I was just sent an AutoCAD drawing from a potential customer, and saw that it was created in the student version.  I declined to work with the drawing, saying, they are using a version that doesn't not permit using it for commercial purposes.  I cited scripture, "The labor deserves his wages".

I was going to refer them to the free Draftsite program, saying they have an alternative that is legal to use, but then saw that the free version is no longer being offered, and any past installs will expire by December of this year.  I have no problem with that. It was understood that the free version could go away at any time.

However, I was quite disheartened to see that they were only offering Draftsite on a subscription basis.  As soon as  Autodesk, started the subscription-only model for their products, I said I would not subscribe to anything from them. Though, this is somewhat softened if you are only using basic AutoCAD entities, and saving DWG files.  This has successfully been reversed engineered by others, and so your data is still usable by the creator.  But, 3D parametric programs and their data formats are not so blessed.  Once you  encode your work into their data format, you are pretty much stuck with that program to use that work.  And if they decided to increase the price 10x in the future, you will have to pay that amount to get to use your data.  If you had purchased a permanent seat, you could simply use that seat as long as you could keep it going on a compatible computer and Operating System.

Seeing the Draftsite software follow the example of the Autodesk does not bode well for my view of Dassault. And while SolidWorks is currently available to purchase a permanent seat, I wonder for how much longer.

-Joe