my opinion. The problem with subscriptions is that you lose control over future access to your data. For my logo, I'm fine with Affinity Designer v2 never getting updated as long as I can load the software and use it as-is.

I recently loaded up an abandoned Java project that I haven't looked at in a dozen years. I use IntelliJ IDEA and it wouldn't load in the most recent version of IDEA because the Gradle version used in the project was too old. I fired up my self-hosted server that I used at the time, installed IDEA v8, added a hostname for the Sonatype Nexus server to my DNS, and loaded my old project to look around.

You can barely do that anymore because you don't own or control anything. Everything is subscription based, pay forever, with deep links to infrastructure you don't control either. I can mostly do it because I refuse to get on the subscription "never control anything" bandwagon, but I'll still probably get burned by online activation at some point.

Just wait until everyone has 2 decades of AI context locked away behind paywalls controlled by a handful of companies. Everything in existence will be vendor locked and those companies will usurp every novel idea anyone is naive enough to feed in as context.

[damnesian]

> the new "free" software is a sales funnel into the paid subscription, and will also increasingly have that "second-class" feeling as new pro-only things are added to it

There's a plague of this on the entire industry now. Free apps abound, none of them will do exactly what you need, all of them will point you to the shiny unfree thing that will.

[jonathanstrange]

The practice would be easier to tolerate if the unfree thing had reasonable pricing. Alas, it is always subscription-based and the monthly fee is crazy high, in the range of re-buying a traditional download product every four months. I understand that professional users might have more money to spend but it still seems to me that those companies overestimate what potential customers are willing to pay as running costs.

[netghost]

I mean 20+ years ago we called this shareware.

If you get value out of the free part of a tool, great! If not, then you get to choose to pay for the rest or not. Personally I'm happy that it tends to be the feature set I can live without that costs money. Not always, but often enough.

[microtonal]

I'm sad (buyer of both v1 and v2). Being a paid app as opposed to require a subscription was the main selling over the Adobe Suite. A lot of users migrated to Affinity for that reason. As the free version will get more and more crippled as they move to pushing subscriptions, why not switch back to Adobe?

I hope somebody else will try to crack this market like affinity did a decade ago.

[Gigachad]

I’m kinda keen on this. A few months ago I was looking at making a one time magazine print, but I discovered there were essentially no affordable options. The affinity option was the cheapest one, but still unaffordable for a one time project.

I don’t even mind paying a subscription but the adobe option requires you to get a minimum of 12 months.

[carlosjobim]

> As the free version will get more and more crippled as they move to pushing subscriptions, why not switch back to Adobe?

Because this is just in your imagination?

[odie5533]

I just want to pay $50 and have a single version I can download that doesn't need to auto-update and that I can use as long as I want.

[jansan]

On the bright side, i am still using Paintshop Pro v7.04 from 2001, so we may be able to use Affinity for another 20 years, too.

[trinix912]

Unless you're on Mac which many design folks are. PSP from '01 (if it existed for Mac) would likely mean running a pre-OS X version from 2 CPU architectures ago.

[lysace]

That sucks for that usecase, agreed.

On the plus side, there is finally a free modern piece of software that matches 80s MacDraw and MacPaint on the Mac. (Keynote isn’t it.)

[Computer0]

I did pay for perpetual access to it 2 months ago! :)

As a windows PC user I am hoping the compatibility issues wont effect me and I can enjoy the product offline.

[stOneskull]

i wonder if you get some type of compensation if you paid recently.

[naikrovek]

perpetual licenses give you access to the software you purchased perpetually. a perpetual license doesn't usually give you access to later versions of the software, only updates & fixes for the version you bought.

you were lucky to get the updates that you got. that is not normal, and is not something that a perpetual license purchaser should expect to get.

[blackqueeriroh]

> they're completely stopping all updates to v2; even image trace won't be coming to it.

There’s as of yet no confirmation about this. There is a lot of speculation, but there has not been official confirmation.

[dbmnt]

It's right there in the FAQ.

"Your Affinity V2 license (via Serif) remains valid and Serif will continue to keep activation servers online. But please note that these apps won’t receive future updates."

[justinclift]

> they're completely stopping all updates to v2

The article itself says at least this bit. I didn't notice anything about a "trace" thing though, but I was just skimming.