[marcodiego]

This is what happens: you've got enough corporate clients dependent on your product; you know they can pay what you're asking and it would be even more expensive for them to invest in alternatives; you also see that alternatives will improve and take youR market in the long run, but when that happens will be already retired.

I think we've seen this happen with other tools before.

[jchw]

IMO: IDA Home was the response to Ghidra. They could’ve raised or lowered rates without this change. But, subscriptions are probably a response to… perpetual licenses. Because I can keep using my current version of IDA forever, and with updates usually slower than the speed of smell it’s pretty alluring sometimes. I mean fuck, IDA Pro hasn’t updated since like April. Not because there's no bugs or no features that could be added, it just doesn’t get that much updates in a year. This is not the worst thing and I am sure there’s a reason, but yeah it makes the value proposition of keeping the support license alive a lot weaker.

Of course Hex Rays wants people to ditch perpetual licenses. Because I can just not pay and use my current IDA and Hex Rays licenses as long as I want. And at this point, I am probably going to do exactly that, and transition to greener pastures as I am able to.

It’s not like their licensing was generous before either. Before, you had to pay separately for each decompiler, including x86 vs x64, AND for each platform you want to run IDA on, you need another full set of licenses. That fucking sucks. This new scheme may have improved some of that, but at the cost of perpetual licenses and both higher starting and renewal rates, it’s extremely difficult to see this as a win.

I wanted to like Hex Rays. The high cost was literally never an issue for me other than for accessibility reasons. The software is useful and featureful and the lack of annoying DRM was good. But this, plain ass sucks. Between IDA Home and subscriptions, it’s hard to imagine how much harder Hex Rays could spit on home users other than flat out telling them to take a hike.

And yeah, at the end of the day I’m sure a lot of thought went into this, but I hope the response doesn’t go unheeded. I am not downgrading to a subscription under any conditions.