Hi Do you remember the big news about six months ago in July 2016 when Autodesk bought cadSoft Eagle The Eagle PCB CAD program actually bought it from finals and Finals bought it bought cadSoft Eagle A couple of years before that and everyone was kind of worried about what was going to happen and things like that and Art of Route Did an interview with the head of the new electronics division at Autodesk oh we coincidentally is a former Altium a colleague of mine and it was all female sounded pretty good of reassuring things like that, but their people were still getting a little bit of the heebie-jeebies wondering about what the future would hold. Now one of the major concerns was that they would switch over to a subscription-based model and/or cloud-based our software because Eagle has always been a perpetual license ie. you buy it one off cost and they give you a license key code. You've got the executable.

That's it. You don't need to ping back to the server or do anything else. You can still use it in 20 30 years time if you've still got the hardware to run it and of course having the finely honed detector that I do I read there to complete non answer to this question, call them out and they should have said they should have just been honest and said it's going to cloud and subscription-based but sure enough they responded and said hey, Dave it's not going subscription so they're slowly. at this stage, it isn't anywhere on my roadmap.

Thought about it, decided against it. Can't say that we will never in the life of the product do that. No, of course not. That would be at best unfair at worst.

dishonest. But I have so many things that are more pressing. so there you go. Very reassuring.

From just six months ago, it's not going to subscription base Yeah, you guessed it. Yep, I called it or at least half of it. They went to subscription-based pricing today, but they hate. they haven't gone to cloud yet.

but hey, I'm sure it's not Matt's fault I mean II works for Autodesk Autodesk are huge. It big corporate, big company mentality and I think the majority or most of their other products are also subscription type based as you know services. So it was obvious they were going to do this. and it's so funny.

just a few days ago on the Eevblog forum when they're talking about the new version of software that they're going to release, which they just did with this new license feature. You guys have no idea the awesome that is about to drop. Yeah, drop one. All right.

it's a big stinky one. And of course changing owners seems to a race company memory very very quickly. Here's a post from two years ago when they introduced Version 7, and what do you know, they introduced a new license management feature with the release of Eagle Version 7 caps off computer entries new license management system for Eagle in order to better protect our intellectual property and offer more flexibility and control to customers with multi-user licenses on a network. During the two weeks since the launch of Eagle Version 7, we've been listening carefully to your constructive feedback and concerns about the new license management technology and have decided to remove the license management features and with Version 7.1 they caved in.

listen to all the complaints and they dropped it. But yeah, two years later, new management's come in and yeah, they haven't learnt the same lesson, but maybe they're about to and they're not beating around the bush ever. Here's a post from my Jorge Garcia, who works for our Autodesk on the Autodesk forums the Eagle Forums As it stands now, if you are not on subscription, you won't be able to use Eagle. Version 8 or any other version that may come out in the future behaves like an electric bill and I pay the power.

it shut off at this point in time and under this licensing mechanism, there is no solution for off-network machines ie. ones disconnected from the interwebs. There are other schemes that Autodesk that do allow off network licenses, but Eagle Current currently does not have them. I'll be making our management aware of this full thread and see what improvements can be made.

So you think Autodesk is full description going forward and this position is non-negotiable I Know that for a lot of you, this is not good news. Yeah, think again, but there's not much that can be done about it. I'm truly sorry guys. Yeah, I'm sorry too.

George But yep. I think you're going to get a fair bit of backlash from this one. and predictably, the campers aren't happy. They've been angry all day over it.

bye-bye Eagle at purge Eagle In-store Kicad and there's no shortage of people saying it's a complete showstopper for them. Eagle is dead to me. this is a no-go This totally kills it for me. It just goes on and on.

and there's even a user who's got 30 professional licenses and well then I've got to upgrade and a stick with version 7. And also predictably, there are calls everywhere to switch to Kicad open-source software, all that sort of stuff. and somebody even came up with the XY ID down the bottom there to give his entire team 2k bonus to learn Kicad and make a tax-deductible donation to the free and open-source community. Love it.

But there's some good news. The free version of Eagle which of course made it the de-facto industry standard in the open source hardware community, is still free, which is great. In fact, they're very in crease the capabilities of the free version I Believe. Buts the downside? Yeah, you need an Autodesk account to download it or to upgrade a future version? Don't And of course you might say Dave What's the big deal? You know everyone.

everything is going to this subscription model. Well yeah, that's true. and I personally use a lot of subscription stuff and I don't have too much of a problem with this personally, but the problem is a lot of people do not only on principle, but for the work environment and their workflow. And Eagle recognize this a couple of years back when they admitted here.

We understand that for a large group of customers, the current license management is causing limitations or simply not usable your current workflow. I've worked at companies where you are like cut off from the internet, you're firewalled from Internet and if your software has to go back to the internet periodically to check your license and it is simply an unusable product, like based on company procedures, you simply cannot use it. Or for those who want to, let's say you want to. you know you go on a plane trip, you know you're going for me.

it takes me 24 hours to get a 30-hour If you get to the other side of the planet, you know I want to be able to use something standalone if you're sitting on a beach for a couple of weeks, if you've gone out back, whatever, you know if you disconnect it or got an unreliable internet, you don't want to be tied into it. But as a consolation, they have actually thought of this. Here's a post from Matt on the forum: If you lose your network connection, the software has a 14 day heartbeat that will enable you to work offline for 14 days. I Know a some folks would prefer to never have to connect, but this is required to support their monthly subscription model and we'll get into the prices in a minute because they've changed over and well.

They want people to be able to have the flexibility to rent monthly and fair enough. but that's then now. Locks them into this 14-day online subscription heartbeat requirement and it's just going to be a complete showstopper for people either due to serious requirements or just on principle. The biggest problem with not having a perpetual license option a standalone license option is you don't have the ability to.

When you make your CAD files for a particular product, then just like a zip and lock archive of the software, the license Keys Everything A lot of companies and people take incomplete snapshots of their hard drive and back those up so that they can instantly come back in 10-15 years time. When the customer has they are, you've got to upgrade the product or the customer needs some support or something like that, you're going to change it and you can just get back up and running. We should think, but now it's this online licensing. You don't have that standalone license key that you can then zip up an archive and then just get up and running later you if you come back in ten years time a the company may not be there, but hey, it's Autodesk Okay, the product may not be there anymore, but hey okay, it's Autodesk or your license for that particular version that you have, it may not exist, but hey, it's Autodesk Or you might be able to buy the latest life for the latest version, but then you've got problems with that.

Your old files may not be compatible. It could be some bug QWERTY can't load it in. That's why people take snapshots of their entire development systems. Anyone is really serious about long term maintainability, Ever just because or because you have contractual requirements.

I've worked in large companies where we're contractually obligated to provide support for 10 or 20 years or whatever. and you can't do that with this type of subscription model. CAD Tool and well, that's the thing. These companies just don't get it.

CAD Software is not like your regular consumer software. It's almost a religion. I Know it is like that, will you know some other consumer type software, But this is a tool for professionals that invest their entire career sometimes learning how to use this tool. and when you try and change it on them, they don't change the way it works, operates the the entire subscription model.

You turn it on its head and you're going to get this backlash it should. People will just get angry on principle, let alone due to practical requirements. ly They really are going to be in for a hard time here and they learnt this two years ago and they're probably going to learn the exact same lesson yet again. Now of course you'll have the only ones to change things up like this: ATM for example a famous infamous for turning the world of electronics design upside down and changing the way they do things.

their models, their price in their licensing that features, they're going to focus on everything else I specialize in shooting themselves in the foot, plpl and every available opportunity. but hey, the customers stuck around because a they are loyal, they're tithing the software and there wasn't really any serious competition in the sort of price point that our team operating at. but this is different for Eagle Just look at all the people saying well I'm going to go to Kicad I'm going to go to Dip Trace I'm going to go to, you know, insert one here. The new circuit studio has a Altium have a standalone license for example Eagle just aren't in the same position as say as someone like Altium was.

When they make these big changes. there are so many other options, most of them. majority of their business is going to be done, but you know, small hobbyist hacker maker, you know one-man band, You know five person company or whatever they have doing smallish type stuff. No real serious professional companies out there.

you know, using eager you don't see it in the job requirements of professional companies and stuff like that. These are people who can switch much easier and this backlash is real. I Like it. They need to take this serious.

They may not survive. Well, they'll survive as a company, but they may not survive this intact in terms of their reputation. They go lose a lot of business over this, and there's been some talk about how it's actually can be potentially more expensive now as well, and that's a yes and a no. Let's take a look at the new pricing model.

So now they've got two versions instead of three: Eagle Standard an Eagle Premium Eagle Standard $15 if you just want the monthly thing or a hundred bucks a year if you want to go for the yearly option. and the Eagle premium is $65 a month or 500 bucks a year. So if we take a look at their original prices on the left-hand side here, you can see that they actually have three standards: Eagle Light, Eagle Standard, and Eagle Professional. They've gotten rid of Eagle light and they've only got the Eagle standard now, but Eagle Standard has changed.

You can see how it used to have six layers there with 160 500 millimeter routing area. Well, now it's only two layers for that. Ten dollars a month or 100 bucks a year. So that has changed fairly significantly.

So if you just wanted to jump up to like a four layer board, they don't really have that option anymore. you've got to go up to the premium. So in that sort of case, yes, it's more expensive if you had that limited routing size and the four layer or six layer requirement. But I've always thought that this was really completely stupid.

I Mean why would you pay? you know, 500 bucks or eight hundred and twenty bucks. If you want the auto router for a 12v 160 millimeter by 100 millimeter routing area, it is. Oh It's ridiculous. If you want a single-layer board with one part on it that's 161 millimeters, you've got to jump up to there before you have to jump up to the $1100 model.

But now it's actually cheaper to sort of like Go Pro on the Eagle premium Here at 6, it's only now 500 bucks a year. so it's in what more than half it used to be eleven hundred and forty five, and now it's only five hundred bucks. So I think overall, more people are going to win out on this pricing structure, so don't quite know why. There's a bit of an uproar over the pricing here.

Maybe if you're stuck in that mid and sort of airy-fairy area. Yeah, okay, fair enough, but no I think it's much better now. But the good news is though is that you can now actually just rent it for a month if you want that 16 layers unlimited board area size, rent it from up and Bob's your uncle, right? you can. I Guess you can always go back to your previous subscription you know your lower subscription model and Altium we're going to do this with Circuitmaker originally and I thought I actually saw this before they released and I thought that was the subscription.

Like the monthly thing, being able to rent like certain features, it's actually quite valuable. So I think that's a kind of a good move. but of course that's pushed them into that. You know that license check in online requirement? You can't have that standalone license.

And that's the big bug bear here is that there are most people are up in an uproar because they just don't have that standalone perpetual license. That's the real killer here. But hey, also on the positive side, Autodesk Takeover has meant that they're actually finally adding all these new features. I mean they got BGA fan out and they're adding routing, different new routing engines, and all sorts of stuff that they're adding in.

so that's you know that's terrific. But yeah, I can understand why there's a big uproar over this thing. and to completely flip your pricing model, especially so soon, like six months or less after buying the company, they must have made this decision. you know, a month or two back only to you know to be able to roll it out now.

And they flipped on that. They did a complete U-turn on that pretty darn quickly and you know they were promised basically back at the start that know, we've investigate know when, a gun and subscription model. So you think, okay, maybe a couple years down the track they might change their mind. but no flip-flop after, you know, less than half a year.

Ridiculous. Anyway, I can understand the uproar and they need to fix this. It's just ridiculous. They need to have that standalone license option.

Otherwise, it's as I said before, it's easy, relatively easy for people to live from Eagle because it doesn't have that you know locked in structure that you know your other higher end packages have. There's too many other options. So yeah, I don't like it at all. Speaking of options, if you did want to switch over to Kicad, then my esteemed amp, our co-host Chris Gamal who runs Contextual Electronics, said he would kill a puppy if I didn't recommend Contextual Electronics over here.

and he's getting the Blinky program where you can learn Kicad and all that sort of stuff. So yeah, we don't want to kill a puppy. So yeah, check it out. So yep, Autodesk and Eagle are they're really open to big can of worms here and they're copping a lot of flack over it.

And I think you know rightly so I think they need to sort this mess out and they recognized it two years ago and they're going to looks like they're making the same mistake again. I Don't quite understand the intricacies of the Cad market and the user base, but anyway, let us know what you think. If you've got opinions on this, would you dare touch subscription CAD Software like this and if so, tell us why. Is it principled or do you have you know some requirement that you know it really makes this a showstopper for you? Leave it in the Youtube comments or on the Eevee blog forum down below.

Catch you next time.