I’m not sure the OP is questioning the value - it’s the unexpected immediate cash outlay, so soon after the initial outlay that’s the concern. I also think we might give him credit for being able to work these things out himself.
Of course, the overall value is excellent - had the OP waited a few weeks to make the initial purchase, there would have been a single payment of whatever. As it is, he’s stuck with a surprise double payment.
Do you have to upgrade to 3.0? How many months or years would you have to delay before you would feel ready to pay again?
I probably will upgrade as soon as I have to, but will do so begrudgingly. At an absolute minimum, I would have liked 1 or 2 years before paying again to feel I got my money’s worth.
I totally understand and agree with @edL’s perspective.
Basically as DT revs their version to the next major version - how long are they going to support the previous version after accepting payment? If they support the 2.x for a year, even if 3’s release was 3 months after the purchase - then I think there’s some fairness in asking for an upgrade fee. If the opposite is true and they just stop supporting 2.x - @edL has a right to be upset. Especially when he’s paying the equivalent of $130 - $150 depending upon the exchange rate at the time he paid.
VMWare is a company notorious for a similar model. You pay $X for a license and three months later they release a new version you’re not entitled without paying yet another upgrade fee. However you’ll still get point releases of the version you bought. Most frustrating with VMWare though is that you’ll upgrade a month before a major OS upgrade and you lose the ability to upgrade OS without paying the VMWare upgrade tax a few weeks after you paid for the latest version. Most software companies with perpetual licensing follow a similar model anymore where you get at least a years worth of support based upon the major version you purchased. A few companies, JetBrains comes to mind, work more like a subscription in that you get every version released within the year of payment - however they pretty much stop supporting previous versions immediately. DT should seriously consider the JetBrains model - IMO it’s a fair model that permits the company to accelerate development and keep as many customers as possible on the latest version for at least a year while ensuring an income stream. Customers are more likely to pay for upgrades if they know they will get new features and updates frequently and consistently.
Over the last two years I’ve become increasingly less impressed with DevonThink as a company as their support has been pretty unremarkable to awful. To a certain extent their Business Principles as someone linked have been violated several times in my experience. Most recently as a paid DTP license holder, I was interested in buying some additional products to enhance my DTP experience, however I had issues with evaluating - and basically got very flippant remarks from their support staff with no assistance to help me evaluate their product in a functioning manner. In 2018 the 2.x product still has lackluster support for even the most basic note taking formats like Markdown and Asciidoc, instead we get extremely piecemeal support - if you look through the forums WRT questions about fixing the half baked implementation - it’s always turned around to how the DT way is “better” albeit non-conforming to the vast number of competing implementations. I would have gladly paid annual upgrade fees if DTP had actually been supported and maintained for bugs and new features in a non-piecemeal and non-confrontational fashion. For folks that think they got a deal on 6 - 8 years of free updates, how would you have felt if you still got those same - mostly minor updates and somewhat half baked new features had you paid $100 a year for them? DTP has not really changed in those 8 years outside of maintaining OS compatibility and it seems every encounter I’ve ever had with @BLUEFROG has ended with disappointment from what comes across as a very ego centric developer. Personally after @edL’s experience - I’d be extremely hesitant to spend another dime with DevonThink unless they get their house in order and start developing software like its 2019 and not like it’s 2000 - especially when there are a fair number of competing products in this space that would solve 80% of DTP’s customers’ use cases that are extremely compelling from both price and support perspective.
Your issue doesn’t seem to be the same as @edL. You seem eager to burn something up. I see enough of that on the news.
IMHO, one comment in this topic is very unfair.
As long as the support request/question is relevant and reasonable, DT’s colleagues always go extra-miles to help us users to expand the potential of DT. We can learn so much from DT’s support and other selfless and helpful members of this forum but ones need to invest his/her own time to learn and to read through all those valuable info in help, this forum, and other forums. I think the task of building an ideal integrated-setup is users’ own job and we probably can try to be more humble in asking for help.
In the era of iOS apps, we are becoming so used to those <10 apps. All good app/program involves so much development and it costs. For DT, the more I use it the more I discover its power. I think DT is one of the best investment and best value in app that I’ve ever purchased but its true value is dependent on how you use it. This is kind of different to Microsoft products or Parallel Desktop, I have to pay for annual subscription fees or annual upgrade more of a “no/few choice” situation, and I think I am overpaying for them hugely if I look at my actual utilisation time.
I’m just going to pick up on this point - the remainder of your post seems to be a general complaint about DT support that hasn’t been reflected in my own experience.
Looks like you are unhappy with a marriage and still hanging around, ppl wonder why you are still around!
Good luck finding another product as good, versatile and powerful as DT.
If you do what BlueFrog does in a day, I don’t think you would last a week at a job.
They have a direction they are aiming and what’s best for the company, and that’s what he projects, it may or may not come across as being “ego centric” but that’s not the intention. imagine implementing all features requested by all users? You would end up with all strings with no directions or purpose.
Btw I don’t think they would stop supporting DT2 for at least one or two more years, until it is reasonable to do so.
We will, of course, continue to deliver customer support for version 2 so if someone doesn’t want to update they don’t have to.
