[Tostino]

When the purchase medium is a download link the expectation is that the link keeps working if the company is in business.

Give a good reason it shouldn't.

Edit: also, list your startups. I like to avoid doing business with people who think this way.

[dghlsakjg]

Maintaining a perpetual archive for the convenience of those that don't do backups is not part of a typical licensing agreement. It is a nice thing to do, but unless a perpetually accessible hosted file service is what you bought, it is reasonable for the company to stop hosting copies of software that they no longer sell.

Some people might believe differently, and some companies might do it out of the goodness of their hearts (or because they signed up for a permanent liability for hosting)

[Tostino]

I absolutely conceded that it is not legally required.

I just don't want to do business with people who think that's an ethical way to do things. The hosting excuse is pathetic. Learn to do your job and it isn't something you need to think about more than once every half decade.

I had to maintain a full build artifact history of my old app. It "just worked" for years and years without thinking twice, and cost a handful of dollars a month for a few TB of build artifacts.

For most apps that aren't continual delivery, it's way fewer artifacts to handle so way less data...a couple dollars a month at most.

Really, what excuse do you have for that other than screwing people who previously trusted you enough to do business with you?

[dghlsakjg]

> Really, what excuse do you have for that other than screwing people who previously trusted you enough to do business with you?

The license itself is ~$13 for a perpetual license and a year of support and updates. What expectation should I have that because I spent $13 years ago that the company will support me after my one year support window expires? Presumably, everyone on here knows supporting software isn't free. As you pointed out yourself, the hosting costs aren't free. At a certain point, paying a few dollars per month to host a decade old version of a $13 product that gets downloaded once a year actually is a problem.

Just out of curiosity, what is your plan to host the old versions of your app until 2060, say? Will you setup all that infrastructure again if your current provider goes down? Or is there a time limit that is reasonable to no longer offer downloads for, maybe...

Who exactly is getting screwed by being charged $13 to replace an old version of software with a new version because the client failed to do a backup before nuking an HD for an OS install.

No one is being screwed. This is just one party thinking that they are entitled to perpetual support for a perpetual license, and the other party saying that the license is perpetual and the support ends at 1 year.

[Dylan16807]

> At a certain point, paying a few dollars per month to host a decade old version of a $13 product that gets downloaded once a year actually is a problem.

The few dollars was talking about total cost, not per-version cost.

If we're talking about a single version of filezilla that rarely gets downloaded, the hosting cost is somewhere below a penny per month, possibly actual zero. And they might need to store 25 archival versions total? It's nothing.

[echelon]

> the expectation is that the link keeps working if the company is in business.

It is hard to keep things running when you're changing and experimenting. It's why Google shutters businesses it finds are not growing - they're a maintenance burden and suck up resources, dragging down other efforts. And that's for a company with near-infinite resources. Imagine sole proprietorships.

Someone has to care and devote time and attention to keep it there. At the expense of other opportunities.

Just because Tim Berners-Lee said "cool URIs don't change" doesn't mean it's practical. Almost everything is temporary and dies. It's okay. Not much in life has permanence.

If you want to hold onto it, archive it.

[hulitu]

> When the purchase medium is a download link the expectation is that the link keeps working if the company is in business.

Famous last words.

There is a reason Internet Archive is so popular.

A lot of SW was hosted on ftp sites, which became "unsecure".

[throwaway1389z]

Unreasonable and unrealistic expectation. You pay for a copy, you get a copy. Deal is over unless you have problem with the product in that it doesn't work as advertised or malfunctions.

[op00to]

Posting the same drivel twice does not make it more compelling.