finding out that this is basically a subscription by another name
-wraith808
Can you clarify that? The purchase page says that the version you buy is good forever. You don't get free updates after a year, but you don't need to pay again to keep the version you bought working (as I understand it).
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-mwb1100
This arguably has a lot to do with
ethics in business.I consider that
@wraith808 has probably hit the nail pretty squarely on the head, and then later provides further substantiation of his
comment.
It could arguably be called "a subscription by subterfuge" based on a position of pseudo-"lock-in". It's also a variation of a sort of bait-and-switch I suppose. Clever though, but then that don't impress me much. That sort of thing is known as "sharp practice" where I come from. In the long term, it could potentially and probably turn out to be a self-destructive commercial/marketing tactic. Co-incidentally, I notice that Malwarebytes have been subtly shifting their licensing terms in what ominously looks like a turn in a similar direction.
Having studied and applied marketing and commercial/contract law in business, my understanding is that one shouldn't
need to have to hunt around for the embedded hooks/gotchas, if one can reasonably
trust the person one is dealing with to be dealing in a straight-up-and-down manner.
It always disappoints me when people let me (and themselves) down in that regard of trust.
In some of my job roles I've been responsible for the selection and financial sign-off of software licencing purchases for quite large farms of client-server and thin client systems. One of the primary risks in those cases is
projected future cost, and if it turns out that a good product is available at what looks like a good price, but that in the longer-term it's pricing structure would force you down a potentially more expensive route, then you go for another product that doesn't stitch you up that way. I have to say that, in my experience, Microsoft has always been pretty straight-up-and-down and fair in its licencing schemes. Buyers of MS software can project future costs/budgets, and on functionality and price (risk) they would tend to usually win against their potential competitors.
So, sadlement, I'll not be buying an upgrade to GS-Base, and I'll not be committing myself to using GS-Base, even though I think it's quite a good product, and I'll certainly not be wanting to do repeat business with
Citadel5 - or other people/organisations - if they demonstrate sharp practice. I risked very little, buying a licence for what, for me was a trial, at 50% off, but though the product was good, when I realised the subterfuge, I just uninstalled it and determined to continue to use the well-integrated MS Office 2016 product suite (Access, Excel, Word,
OneNote, etc.), via the excellent $10 corporate home use licencing scheme,
and it's a superb product set that is regularly updated, with only infrequent primary version number changes. Why would I use a
single short-lived database product for the same cost, with a limited 1-year upgrade life? It wouldn't make commercial sense. So, regrettably, my trial of GS-Base is short-lived and it becomes one of my dusty "also-rans", with a note to self to not waste any more time on it in future.
We will nevertheless probably see GS-Base
continue to come up under BitsDuJour and elsewhere at the artificial "50% off" (or whatever) price, appealing to uninformed and price-sensitive demand where, after 12 months, the suckers/buyers will find themselves caught up in an upgrade costing them - guess what? - an artificially-motivating "50% off" price again. Everything is 50% off all the time! Isn't that
great? If the offer sounds too good to be true, then it probably is.
Economic and accounting theory would indicate that, under such a pricing scheme, the
real price is always going to be 50% (or whatever) off whatever number happens to have been arbitrarily set as the supposedly undiscounted price.
This could even seem like a simple scam. Call a spade a "spade", as they say.
@wraith808 would seem to be correct and it's arguably "Subscription" by another name.
