jfkansas wrote:The price isn't that high. Most industrial software runs into the 1000's a year with maintenance contracts additional.
actually not true, with number of professional machines you get the professional software for free with free updates for life. they are linked to work with their machines only but are professional (and usually way more powerful then we are seeing here). number of professional cad systems also now have a free slicer add-on especially since microsnot added 3d printing support to 8.1+ windows (have not tried how it works but I heard some very good results ppl had with solidworks+win10)
jfkansas wrote:It will most likely by a small upgrade fee for previous users.
it's a sure way to kill off a product, shoothing "small upgrade fee" yearly to slic3r or cura will ensure lot more dev hours pushed into open source solutions then we are seeing simplify3d pushes into their solution... there are many "not from around here" 3d printer users and the numbers are getting up but almost all of them ask us "from around here" before they spend money... when the self assembly was around 800 for a cheap machine the 150 was not that much, but now you can get a whole printer for 150-200 the numbers just don't add up, especially when you compare the featureset you are getting
don't get me wrong, I'm still using simplify3d every day ... but it's a very fragile relationship, I already don't suggest it to ppl any more (and I convinced more then 50 ppl to get it in past year or two).. making upgrade cost money will break that relationship completely..
anyhow, they only said 3->4 will be free, noone mentioned from them any $$$ for upgrades so I think this is not a very useful speculation... with regards to how licence work I have no issues and imo it's completely ok. I didn't check how it is implemented in sw as if this "licencing" is contacting their server every time to check if it can work then it's a big mess as at any time they can stop supporting old versions and turn off licencing server