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Many of these plugin companies charge for software version upgrades, it’s common practice.
Just because it’s common for audio companies to gouge people, that doesn’t mean it’s acceptable. I’ll never pay for an Adobe product because of their business model, for example.
I wouldn’t have an issue paying for support, upgrades, or new versions, that’s not what this is. This is charging us to continue using the same software, just on another computer. In principle, it feels like monetizing something that doesn’t need to be. As I mentioned in the original post, if you pay for something, you should get some added value or benefit. This is not that. The benefit of continuing to use the same software. Again, the amount isn’t what’s at issue, it’s the principle of it. The FTC is cracking down on auto dealerships to help stop them from being deceptive and gaining profits and offering no added value in return. If Leif and Co need more financial support, they could consider changing into a subscription model. That may prove difficult this far in, however.
I see the key replacement fee as an administration charge. Leif’s company has to employ someone full time, provide office space, email facilities etc just to process licence requests. Add in all the other costs of employing a person these days (I am much more familiar with Australian regulations, but there are costs like superannuation contribution, insurances etc as soon as you put someone on the payroll). Up until now, for the past 20 years, Leif has absorbed those costs, but he has now decided to look at a “user pays” scheme.
I don’t know exactly what is involved, but it would at least involve retrieving information from a database on just what the requestor has licenced, generating the new key, updating the database accordingly and then emailing the key to the recipient. If that takes 15 minutes to complete, the charge is totally justified.I personally don’t have a problem with that in principal. However, I’d like to think that, if anyone experiences a “difficult” installation where multiple attempts are made to get BA1 installed and registered, that there would only be the one fee charged. I’m sure if you wrote to them in a situation like that, they would make exceptions.
I’d also like him to consider a sliding scale of charges, rather than a flat fee. Some users of the software have multiple cores, the remote admin option and other licenseable options, so I believe that they should pay a premium for that. Maybe $10 for those who just have an HD core, through to $25 for those with much more complex options.
I hear what you both are saying. Administrative actions and support would justify a cost to the end user. However, I feel like this could be easily automated where you paste in your license info from the software, it’s processed and it spits out a new key. I don’t know that they need to pay a person to be doing this. Yes, development of such an automation would incur some cost. But it’s possible as I have other software that works like this. Or, do like stereo tool does and send a license key based on your paid features and that’s your permanent license key. You change computers, you look up your key and bam, done. I think it’s over-complicated as it is. I am no programmer so I don’t know what is really involved with all this I’m describing. All I know is it’s possible and probably quite feasible.
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