Correct me if I'm wrong, but this is a normal piece of software, not some kind of cloud service. If that's the case, the developer has no ongoing costs from lifetime license users besides hosting downloads and support. Hosting a few MBs to maybe a few thousand users per month is basically free these days, so if they just discontinued support for those users but let them keep using the software, the fallout would surely be much smaller.
Losing support and even updates a decade into a very cheap "lifetime" license is fine. But the same executable that worked yesterday not working anymore is entirely unacceptable.
This naturally depends on the software type, its quality and the composition of its user base, but I've been on a receiving end of the support firehose for a software with a lot of "simpleton" users and it was a nightmare. This doesn't sound like something that would apply to the mIRC case, but it'd be one rationale for yanking lifetime licenses. You want support - you need to keep chipping in.
I don’t know why he wouldn’t just let everyone’s lifetime license continue and just start to provide shitty support to those users if he can’t keep up. Reneging on the license itself is a clear violation of the terms, but “support” is vague and subjective enough that you can pretty much scale it down to nothing if you don’t mind having unhappy customers.
Yes, that was exactly my point. Support is the only "costly" thing, so they could've just dropped that without preventing people from using the software.
Retroactively changing the terms to only give support to people who "renew" their license every X years is a lot less objectionable than retroactively revoking their license to use the software at all and remotely bricking it through DRM.
The header screenshot in the article shows a "license not valid" popup and the article doesn't say anything about existing licenses. The quote "one of my colleagues [...] came across the expiration of his license" isn't clear either, but leans more towards "fully revoked" than "no more updates" in my reading.
However, if existing versions do still work, I fully support the dev. In a world where billion-$ corporations advertise 50$/m "unlimited" phone plans that aren't actually unlimited, a solo dev revoking a lifetime support and update plan that cost 7$ two decades ago isn't even worth writing about.
> But the same executable that worked yesterday not working anymore is entirely unacceptable.
I agree completely.
But a problem is APIs are evolving. If security vulnerabilities get patched in libraries, and their new version becomes incompatible with the executable, you have to choose between staying safe and the program still working.
That's my take too. The proprietary software licence I could agree with is a perpetual licence combined with limited updates.
I can accept that mIRC made a mistake when they offered free updates to all future versions, and needed to walk that part back. The problem with not accepting this is that mIRC could just be forced to rerelease as mmIRC, which is bad for everybody (users lose updates unless they switch, author loses branding).
However, as you say, it should have just been the right to updates that was walked back, not the perpetual licence for the existing software.
> From approximately 22-Aug-2015 to 07-Mar-2016: The home user license is valid for 10 years of updates.
> From approximately 08-Mar-2016 to 01-Sept-2018: The home user license is valid for "several years" of updates. It is unclear exactly how many years that means.
> And from approximately 02-Sep-2018 to now (March 2020): The home user license is valid for three years of updates.
Who is "most companies"? Most companies never offered lifetime updates to begin with. Anyway, the logic still applies: it's unlikely that mIRC has very many "new" customers so they wouldn't be commercially viable.
> Again, a bold move that doesn’t quite walk the line of honesty.
I don't see how the statement isn't honest. I'd be more careful about accusations of dishonesty.
As others have mentioned, devs in this situation typically just come out with a v2 that isn't covered by the perpetual license... or stop development altogether.
Here the developer is at least admitting the license was naive and giving a still-generous 10 years and will actually give you lifetime license after all, if you're willing to write an email and wait a little.
> ...I find this to be an extremely fascinating and concerning topic
Because what we really need to worry about in tech is the little guy screwing you over after 20 years?
> I don't see how the statement isn't honest. I'd be more careful about accusations of dishonesty.
No, it's completely dishonest. He accepted money in exchange for certain terms of service, then changed the terms so that he can keep the money without providing the service. I'm genuinely not clear how it could even be interpreted otherwise. I feel for the guy, but no, it's dishonest.
> As others have mentioned, devs in this situation typically just come out with a v2 that isn't covered by the perpetual license... or stop development altogether.
According to the author of the article, the old license says it's for every version of the software in perpetuity. If he comes out with v2, that would be covered as well.
My takeaway is: don't offer a lifetime license, offer a 10-year license. Or, include a clause in your lifetime license that says "by the way, I can change these terms in the future".
That original license contract is legally binding, too. So it's not only about dishonesty at this point, it's a new legal liability that he's opened himself up to, which has the potential to cost him a lot more than the trust he decided to give up. It's a pretty brash move.
> According to the author of the article, the old license says it's for every version of the software in perpetuity. If he comes out with v2, that would be covered as well.
Well this is easy enough... "mIRC pro" comes around and "mIRC" is discontinued. It's kind of strange that the author didn't even bother to do this much.
I can only assume that the user base for a proprietary, Windows-only IRC client in 2022 is vanishingly small, so he may have rightly assumed not enough people would notice or care to cause him any headaches.
> and will actually give you lifetime license after all, if you're willing to write an email and wait a little.
He doesn't say that you'll get a lifetime licence. In fact, if he now regrets ever issuing lifetime licences, it seems pretty unlikely that he'll issue new ones.
I hate software licensing models. I wish developers would just sell proper support contracts.
Frankly I'm completely shocked to see that mIRC still gets updates.
That said, this is basically what mobile developers do constantly. When you buy a "lifetime" license the software basically gets abandoned and a new version comes out where you get updates.
If you've been using mIRC since 1995 and the developer has been keeping it up to date, perhaps you should be supporting them.
If I offer you a product, And we exchange money based on my offer of a product for a specific amount of time (In this case lifetime) and I change the deal afterwards, it is dishonest and unethical.
> If you've been using mIRC since 1995 and the developer has been keeping it up to date, perhaps you should be supporting them.
Why? It was part of the financial transaction at the time to have a lifetime license for the agreed amount of money provided at the time. It doesn't matter if it was $1 or $1,000,000. Changing the terms after the fact is dishonest. Full stop.
Seems to me it's fully honest if the original offer was made without any deceit. In fact, acknowledging that the original offer turned out to be impractical is also honest. However, that does not mean that some other criticism or pejorative cannot be leveraged against this action.
You can plan to support it all you want, but "lifetime" is a long-ass time. You should be humble enough to know that your ass isn't going to be able to cash that check, and avoid writing it in the first place.
I suppose it depends on the terms of the licence. I've permanent/lifetime licences for various software, applied to either particular versions or all version released within a year of purchase; this means that the licensed persists indefinitely or until a violation of license (or until rightful transfer of license or voluntary termination of license). I've very few licenses which include all future versions, and those are mostly open-source volunteer projects.
> That said, this is basically what mobile developers do constantly. When you buy a "lifetime" license the software basically gets abandoned and a new version comes out where you get updates.
While I never encountered this (there simply aren’t many apps I use), I regularly encounter this in completely free apps. Like my supermarket’s app. There’s a new version, that’s almost identical, slightly rearranged interface. Only one of them gets updated now. What?
I've done outsourced IT work for a bunch of small companies. What I've seen so often was something like "we had a very talented programming intern who built this whole thing and then (went back to college | got a new job | accidentally deleted the codebase). So this time we went with an agency, but they called all the code garbage and said we need a complete re-write so now we have two systems we're moving between".
The larger the enterprise the longer and more distant (and in some cases, more prone to corruption) is decision-making chain, the crappier the contractors ;)
There are obvious exceptions, but that's just how it is in practice.
I think sometimes this happens to reset the reviews. If the score gets to low, they just publish a new app. Or they fix an issue that people have been complaining about for a while. Maybe they want to increase ad spend and those 1 stars from three years ago make it hard to promote?
IME, review resets are definitely part of it, but not all. The other big one is "we lost control of the app namespace when we fired $vendor and while it may be ours (and sometimes we agreed to bad deals where it's not), we don't know how to get it back."
Yeah, never pay for an upgrade is just not a good business model because you presumably have sold to a larger and larger percentage of your potential market over time. Some sort of minor updates are free with discounted price for major version upgrades is a better idea in general.
Panic Prompt, a pretty good ssh client for iOS, released a 2.0 version that seemed more like a big update to me. I definitely didn’t mind buying the next version, but it did surprise me.
I dunno. I think to some extent it is just the result of the change in how code is deployed — in the past, for consumer software, you bought a program for a version of the OS and sort of expected that when you upgraded you’d have to go find replacements or buy new editions of some software. Nowadays with app stores and these sort of rapidly-updated, never quite done operating systems, you kind of expect updates, right?
I don’t think conventions have been universally agreed on for this sort of thing.
Prompt 2 brought the GPS-powered hack to keep SSH sessions from timing out and that was a major upgrade worth paying for. Also, the App Store deliberately doesn’t have a good way to do upgrades because Apple would rather developers move to the exploitative but lucrative subscription pricing model.
Just to be explicit, I definitely wasn’t trying to criticize Panic. They are sort of a well-known, well-regarded group I think (I was surprised by Prompt 2, but not annoyed by it or anything). I think they make a good example of the fact that a non-exploitive company might want to do this sort of thing.
There are not really any clients for XMPP or Matrix that work as well as irssi or weechat for IRC. I also have more issues with servers for XMPP and Matrix (delayed messages, uptime, encryption weirdness). I use things besides IRC, but IRC still gets daily use and is my favorite. I suspect everyone who knows how to make a good client is still using IRC, so they aren't available to make good ones for the newer protocols.
weechat-matrix works pretty well, tbh. but agreed IRC is simpler to get right than XMPP & Matrix. Matrix stability at least is improving constantly though (but agreed it's not quite at the same level as IRC. Turns out decentralised E2EE is hard.)
What a strange website. The article was written in a unique voice, so I wanted to find more from the author to get a better picture of their perspective.
But all bios (that I checked) are dead ends (leading to general social media accounts). There is one employee at the company on LinkedIn.
Are these people real? This is now more interesting to me than the article itself. There are 13 years of content, but I can’t tell much more.
This is to me peak social media in 21st century. Somebody has been curating or authoring content for 13 years, but if they don't have clearly identifiable personalities that you can track down, we ask ourselves if they are real.
In general, I don't care about the people behind the article content. They have their own lives that should be private, and the articles should be able to stand on their own merit.
Many times they are not real people. They are pseudonyms used by an editorial board, all or some of which use the name to publish articles that the board feel may blow back or be controversial. The practice is as old as publishing itself.
It is honestly shocking the number of posters here that seem to think it's completely morally ok to renege on the deal with these lifetime subscribers because the author didn't make much profit?
To be frank, if these purchases are no longer worth supporting, those customers should receive a full refund.
> It is honestly shocking the number of posters here that seem to think it's completely morally ok to renege on the deal with these lifetime subscribers because the author didn't make much profit?
mIRC sales are obviously declining. Author wants to continue supporting it, but the business model no longer works. The options now are:
1) Shut it all down. Author takes a job somewhere else. Product lifetime ends. Lifetime agreement honored.
2) Be honest, admit lifetime agreement isn't workable going forward, and come up with new license terms. Doesn't match the letter of the original license, but project gets to continue and author can continue working on it.
3) Create an "mIRC 2.0" out of nowhere that isn't any different than an incremental update, but gets presented as an all-new product. This is functionally equivalent to #2, but also adheres to the letter of the original agreement.
I don't consider "author forced to work on product in perpetuity at a loss" an option, so I didn't list it here. I prefer admitting that the business model needs to change over shutting down the product or doing name-only new product launches to get around lifetime licenses.
I'm not expecting the author to continue work on mIRC in perpetuity. If they want to decide they're done and stop updating mIRC, that would be totally ok in my book.
What is unethical, in my opinion, is to continue updating mIRC and not honor the agreement you made with some of your earliest supporters, even if you kinda regret that agreement now.
No, of course not, that would be dodging their responsibility just as much. They sold a license to all future updates of mIRC, I expect that to be honored (or refunded if not reasonably possible to honor) - and not for the author to try to play games to get out of this commitment.
The author could start a new project, not based on mIRC, and sell that separately.
> Shut it all down. Author takes a job somewhere else. Product lifetime ends. Lifetime agreement honored.
And this is why DRM (as with mIRC apparently) is such an issue. People should be able to just keep using their version, instead of being dependent on some license server responding properly.
They most certainly are not sitting on all that money, it was used to fund the project.
It’s not defraud if he decides to pull the plug and stop development entirely, but then no one will be able to enjoy it. They could also change the name of the product and loophole out of the situation as well. That’s honestly what they probably should have done given the backlash here.
What he did with the money is irrelevant. He sold people a lifetime support contract. He then decided he wanted them to pay more, so he canceled them all just because he felt like it. The fact that his original sale was a stupid idea is also immaterial. Every one of those people should get a refund, because he's explicitly told them they're not getting what they paid for. Instead he keeps their money and invites them to give him more. It's revolting behavior.
> They most certainly are not sitting on all that money, it was used to fund the project.
Then declare bankruptcy and to their best to fulfill the obligations then restructure and continue. Basically he took out a loan he cannot repay, which is unfortunate but not unusual. What is unusual is telling the people you borrowed the money from “I realized I can’t pay you back and still have as much profit as I want, so I’m considering the debt to be absolved.”
mIRC isn’t some sleazy megacorp trying to cheat customers to fund new gold toilet seats on their private jet fleets. It’s one person trying to make ends meet by selling his life’s work.
Sure, him selling perpetual licenses was a mistake, but he probably doesn’t have a pot of gold somewhere to refund those licenses. He spent the money maintaining the software. An honest mistake, not some sort of malicious scheme.
I’d be happy to forgive him. If I were still using mIRC, I’d happily fork over another $20.
Edit: actually, thinking about how much milage I got out of mIRC back in the day, decided to buy a new license just to support him.
This is the weird blind spot I'm referencing in my post.
There seems to be this strong belief on HN that because they're a small time software engineer, that things we all agree would be unethical under the exact same circumstances from other actors ("some sleazy megacorp") are completely ok.
I don't understand why his customers should be forced to eat the cost from his mistake. If a local small business sold me something at a price a little low (so they still made profit, just less than they wanted) would it be ok for them to take the thing away later and demand more money for it?
It's possible to acknowledge that the act is equally unethical and also relatively much smaller in impact. Not all offenses against humanity are equal. I've had friends who still owe me more money for something two decades ago than the author of mIRC does for my "lifetime" license, and they don't give me anxiety either.
> If a local small business sold me something at a price a little low (so they still made profit, just less than they wanted) would it be ok for them to take the thing away later and demand more money for it?
If a local small business sold me anything for US$20, provided continuous support for it for more than two decades, and then asked if I could pay another $20 to continue to get support for it, I'd tell them it was still at my parents' house and probably got sold in a garage sale years ago.
Nothing I've ever purchased has gotten 23 years of updates and support from its creator, much less something that cost $20, even in 2015, 2005, or 1995 values of $20. Is it normal to receive this service? I'm thankful for the two decades of updates and support, not upset that the author didn't believe mIRC would still be relevant to anyone after nearly a quarter of a century.
It’s not a blind spot. Its an acknowledgement of the fact that small time operations are often run by people without MBAs and without lawyers checking everything. Megacorps should be held to a higher standard, because they have the resources to meet them.
What's the higher standard? "Megacorps are expected to actually honor their agreements"?
I'd love to hear you articulate what the difference here is that Megacorps would be expected to catch with their "MBAs and lawyers", but the author of mIRC wouldn't?
MBAs and lawyers would have prevented the sale of perpetual licenses to begin with. Supporting software is a recurring expense, so selling lifetime support for a flat fee is a timebomb that will inevitably end up as perpetual a financial burden, so the more such licenses you sell, the more you set up the company for future failure.
That’s an excusable mistake for a small company. Not for a big corporation.
"Ongoing cost" has nothing to do with it, if that was true the author would have just cut support but still allowed users to use the software and receive updates.
I'm not asking for the author to write updates if they don't want to.
I'm asking that if they do (for whatever reason), that they make their updates available to those who already paid for them (and static file hosting is practically free nowadays).
…and given this choice between continuing to work for free, or abandoning his life’s work, it’s not entirely unreasonable that he decided to go for the option of reneging on the perpetual license mistake, even if that is distasteful.
For the people who don’t want to pay for a new license, the outcome is the same as if he just shut mIRC down: no more updates.
So from that perspective, they’re no worse off. And the people who are happy to pay another $20, they will be able to continue to enjoy the software.
> mIRC isn’t some sleazy megacorp trying to cheat customers to fund new gold toilet seats on their private jet fleets. It’s one person trying to make ends meet
that one person trying to make ends meet is sitting on 1.3 million pounds in cash
Don’t confuse assets with cash. That the company has something with a book value of £1.3M does not mean that they should be obliged to spend their rest of their lives maintaining mIRC for free.
"current assets" under English law is either cash or something that can be easily converted into cash
> That the company has something with a book value of £1.3M does not mean that they should be obliged to spend their rest of their lives maintaining mIRC for free.
> "current assets" under English law is either cash or something that can be easily converted into cash
Yeah, like owning stock in another company or some other security that can be sold for cash, but not without loss.
> this is a strawman
So is bringing up the book value of a company when we’re talking about running costs. Sure, he could run the company at a deficit for quite a while. But I don’t think that’s a reasonable thing to demand.
IANAL, but as I understand contract law you can’t be expected to perform the contract if circumstances change too much (law of frustration). The developer here indicated they never expected to be providing support for a quarter century, and it doesn’t seem unreasonable a court would agree they aren’t bound by the “lifetime” license.
I am also not a lawyer, but I seriously doubt a court would accept "I didn't expect to actually have to live up to my end of the deal!" to be a valid change in circumstances. By this logic almost anyone could back out of a long term contract: "I didn't expect to still be in business 24 years later when I gave you that 25 year warranty!"
To quote the top few results I got searching online for "law of frustration":
> However, frustration of contract is not acceptable in all circumstances nor in all types of contracts. It is acceptable when the law finds it unfair to force a party to comply with the contract terms ___due to events that are outside of or beyond their control___.
> To be frank, if these purchases are no longer worth supporting, those customers should receive a full refund.
English law generally accounts for the benefit received. For example, if you buy a physical product that works for only half its expected lifetime, the starting point is that you did receive half of the benefit of the product and so you are owed (the remaining) half of your money back.
Or, put another way, if a product is expected to last a year, and fails one day before that point, you don't get to walk away with most of your money, and the other party nothing. That isn't fair to the other party, who did fulfil >99% of their obligation to you.
What proportion of the expected benefit you received, and other issues such as consequential damages, also get factored into that, of course.
The license is sold as a lifetime license. Most people who purchased a license will still be in the first third of their lifespan and only have purchased the license ten years ago. So, a fair assumption would be another ~60 years of usage.
Yeah, but the product didn't break down. It'd be a bit like you had a book in good condition, and the company came by and stole it out of your home after 10 years of using it (despite selling it to your for life).
I don't live in England, so maybe it's different there, but in the US you would not be able to claim partial completion of a contract in that case.
Caveat emptor should definitely be applied in this situation. Sorry you feel like someone should do something different, but you didn't enter into a legal contract, you bought software from a developer. They ultimately did not earn your trust. Live and learn?
It's not that simple. One can argue that the original contract is tantamount to a slave contract, thereby null and void at the outset. Now, some people argue that slave contracts are legitimate, and some argue that they aren't. But it's not the trivial matter you think it is.
It's easy to find such arguments using google, e.g. search "are slave contracts enforceable." Also look into the theory of contract law regarding what terms are enforceable and what not, and why. There's a whole range of legal theories and arguments.
Mortality is nuanced, and not everything needs to have a protagonist and an antagonist (or victims). Anyway, the licences were purchased 10 years ago at an affordable price, and the author is offering to extend licenses if people email them.
Was it naïve of them? Alas, it was. Is their latest decision detrimental to someone's quality of life? I doubt it.
Alao, I don't know the details in this instance, but a lot of unlimited/lifetime products come with a shit ton of fine print which void the lifetime/unlimited clause. For example, a lot of hosting providers used to give you "unlimited" storage, but excluding media files, or apply "fair use" limitations, etc.
The fact that both developers and users thought that a lifetime deal was possible just speak to how much our field doesn't understand how to do business.
ImageLine software make a very popular audio production program called FL Studio that has been sold on a “pay once, free upgrades for life” basis for about 25 years. It has been cited as the most installed piece of music software. The product is wildly successful and the company is doing very well AFAIK.
This is in stark contrast to the other major players in the field that charge a similar amount to upgrade to the next major version.
I think in the case of mIRC the lifetime model may have continued to work had IRC continued to grow, but it didn’t and the users went elsewhere.
Ironically IMO most of the users went elsewhere because it seemed like mirc wasnt being updated very much and got left behind the times whilst other platforms like slack and discord took irc and built actual useful things on top.
Now the mirc developer is claiming he updates the software so much he needs all the people who already paid him to pay him again, meanwhile slack and discord remain free (ish).
I bought a lifetime license for MediaMonkey [0] [1] back in 2007, back then it was version 2, now I’m using 4 and 5 is in public beta. And they are still selling that same lifetime license, though it’s $50 now instead of probably $40 back then (I was charged 33€)
The airline example was actually worse IMO, the cost (not opportunity cost, just flat out cost) of letting someone download a new exe is much less than that of an airplane seat
There are 385,000 babies born every day. If just 10% of them need a $10 mIRC license at some point in their life, mIRC would have ongoing revenue of $140 million per year. /s
There is a way to have a sustainable business that sells lifetime deals and continues to support it.
You generally need low maintenance and support costs, but if you setup an investment to generate consistent returns for minimal dev/support costs or have a recurring stream of new customers it is possible, or charge for new features and add ons.
Do you really think that Adobe Photoshop CS purchases or video game purchases don't generate enough revenue to cover the costs and the only solution is recurring revenue?
I don't think Adobe is exactly a good example here since they stopped selling one-off licenses altogether and only offer a subscription based model now.
The old model worked for decades though. For them and their user's, subscriptions offer a low cost entry point which was always a challenge at their full price point.
Pantone is a weird case because they actually do something even if the colors don't change. You're paying for a guarantee, not a color. They have to keep apprised of changes in materials technology used in printing and manufacturing to provide that guarantee. There's a reason the company that bought it out is in the materials business.
It’s a weird case because they want recurring revenue for digital assets when they already have recurring revenue from the physical materials that are also regular recurring purchases.
I think when it comes to games, at least from what I see with my own kids is after awhile the game becomes stale so they quit playing it. They introduced new “seasons”, battle passes and loot boxes to keep them engaged at all times and to prevent user churn. They try and suck the maximum life from each user at all cost
I’ve always personally disliked MIRC as a product, mostly from a UI standpoint. I feel there were also some bad choices around its scripting support, which in the early days, put casual users at risk of malicious actors.
However, I think KMB made the lifetime agreement in good faith as a (mostly?) solo developer. I don’t see a huge amount of growth in Windows IRC usage, so this would otherwise likely be abandoned or largely unmaintained. If someone is big on him keeping his word and he sends the key, I don’t see a huge problem.
The main concern I would have is in the extremely unlikely situation there was a ‘important’ deployment of mIRC that suddenly stopped working without warning, but that would have been three years ago.
Typically if you do something stupid, you are expected to eat the consequences. Giving a lifetime support license wasn't the smartest. The developer doesn't get to ignore a contract just because it's inconvenient.
Why is HN always so damn against developers facing their hubris, or mistakes, or consequences for their actions?
Now, the consequences here could be as simple as stop supporting things after ten years instead of infinite. This could directly open them up to legal challenges but who is going to take you to court for a few tens of dollars after ten years, for IRC.
None of that makes the developer someone we should root for. They sold an impossible deal, probably out of naivety, but that's how life goes sometimes.
The analogy was clearly used to make a point about feedback not being required to come with suggestions attached, not because they wanted to call the developer a dog kicker. If you really couldn't tell that, as opposed to you're just trolling, you could take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metaphor to learn more about this conversational tool.
I love it how you pretend to be helpful only to turn out spiteful. Are you even aware of what we're discussing here or are you just trying to take out frustration online?
But it's not a support contract. It's a licence to use the software, isn't it? You can't reasonably revoke a lifetime licence-to-use; there's no cost to letting people go on using it.
There's also no marginal cost in allowing lifetime licensees to download updates.
You often see lifetime warranties. I treat them all as marketing puff; hardly any companies that exist now existed when I was a kid, and vice-versa. You can't fulfil a lifetime warranty unless you are going to live longer than I do, and companies generally don't live longer than people.
Especially if they hand out promises that last 80 years and more.
Really? Given that the product has died when the warranty is called in, that suggests that any such warranty is worthless. "This gadget is guaranteed to keep working until it stops working."
Interesting. Would you say this is this has been the case for both small and large companies? Genuinely curious.
I do wonder though how sympathetic a court would be to the plantiff if mIRC was brought to court? How enforceable is a lifetime contract? No answer needed just my own curiosity.
When CN refused to reopen the Bridge for vehicles, Thunder Bay brought an application for a determination of its contractual rights under the 1906 Agreement. Two provisions of this Agreement are central to this appeal: s. 3, in which Grand Trunk Pacific agreed to give Fort William “the perpetual right to cross the said bridge for street railway, vehicle and foot traffic”; and s. 5, in which CN agreed to “maintain the bridge in perpetuity”.
If a mega-corp can't weasel out of a deal to maintain a bridge forever, I don't see how a software company can weasel out either.
CN tried all sorts of arguments, too, which essentially boiled down to "things are different now!", and "how could we have known!", which of course are meaningless arguments.
There are many things to give a shit about today, and a small-time developer realizing that a promise made a decade ago isn't financially sustainable isn't one of them.
They didn’t revoke anything. You still are entitled to the license. You just need to take an affirmative action that you’re a total tightwad jerkoff and they’ll provide the license key you’re entitled to.
Did you go to the same business school as Nathan Fielder? The people have paid for their license, but now the developer wants to put up manual roadblocks for you to actually get what you paid for... for the time being. No promise he'll continue answering these emails.
What if he puts a bunch of printed license keys on the top of a mountain, only to be granted after you answer his riddles three? It's still technically available, but not really.
Dude's been maintaining an IRC client for more than a quarter of a century. It seems reasonable to believe that he will be responsive to these emails for as long as having a license continues to be meaningful (in the sense of access to future updates).
I am sympathetic to the developer too and quite amused with how many people have the pitchforks ready. A solo developer offered a lifetime license not thinking they would still be working on it 25 years later. Asks nicely that if you have been using it for over 10 years to think about supporting the product you use. Was a lifetime license a great idea? No probably not but the way the developer handled does not seem like a money grab but value for their continued support on a product 25 years later.
> Asks nicely that if you have been using it for over 10 years to think about supporting the product you use.
If they were asking nicely, I assume there would be no pitchforks. Instead they reverted the license, and you can find a FAQ on their website that tells you that you can email them, and eventually they’ll un-revert the license.
No kidding. I never registered my copy of mIRC as a kid (sorry Khaled!) but in hindsight it would've been one of the sounder financial decisions I could've made in grade school.
It's not about ethics, it's about what's reasonable. Yeah it sucks that the author can't uphold the lifetime license, but the alternative is that he closes up shop. $20 frickin dollars, man. Less than $1 per year, and you're complaining about ethics. Some people enjoy eating and paying for housing.
Nobody wants to be your customer with the expectation that they are cheated out of value. However, who has been cheated out of value in this case? Noone. The app provided more than $1/year of value for its users. Whoever paid for mirc got their money's worth and more.
I'd love to see a poll about what percentage of people complaining about ethics have ever run a small business. I stopped developing iOS apps, because it's not possible to write the software once and charge once. You have to grind through bullshit API changes every year, and users want something for nothing.
I stopped developing iOS apps, because it's not possible to write the software once and charge once.
Good. You did the honorable and ethical thing.
Or, you could have changed to a paid support model for new customers only.
But you're arguing for a very different approach --- changing the license after lifetime support was sold. This is not good --- or ethical.
It doesn't even make sense from a business perspective. How many people will pay again after they were lied to? They have no reason to believe the new license will be honored any better than the old one. Credibility has been lost.
A few years ago I dropped $500 on a "perpetual" Crossover license. I did it more to support their excellent work than to assure myself of a lifetime of free upgrades. That being said, I think a person/company should stand by their word and honor commitments they've made. After 35 years, I'm still angry with US Robotics/3Com for terminating the "lifetime" support of their Courier modems.
tbh, it would probably be pretty simple to have a senior support person be in charge of old gear like that. I mean what would that entail? One or two calls a year.
The only reason they wouldn't do it is if they want business to actually upgrade equipment that's still working. Which brings us back to the real topic of this entire thread, why offer "lifetime" support if you're really not going to do that?
We all know the answer. It's because you want the money that promise brings.
I understand both sides and willing to give Khaled a pass. The maintenance of mIRC has been more of a labor of love and it's a regrettable situation, but his devotion and efforts to the community have earned a pass from me.
It's normal. My Affinity license is a lifetime license. It doesn't include version 2, but I still have the license to the original. Similarly, any non-subscription Microsoft Office license is a "lifetime" license. You'll get security updates as long as that version is supported, and afterwards, well, it still works... your license just doesn't expire.
It just also doesn't grant you access to newer versions.
There’s a big difference between the two. What you mention is usually not called a lifetime license, while the mIRC one states "with current and future versions of mIRC"
It's old timey internet slang from the 1990s for "I Am Not A Lawyer"
And for everyone else, don't give me push back for "old timey" - there's people out of college now that were born after 2000. Plenty of people weren't there.
The adage of interaction on the internet: others are younger and less sober than you assume
It was pretty funny in 1994 when I and everyone else thought of it and saw it the first 50 times. I don't think someone is that daft. Far more likely they're young and have never seen it. It's a 17 day old account.
Why would someone seriously say that? I dunno, genZ is weirdly open about stuff and I really don't understand them. Best to not assume
> If a lifetime license with no other terms other than “it’s for life! Including all future versions” can be pulled at any time, what does this say about the risk of buying into any lifetime license with any other company? This turns into a high-risk investment as all rules would be thrown out the window.
It's not particularly difficult to just retire and cease supporting the old product with the "lifetime license", and release a new one, that's substantially the same, but with a different license. Give it a facelift or something.
Seems like a scumbag thing to be honest. You can't entice people to pay for a "lifetime" license and just take it away. Now people who expected to have lifetime access to the software need to periodically beg him through email?
Wow yep, my licence purchased in 2010 (after a decade of unlicensed use I thought now I have some money better throw it their way!) has expired.
Emailed asking how to fix the "error".
A fair way to do this would have been: when activating an old licence have a dialogue that explains the situation and asks if you mind contributing again, or links to a page where you can automatically renew your licence for free but again explains the situation and asks for a contribution - or email all the licence holders explaining the situation and asking if they mind chipping in.
If any of these had happened I'd have gladly proffered another $20.
Unilaterally killing it off isn't any way okay. I'm not going to give another cent to this prick.
1) Augmentra made a mobile phone app called Viewranger which is useful for walking. It presents topological maps, and uses GPX files to plan a route or record a trail. I bought the 1:50000 maps for the whole of the UK for about £200, plus various other maps over the years. All of these were lifetime licences. Augmentra decided that they wanted to be rent-seekers, and brought out some similar software with a periodic licence fee. No problem there. But they also pushed out an "upgrade" to Viewranger which disabled it completely on a certain date. That's theft, to my mind.
2) TiVo in the UK used to sell one PVR. You could pay a subscription for the TV schedule which you needed to make it work effectively, or you could buy a lifetime subscription. A few years later they wanted to bring out a new model, and they shut down the data feed for the old model.
3) Garmin satnavs can be bought with lifetime map updates for particular areas. The problem is that with older models they used a proprietary protocol to get the data in and out - and that stopped working. Look it up on the web site and they claim that the problem is the increasing size of the map data, and that the older models don't have the space. No, there's plenty of space, you're just not honouring the deal. And we're talking about an expensive weather-sealed motorcycle model here, not bargain basement.
IAAL, although I'm licensed to practice in my country (Paraguay, South America) which has a legal system quite different from the Anglo-Saxon sphere. So take this with a ton of salt. This is not legal advice and the whole shebang...
Articles 671 and 672 of our Civil Code say basically that if there is a manifest disproportion between duties of each party due to one party's need, recklessness or inexperience, or if over the course of time the burden of one of the parties becomes too onerous, the contract might be resolved or "equitably modified". This move would fall under one of these cases and the guy could offer newer, more equitable terms.
Anyway, even when I was a heavy IRC user I used mIRC sparingly. Today, I would use Konversation or Hexchat for GUI clients, and weechat or epic5 on console.
Adobe Systems - let's talk? I have a customer ID in their system .. from 10+ years ago! As said well here at YNews, the people who are most unhappy with the cloudy-Adobe are the people (like me) that were committed and loyal, so long ago. You know that Adobe is going to 'exit' the digital type market completely? That is how different 2022 is from 2000.
The day my registered and paid for, ten year old Adobe software stops working, I will personally pay for and print t-shirts and hand them out to anyone in front of the SF building. Its not going to be pretty, Adobe!
Let me pay for that old software then.. without BS cloud marketing traps. I will give some reasonable amount of USD and you do NOTHING and it all works. deal ?
I'm more sympathetic to that model than with the business of model of some companies to "pre-sell" you some vaporware feature that you then spend the lifetime of the product waiting to actually work as advertised.
I've got bitten by "lifetime" deals before. One was Zoolz backup, which offered a lifetime, but stopped it after only 2 years after I paid for the service.
Another is a web hosting service that offered "lifetime" webhosting, which seemed legit, but then after couple of years, the company folded or at least what they claim... I suspect they've moved on and started another company in place.
The new Manycam owners also trashed lifetime licences. They immediately released version 8 and refused to provide perpetual keys for the new version to customers that had bought lifetime licences. They also refused to offer any refunds.
Technically, it's a breach of the license agreement Khaled entered into with his customers.
It seems he realized that the lifetime license did not work out for him as intended, and he started looking for a way out. Possibly there are more users on those lifetime licenses than those on newer licenses, or maybe just enough to, in his mind, warrant this step.
He obviously does not want to abandon the project.
He might have no other way of communicating with some/enough/many/all of his lifetime users, so he chooses to use the one thing he has---the (re-)registration process. Or maybe this is the way, in his mind, to get their attention. Maybe because of GDPR.
He seems to reason that after all this time, asking for another contribution is only fair (even though it goes against the original license). He does offer lifetime users the option to email him and get around the need to pay again.
I can understand both sides, actually.
While in principle I disagree strongly with one-sided changes to agreements such as this, at the end of the day we are all only human, and we have to somehow find a way to make life work for us. It has to be sustainable and worthwhile. I see Khaled trying his best, even though I would probably have recommended a different course of action.
This is not Big Corp effing us over. (Which, sadly, happens a lot, and has much more serious consequences.) This is a single developer with, I believe, no ill intentions, possibly making an understandable but questionable move.
The author of the article seems to look more at the principle of the question that this specific case illustrates. I agree with the principle. We need to be able to trust agreements we entered into.
This is completely misleading. They didn’t end jack. The developer merely ended the automatic extension of the license and now requires you to stop, realize what a tightwad you’re being, and ask for the next extension, which the developer said he will grant as promised. I see absolutely nothing wrong with adding a speed bump in the license extension process after 10 years of automatic extension, and “email the developer to ask for the next key” doesn’t imply the ending of anything whatsoever.
I don't disagree with the general point you're making (though speaking of "mildly misleading", there was never an "automatic extension" or a "license extension process", it was one payment and done). That said...
>... realize what a tightwad you’re being...
C'mon now. If you call something "lifetime", you can't be shockedpikachu.jpg when you change it to something else years later and people are surprised.
But literally nothing changed with regards to the license. He just makes an appeal that it would be really useful to his ongoing development if you voluntarily opted to fund his work.
A tightwad isn’t necessarily a bad person, they’re just unwilling to yield a thin penny in the face of someone’s need unless they’re contractually obliged to.
>But literally nothing changed with regards to the license.
Yes, it did. The original agreement[0] was for "a one time, life-time registration which will work with current and future versions of mIRC". The new agreement[1] "entitles you to three years of free updates to new versions of mIRC. If you are a business user, you will need to renew your licenses yearly at a discount".
>A tightwad isn’t necessarily a bad person...
Delivery matters, though. And for what it's worth, I'm not getting the sense that a lot of the people in this thread who are frustrated by this are simply never going to pay. You can simultaneously be annoyed by this change and also understanding of why.
I've read it, and I already know that, yes, it sounds like the dev is willing to grandfather your existing license agreement if you reach out to them directly.
>That’s only if you relicense.
I mean, sure, but I don't know how else I was supposed to take, "Literally nothing changed with regards to the license". "Literally nothing" is pretty specific.
Sorry, there’s the license that you enter into and is in effect for your duration of the license. Then there is the license that is offered today for someone entering into a new license. I was referring to the former (and I think that’s generally what folks are talking about here and in the blog), but it sounds like you were referring to the latter.
>Everyone knows that lifetime licenses aren't really lifetime.
Clearly "everyone" does not, which explains why you're being heavily downvoted elsewhere in this thread. Words have meaning, "lifetime" means "lifetime".
The whole point of selling something as a lifetime license is that you can charge substantially more. You’re not a tightwad ponying up. The developer is a tightwad for trying to double dip on the customers that thought he meant what he said.
I am genuinely confused. April is too far away to start confidently saying "everyone knows a word doesn't mean what it means in a *license agreement*".
Allow me to be a counterexample. I have purchased software licenses - the old fashioned kind, where you pay once instead of signing up for a subscription - and I expect that I will be able to use those pieces of software for the rest of my life without making another payment of any kind.
But it is. I’m worried you might not have read the article. You are still entitled to your license after you read his appeal to your generosity and email him.
I have read it. Instead of honoring the license they sold, they changed them unilaterally without even contacting their customers and now they require you to periodically beg for a renewal of the lifetime license you own. This is scummy behavior.
Also, I wonder how they plan to reimburse users for the days they weren't able to use the software they paid for. Note how they pointed out that replying to the emails begging for a renewal will "take time" during which the software is unusable.
I don’t get it. What can you point specifically to the lie? Did you read the article in full? The headline is wrong, the premise of the blog post is wrong. The only factual bit were the quotes from the developer in which he explains his appeal to his users generosity and provides instructions how to receive the renewed keys for their life time license. The only difference now is the keys weren’t automatically granted but require a manual step. That pause in the process just gives folks a chance to reflect on what a tightwad they are given the pretty compelling appeal of the developer where he says clearly he was young and naive 25 years ago (when he was likely basically a kid) and made a commitment he regrets now, but will honor none the less.
That seems like exactly the right behavior for a solo developer to do in this situation. Everyone here is opining how he should be ended mIrc and making nirc as a licensed hard fork that people have to pay for instead. That’s really not in spirit of the original license, but folks somehow find it more tasteful than honoring the original license but caveating it for users as being a financial difficulty for the developer. I feel like I’ve stepped into moral bizarro land. The fork and rebrand to get out of the license agreement is sociopathic to my mind.
> That seems like exactly the right behavior for a solo developer to do in this situation.
The right thing to be would be the dialogue saying “mIRC as a business isn’t doing so well and your licence was bought 15 years ago. Do you mind chipping in again? If not click next to continue sorry for bothering you.”
Instead it says “This registration has expired. Please see the mIRC website for more information on renewing your registration.” which projects a very different message.
The original license terms never specified an end and the need of an "extension" or renewal when I bought this software in 97.
Like any other software company that have done similar things with free / lifetime software, he could have just dropped support for the original branded mIRC client, respun it into another program with most of the code base, add a few entirely useless features (maybe you can slap other people in channels with things other than large trouts!) and sell it under his new license model. He's still branding and selling it as mIRC. That's problematic.
It never specified anything about how licensing would be distributed did it?
He could have, you’re right. But he’s honoring the lifetime license instead. And all you have to do is read his appeal and email him to get the renewal key. And if you decide that’s what you want he will give you your key and you continue to enjoy your lifetime license.
How is this worse than ending mIrc v1 development and requiring a relicense for the next version? I’d argue “life time license is honored” is more honorable than “relicense the same product so I don’t have to honor the original deal.”
So I have to beg? A programmer so busy coding a high-demand bleeding edge IRC client all the kids are using that needs to resort to manual e-mail to distribute licenses to the people he owes it to, every one he has (or should have) the e-mail for that helped him pay the bills? Please.
These points feel unrelated to whether he is breaking the license terms. I mention in another comment the whole email cycle bit seems unnecessarily tedious, but so is irc.
Why does a lifetime extension need automatic extension in the first place?
Selling lifetime licenses are terrible for your business; they bring in a load of money upfront, but your revenue stream will start to dry up as your customer pool gets saturated.
It's a small fee for many people, but I'd argue it's an unnecessary one.
Lifetime licenses for anything that is related to a service is a terrible idea, in the same way that not linking cost to usage can also be problematic.
For a standalone application, it can make a lot of sense along with bringing customer loyalty as they are treated well.
FL Studio is another example, and they also demonstrated how you can add new revenue paths, whilst still providing excellent value to your original customers.
I suppose you’ve not played Minecraft lately. Microsoft has loaded it with monetization. Yes you can buy a license to play Minecraft with updates for forever (although I don’t think they assure you of this, as the developer in question did). But you’ll be constantly bombarded with Marketplace appeals. My daughter and I play it all the time together with her friends, which since some play on a switch we have to pay a monthly fee for a realm. Then they’re constantly asking for “gold coins” to buy skins and stuff with. Microsoft injects animations into the Home Screen to pull you into the market place, which is rendered like a flashing crack casino for kids.
I suppose that’s another option for the developer.
I used Minecraft as an example for the original developer, who was certainly financially independent as a result of the success.
For an ongoing concern, it is often the case that microtransactions, or additional paid features, are offered - some more 'strongly' than others - but if the core value proposition that was initially paid for remains intact, that seems reasonable.
The excessive marketing of Minecraft monetisation by Microsoft, is certainly not something to praise, but it has not reduced the ability of original owners to continue playing. I can download the latest Java version (and server) and play completely offline on a LAN, with no problem, all as part of the price I first paid back when it was in alpha ~12 years ago.
Realms need to be paid for, as they are the ongoing 'service' which needs to be funded.
I would agree up to the bump in the road part. Dev says email them and they will sort it BUT it will take time.
So how do you avoid this? Well use a different type of speed bump. Make an automated site to issue new keys to these people (because they are entitled to it) and then use that website to explain the situation. Inform the user how many years of use they have had out of their initial purchase, then offer them a “pay what you like” purchase / donation to the next key.
You could even set it up that if the user choices “free” for their next key, that new key will stop working in 6-12 months time and they will have to repeat the process.
This will prevent people on hard times having to beg and wait for a new license on something they already have paid for, and will still allow those with means and value the use of the software to continue to support the software if they so wish. Heck I wouldn’t be surprised if they gave more.
For me personally I stopped using mIRC years ago when I moved to a Linux based desktop for a few years, at which time I swapped to Hex Chat and just never swapped back when I returned to a Windows Desktop.
Yeah I think the email and wait part seems like more work for the dev ultimately and counterproductive to the point it looks passive aggressive. But I respect that he has opted to honor the life time licenses regardless rather than the jiggery of making a new version to “fake” honor the original commitment and get more licensing. Im frankly stunned so many people think the latter is more honorable than the former.
> I think the email and wait part seems like more work for the dev ultimately and counterproductive to the point it looks passive aggressive.
My first thought on that was that it was to add a delay to getting a new code and feed into the instant gratification to just paying up (if able and value paying again) and getting a new code there and then. Making a user email is "effort", low effort but still effort, which could disway some people asking for new codes.
I also repect that they opt'ed to honor the license then opting to release "mIRC2" on new terms, I like you just felt that there are better ways to handle the process then the "email me and wait" option, which could lead them to recieve nasty emails during the process where an automated system could remove that (because while a user might be pissed off, its quickly resolved).
> Everyone knows that a lifetime license only lasts for a limited period
One of the more baffling statements I've read online this year.
This is actually why we have contracts. People say one thing, a few years pass, and they change their mind and start calling you a greedy tightwad for not giving them more money when they decide that they should have more money from you.
The meaning of "lifetime" is an agreed-upon term. If this developer decides that the word means something different, that's not what the buyer has agreed upon based on the wording of the license being sold.
If you don't actually want to support something until you die, then don't offer lifetime licenses. If you do offer that license, don't act surprised when your users interpret that with the common and dictionary definition of that word.
It's literally impossible to find somebody to argue with about a "universally agreed upon social norm" because everyone agrees about them. How can you be in the situation you're in?
>If you can only afford one car every 10 years then something is wrong with your living situation
Yikes, you're really shooting from the hip when it comes to judging people across multiple posts, and you seem pretty elevated. Maybe put the screen down and go get some fresh air? Damn.
And they do. Did you read the article? The headline and blog post is misleading unless you read the whole article. At the end they note the developer does honor the license. You just have to read his appeal for support and email him asking to continue. This in no way violates the very loose terms of the original license for lifetime licensing.
Everyone who paid for licenses should form a class action lawsuit to sue for refunds as the lifetime license is no longer being honored. Then they should settle for putting the software into the public domain in lieu of repayment.
“Again, a bold move that doesn’t quite walk the line of honesty.”
In a world of googles facebooks and amazons calling this guy dishonest is…dishonest in itself. As others have said he could have simply created a new mirc or just abandon it. Instead he was _honest_ about it. Instead of making all sorts of dodgy deals that sell our data he states his intentions and his reasons. I applaud this move even if i am affected by it.
He took money in exchange for a lifetime license, and is now revoking those licenses.
I don't see how you can ever call that "honest" unless we have fundamentally different ideas about what honesty is.
It can be honest to say: I made a term I can't support - I am going out of business as a result.
It can be honest to say: I made a term that is no longer worth my time - I am going to stop working on this as a result.
It's sure as fuck not honest to say: I want the marketing from the current name and user base, but I made a bad deal so I'm going to break my terms because I want more money.
It feels like he's trying to have his cake and eat it too. Frankly - I'd much rather he own by just going out of business or by end-of-lifing the product and launching a new one.
In some countries like Norway, a lifetime sentence is 21 years. In most European countries you're unlikely to get more than that even for murder except under special circumstances.
If the developer chooses to end a lifetime license after 25 years.. he has already basically fulfilled his end of the bargain IMO. Especially since he isn't even terminating the license, just asking people to personally renew.
Didn't say it's fair. Just understandable. If you use something for more than 25 years and are too greedy to give a couple bucks then that's worse than being unfair IMO.
When I buy something I should get what I paid for. It isn’t greedy, it is a square deal.
If you choose to remove what I paid for or at least put a passive aggressive requirement for me to email you after posting your sob story in order to continue to get what I paid for, that isn’t a a square deal.
Look it isn’t that much money, and I’m sure the developer could use more, but the right thing to do is to grandfather those people in, instead of now guilt tripping them into paying more. You can post the appeal and explain the same way without suspending current lifetime licenses. It’ll do a lot more for goodwill than going the other way for it.
It's 25 years. That's enough time for him to have a child and have him take over the mIRC business. It's a solo dev working on a piece of software since 1995, cut him some slack, jeez..
You're right about the expectations placed on trade. I just expect a different set of requirements from large corporations and small devs.
Losing support and even updates a decade into a very cheap "lifetime" license is fine. But the same executable that worked yesterday not working anymore is entirely unacceptable.