Benefit of New Subscription Model

[Martin_Henz]

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@danny_t wrote:

The SSP inflation over the last couple of years was hard to swallow, but the increase this year to get LabVIEW Professional is horrendous.

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you are right, but you can keep the costs for the next three years, which didn't help much.

The subscription model is the next desaster after the NXT desaster. A long time ago I started with labview 2.5.1, but it seems that NI force me to say goodbye.

There are very rare cases where I use the newest labview version and I never use anything bevore SP1. Now I can switch to 2021SP1 and keep that for the next years.

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Slightly disappointed that there is not more general talk about this within the community.

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You can be shure, that everybody is disappointet about it and a lot of customers will stay away from NI in the near future, excapt NI revised this decision.

[rolfk]

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@danny_t wrote:

So I am VERY ANGRY about this and sometime in the next two months face the situation do I stop using LabVIEW, close my company and go permanent  somewhere. Slightly disappointed that there is not more general talk about this within the community.

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I can understand your disappointment and have been critical about this decision too. But stating that you are angry in a post here on the forums will maybe get you some sympathy from other forum users who feel the same, but not change anything about NI's decision. In fact it makes your post more easy to dismiss by those who may have anything to say about this decision. So try to stay with constructive critique and safe your emotions for more important things in your life.

[danny_t]

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@rolfk wrote:

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I can understand your disappointment and have been critical about this decision too. But stating that you are angry in a post here on the forums will maybe get you some sympathy from other forum users who feel the same, but not change anything about NI's decision. In fact it makes your post more easy to dismiss by those who may have anything to say about this decision. So try to stay with constructive critique and safe your emotions for more important things in your life.

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I get what you are saying Rolf. However, I think that nothing anybody will say will change any decisions, this is a done deal not a consultation plus I feel it is actually totally valid for people to express how they feel about something as long as they keep that expression polite and do not turn it into personal attacks.

In the UK, NI have appointed an authorized distributor, which can as a surprise to myself and others I know who only found out several months after the fact when trying to purchase hardware from NI and were automatically forwarded without explanation. 

As an old man what is happening worryingly reminds me of the way HP went in the early 90's. HP was THE Test and Measurement at one time, the quality of both their products, the engineer process, support and principles were exemplary, then they lost their way. Maybe from a financial point of view they didn't loss their way and made much more money.  But their reputation certainly did not

cheers 

Danny

PS for anyone body interested there is a separate discussion about this on Lava Forums 

[Hooovahh]

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@danny_t wrote:

Slightly disappointed that there is not more general talk about this within the community.

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I think this is the third thread I've seen on the topic.  The LAVA one was already mentioned, and there is another on the public NI forums but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

I recently saw a post I made about when WebVIs were taken out of NXG as a separate toolkit.  In that thread I talked about the new (to me) licensing scheme of having an expiration date.  I said then that having licenses not be perpetual is like getting a one year trial, that you have to pay for.  I think that likely is one of the reasons why I don't like this change.

[JimB.]

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@rolfk wrote:

It's peanuts if you compare it with the LabVIEW price but the IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate is $149 for individual licenses.

They do however offer discounts for the second and third year if you extend your license without interruption, which at least gives some incentive to not just buy a subscription incidentally when needed. The current NI pricing really does not give any incentive to anyone to keep a license subscription active if they do not foresee to use LabVIEW in a particular year. And if they do need it anyways, they always could decide to purchase the subscription the moment the need arises for another year (if NI sales is at least responsive, which seems to be sometimes a problem too). But the quoted lead time at Farnell and other distributors is 2 to 3 days for a LabVIEW license, so that should be manageable if you can't get hold of NI sales directly.

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And if the company pays for it (IntelliJ), it's still only $499 and discounted 20% at first renewal and 40% from the third year onwards.

Their "All Products Pack" is also only $649 with the same discounts and covers quite a few languages. ($249 for individuals.)

This probably would have gone over a lot better if NI offered similar renewal discounts, and especially if they allowed current customers to be grandfathered into something like a 40% discounted rate. I can only speak for myself, but at that point I'd basically just shrug and figure it is about the same as paying our SSP.

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@danny_t wrote:

The MS Visual Studio Professional subscription was around £50/month one developer, when my project ended I could cancel it and if I got a new project needing it I could just start it again. With NI I have commit to a one of upfront payment with no idea of how much money it will generate in return.

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There are also other ways to work in C# that range all the way down to free, although obviously not all offer the same features.

[crossrulz]

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@Hooovahh wrote:

I think this is the third thread I've seen on the topic.  The LAVA one was already mentioned, and there is another on the public NI forums but I can't seem to find it at the moment.

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LabVIEW subscription model for 2022 

and for completeness, the LAVA thread: NI's New Software Subscription Model 

[Taggart]

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@JimB. wrote:
There are also other ways to work in C# that range all the way down to free, although obviously not all offer the same features.

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That is a key difference between LabVIEW and almost all text-based languages. IDEs for text languages are optional. You can use something as simple as notepad or vim to edit your code. If you want an IDE there are more options. For those reasons IDEs for text based languages are cheaper. You also never have to worry about losing the ability to edit or view your code if your subscription expires.

LabVIEW is just a whole different ball game.

[danny_t]

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That is a key difference between LabVIEW and almost all text-based languages. IDEs for text languages are optional. You can use something as simple as notepad or vim to edit your code. If you want an IDE there are more options. For those reasons IDEs for text based languages are cheaper. You also never have to worry about losing the ability to edit or view your code if your subscription expires.

LabVIEW is just a whole different ball game.

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Valid points Sam, however by paying a subscription you can definitely get fuller functionality in various IDE, there are a number of improvements with Visual Studio Professional when programming in C# including some compiler and language impacts. So often text programmers subscribe for their IDE.

I subscribed for VS when doing my C# project. It is not so much the subscription plan it’s have problems with it is the combination of subscription with a significant price increase and a full year tie in.

The MS option of month by month, is cheeper if you take the full year, allows for dealing with an unpredictable future. Plus the cost of subscription method should really be cheeper not more expensive. 

As I already have a SSP in place the quote I was given for the three year Test Workflow, though expensive, was very significantly better than for 1 year. But I do not know what my next project in a few months will be. So I could literally be throwing the money away.

[AndrejValand]

I have been a LabView user for over 20years. Two companies I got over to LabView when working there and then also in my Company. LabView was always a tough sell if not using 100% their hardware. Now it will be an impossible to convince anyone to use it, and everyone will run away from it...

I would understand if NI would offer this as an extra optional licensing scheme if someone needs LabVIEW only for a project for one year. Or if subscription price was lower than the yearly upgrade pricing. But to force this to all us users for such a price increase its just plain mean usury. It is a shame NI forgot what LabVIEW was, what where its roots…

Will definitely not subscribe to this licensing scheme. We are still entitled if a new version comes out this year but then will just use this version and in the meantime search rather to find an alternative for LabVIEW, we can use...

Shame on you NI! 

[JimB.]

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@Taggart wrote:

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@JimB. wrote:
There are also other ways to work in C# that range all the way down to free, although obviously not all offer the same features.

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That is a key difference between LabVIEW and almost all text-based languages. IDEs for text languages are optional. You can use something as simple as notepad or vim to edit your code. If you want an IDE there are more options. For those reasons IDEs for text based languages are cheaper. You also never have to worry about losing the ability to edit or view your code if your subscription expires.

LabVIEW is just a whole different ball game.

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There's validity to that, but I'm sure we are all aware that an IDE is much more than just a source code editor. Aside from that, what really enables the statement that you quoted to be true for any given text based language is access to free toolchains. The fact that it's just a text file surely makes finding an application that can edit the source code easy, but the .Net SDK being free is what enables the statement you quoted to be true. Without interpreters, compilers, linkers, etc. those text files are worth about as much as "G source code" that's been drawn in Paint.

But you bring up a point: There are no other options to edit NI's proprietary file format. In fact, even their own (failed) next generation IDE was not source code compatible. So... what is the ability to edit G worth?

I guess that depends on just how badly you want to be able to write in G. 😉