One venerable software license model that many companies have
utilized in the past has been the license upgrade, under which a
licensee could acquire the right to deploy the newest version of a
product at a much-reduced price, provided that the licensee also
owns a full license for a qualifying, earlier version of the same
product. However, with the increasing focus on recurring revenue
and hosted software solutions, such licensing models apparently are
approaching antiquation in the eyes of many software publishers,
with the most recent being Autodesk.
Autodesk recently announced that, beginning in February 2015,
stand-alone upgrades for its products will no longer be available.
In order to acquire the newest versions of those products,
licensees will need to purchase full licenses and to enroll them
(and to keep them enrolled) in Autodesk's license subscription
program. Autodesk's rationale for this move is full of
characteristically vacuous corporate platitudes:
