Autodesk Paid Bug Fixes

#1

https://www.cadnauseam.com/2017/07/26/autodesk-confirms-its-own-unconscionable-conduct/

Steve Johnson has an interesting perspective of the latest news from Autodesk

Here is an excerpt of the article:

“…Let’s say Fred made the decision after discovering AutoBLOB 2017 was slower than, and really not significantly better than, AutoBLOB 2016, 2015 or even 2010. Fred’s maintenance period carried him through to beyond the release of AutoBLOB 2018, which he intended using for a few years until he transitioned to an alternative product. (Or until Autodesk Becomes Great Again, but Fred doesn’t consider that likely).
Meantime, Fred discovers that there’s a new bug in AutoBLOB 2018 that makes it useless for his needs. It’s not a crash, drawing corruption or security issue, but it is something that makes it difficult of impossible for him to produce the required output. Because he installed AutoBLOB 2018 before his maintenance expired, Autodesk won’t allow him to use 2017 or any earlier version.
Meanwhile, Autodesk has, miracles of miracles, developed a fix for that nasty bug. All Fred has to do is download and install the hotfix or Service Pack, right? Wrong. Because Autodesk has wrapped up the bug fix with AutoBLOB 2018.1, a mid-term update that includes not only bug fixes but also a few new minor feature improvements…”

#2

it could be true

it might be a huge conspiracy for them to make money, which would be shocking

#3

This might sound like it’s not a problem but it really is.

I have mixed seat licensing in my office paying both maintenance and rental. If I had opted out from maintenance last year I would have been able to use Max 2017 ONLY for the maintenance seats. However, Max 2017 came with several regressions introduced and we are absolutely unable to use it in production. Two of many critical bugs are so severe that we were forced to roll back to Max 2016 in order to be able to work. Both bugs have been fixed in 2018 but the fix was NOT made available for Max 2017, even though two Product Updates have been released and the bugs were known to Autodesk for a long time already (all nicely documented and backed with a LOT of error reports).

Bugs, especially those which make the software unusable absolutely need to be fixed for older versions. Otherwise you may end up with a software you just can’t use, and since the licensing only allows to license and use the latest version you had when you cancelled your subscription, you won’t even be able to roll back to an older version.

This may not apply to all users and not all the software Autodesk offers, but in our case we’d have been screwed if I had cancelled maintenance when Max 2017 was released. Not a good way to treat customers who paid their fees for 10+ years if you ask me. I get that they need to make money with the software they sell, but they also need to maintain a certain quality level to make sure their softweare is usable… or give their loyal customers an option to use older versions if all fails.

#4

Maintaining multiple versions complicates software development and support. The problem is more accurately within the rental software model.