I wish that when companies such as this do go out of business that they should transition the licensing model to perpetual.
It is gracious to keep running the licesnse server ut once it ends that is it.
If the company is not going to lose any money because of it, which they will not since they are out fo the busness entirely, let the users have a chance to keep using it.
(without support, without bugfixes, without upgrades to new platforms)
Presumably this could lead to people sharing licensing detals and non paying customers may over time start using it, that should be an acceptable risk, given that there is no monetary gain nor loss.
It would be awesome to have access to a rich library of dead software that people could use for free.
One issue you hit, and it sounds like they may be hitting here, is the need to pay yearly royalties or other yearly licensing fees for some of the components in their software.
The company that they are paying fees to is unlikely to give them a a pass.
In these cases, which are not uncommon, there is not a lot they can do.
(Lots of companies have a mix of perpetual and non-perpetual users and pay royalties on the yearly folks and a one time fixed fee for the forever folks)
Or the software, as written, NEEDS to contact a server to ask the question "am I legit" - and to remove this need would require modifying the software and redistributing it.
Of course, if the companies funds run dry, they will stop renewing the url registration, and one of us can register it, throw up a server that says "you are legit!" To every request and the problem is solved.
That “one of us will register it” is unlikely to happen. It’s easier to run a local server that handles the url or to hack the executable to ignore the check.
I wish that when companies such as this do go out of business that they should transition the licensing model to perpetual.
It is gracious to keep running the licesnse server ut once it ends that is it.
If the company is not going to lose any money because of it, which they will not since they are out fo the busness entirely, let the users have a chance to keep using it.
(without support, without bugfixes, without upgrades to new platforms)
Presumably this could lead to people sharing licensing detals and non paying customers may over time start using it, that should be an acceptable risk, given that there is no monetary gain nor loss.
It would be awesome to have access to a rich library of dead software that people could use for free.