Re: SolidWorks is cool, sort of (but FreeCAD might be better)

On 6/18/2025 2:22 PM, Sergey Kubushyn wrote:

The problem is not the codebase maintenance. You can happily live without
forever as long as you still have hardware it runs on.

Then you just pick an OLDER "perpetual" version and live without the
"new features" that were added when the license became time-sensitive.
Ask me why I run W7 on my machines...

The FUNDAMENTAL difference is that unlike [almost] ALL modern commercial
software the older software had PERPETUAL licenses and OSS doesn't have any
at all. Those will NOT stop working in a year because your license expired
and it is too expensive or impossible at all to renew it for another year.

But, they may contain flaws that make them unusable until someone
"volunteers" to fix them.
I own two copies of Brief.  But, can't use either of them because
the code is "too fast" for modern hardware.  So, the money spent
on them is no longer yielding benefits for me.
Ditto for the DASH suite.  Wonderful if I have a need to return to
one of those old designs for some (paid!) maintenance.  But, otherwise,
an unperforming investment.

If this happens you'll end up holding a bag -- all your work done with those
tools is useless now and you can't do anything to something you still have

You still have the IP.  You just don't have it in a compatible tool
that you WANT to pay for.
Are you planning on making any money "supporting" the design for
which you used these tools?  If so, then the tool still has financial
value to you -- even if you gripe about not wanting to have to keep
"renting" it.
Would you prefer they charge you $100K for a perpetual license?
Are you sure you will have future need to justify that outlay?
I.e., there is a certain sense in renting software; pay for what
you *use*.  But, that assumes you can rent it "a la carte".
My gripe is with tools that I may have to "rent" JUST IN CASE their
might be a future use.  Let me pay for 30 days of use 5 years from today,
as the need arises.  NOT for the next 5 years where it is sitting idle!

to support. Not just some ancient stuff but something one year old or even
newer because your tools stopped working and there is no way to make them
work again.

Run it in a VM.  Take a snapshot of it on day one.  When the license
expires, reset the clock and reload from the original image.  Lather,
rinse, repeat.