Change to Subscription terms: What do you think?

If you haven”t heard from your friendly neighborhood SolidWorks reseller yet, you will. The terms of SolidWorks subscription services are changing. It seems the main force of the change is that the penalties for missing a year of subscription are going up. Here is a screen shot of the letter from my reseller:

This is a dangerous gauntlet for SW to throw down. They are betting that this is just going to scare people into never letting their subscription lapse. But what if it confirms that the subscription is simply not worth the check you have to write? For me personally, the reseller provides nothing of value whatsoever, not to say that this is everyone”s experience, it”s just mine. The service packs are of dubious value. In 2008, how many *.1 releases did we have? 0.1, 1.1, 2.1, 3.1? *.1 releases mean that there were errors that no one counted on. Too many sloppy mistakes.

It”s a little maddening to me, because I pay the subscription mainly as a formality. I have a license by virtue of being a partner (in the Publishing category) and a commercial license for which I have to pay maintenance. I still do commercial work alongside my writing activities, so technically I need a commercial license for that work. Of course I haven”t had the commercial license installed for a couple of years.

With the SW08 release, I”m sure more than a few companies have bailed out of the subscription treadmill. This new policy may be aimed at intimidating these customers or former customers into hopping back on. With such a junk release (08) immediately after a reasonably usable release (07), its easy to see why people would just freeze at 07 and choose to forego updates.

What do you think of the “subscription treadmill”? Does this new policy look like corporate bullying to you? Do you think you get your money”s worth out of your subscription money?