This is a blunt warning to anyone who ever purchased, or is thinking about purchasing, FileZilla Pro.
I bought FileZilla Pro under a perpetual license - a one-time payment, lifetime right to use the version I purchased. After reinstalling my operating system, I simply needed to reinstall the software I already paid for.
Here's what happened:
- Support admitted I still have the legal right to use the old version of FileZilla Pro that I originally purchased.
- Then they told me they refuse to provide the installer for that version.
- Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
The impact:
If a customer cannot download the installer, the "perpetual license" is dead. It doesn’t matter what rights they acknowledge on paper - they are blocking any practical way to use the software unless you pay again under their new subscription model.
There is no way to reinstall. There is no way to access the product you bought. Your "perpetual license" effectively becomes worthless the moment you reinstall your OS or lose the installer.
Why do you think there is any difference? Did servers and backups and data centers and electricity and cooling and ups batteries and generators and facility operators and banwidth all become free while I wasn't looking?
They're going to need "servers and backups and data centers and electricity and cooling and ups batteries and generators and facility operators and banwidth" regardless, because they're still selling licenses. The cost of providing downloads to existing owners is marginal.
And instead trust that subscription prices will stay constant and that the company will always stay in business and support the product you purchase?
The root issue is trust, not a lifetime license. In fact, a lifetime license is a good predictor of trust because users prefer it to subscriptions and it indicates that the company at least pretends to be interested in the customer's wants.
Trust can always be abused, as in this case. Trust is gone everywhere. That doesn't mean it can't be rebuilt. It won't be rebuilt on a subscription model that no one asked for.
This makes no sense. A lifetime license is convenient conceptually, but it completely detaches your goals (working software) from a company's incentives (provide absolutely zero after initial delivery - everything afterwards is cost without upside). Lifetime licenses are bad for users (cf this post, as just one example).
Subscriptions are incentives for companies to keep doing what you want, along with direct consequences (everybody will cancel) to penalise them for ignoring their core user base.
Don't let the awkwardness of the system (fully agree modern banking is shit at letting you manage recurring bills) distract from the underlying user-beneficial dynamics.
Edit: let me give you an example. How much do you pay Valve for a Steam subscription? Zero, because they don't offer one, because that isn't what their customers want. This is Valve, who offers perpetual licenses exclusively, offers steep discounts often, and is worth 10s of billions of dollars. The excuses for why it doesn't work are bullshit peddled by middlemen mouthpieces for suits who believe in nothing. They are redundant leeches. Ignore them and make it work.
I agree with you completely. For me, this is a matter of trust and principle, not the cost of the software. I see this as a questionable practice aimed at pushing long-time supporters to spend more money. After this experience, I would never consider purchasing anything from them again.
> All risk of loss for the Products shall pass to You upon delivery of the Products to the location specified in Your Order (even if no signature is required for delivery). For the avoidance of doubt, the delivery of downloaded Products occurs when the Products are downloaded.
What you are saying is that you ordered FileZilla (agreeing to the T&C as part of payment). The T&C said once you downloaded the product, you were required to keep the software yourself.
> In a one-off purchase you will have a right to receive services or other rights for the maximum period of time indicated in the package you have purchased or ‒ missing that indication ‒ for up to five years.
It also says:
> Unless registered, your copy will not receive updates and will not exploit the services of the Software.
So, I would assume that if you purchased the Lifetime license, and you registered the software within the 4 required weeks, then they are infact breaking their contract with you.
Sure, but that is an older Terms and Conditions. It was a perpetual license, not a lifetime license that is sold today. It's like saying you shouldn't purchase Windows 11 because Windows XP no longer gets updates. Well duh! It stopped being supported more than 10 years ago, and Windows 11 is a different license to that of Windows XP.
The lifetime license purchased today is not a perpetual license. FileZilla says that it will update it for life.
So, respectfully, no, it's not good to warn people about the clause, because people purchasing the product today do not run into this issue.
Why did they not mention what the operating system is? I don't think it unreasonable for a company to no longer support operating systems that are also unsupported.
Buddy. "This is a blunt warning", the reasonable and unreasonable parties in this story are not what you seem to think.
No one owes you a perpetual backup. Not even the people who sold you the first copy.
You are not prevented from reinstalling your os or filezilla by anything but your own apparent dipshittery.
You bought something and then threw it away, and now you cry that you don't have it, and then as if that wasn't ridiculous enough already, you then try to blame this on the vendor.
The justification is that they sold you a copy of the software with a lifetime license to use that copy. Not a lifetime license to download the installer from them.
It's not customer friendly, but it doesn't seem like it's going back on a promise, unless the license especially called for it.
That's a reason they're not legally obligated. It doesn't make me understand their actions in the sympathetic sense, and the sympathetic sense is how I interpreted "but I can also understand".
It doesn't explain the choice they made. "Legally they could" applies equally to removing the download and keeping the download.
The only reason I can think of, to make me understand in a much more derogatory sense, is they want to give a deliberately bad experience to customers that didn't give them money recently enough, trying to make them buy again to keep using the software.
My job isn't based around copies of this software, so hypothetical me forgot.
Forgetting is a pretty good excuse I think.
The company didn't forget anything. They're refusing the download on purpose, presumably because they don't want the user to walk away happy without paying more.
What an incredible load of excuses and rationaizations.
The fact is they don't owe anyone any backups or any reasons.
I guess you will just have to go on feeling abused and robbed. Go ahead and try to sue them for theft and fraud if you think your argument actually holds water.
The rationalization is that since in your opinion it wouldn't cost them very much to give you something, that they really owe it to you and if they don't give it to you, they are actually withholding something and you are being denied something you have a right to.
We all agree, even me, that it's not the most cutomer-first policy. Except, maybe it is actually the most customer-first, because their support & security argument is not bullshit. If there are things wrong with the old version that they know about, then it is entirely valid to decide not to actively help facilitate the proliferation of old bad versions that still have their name on it out in the world. Maybe they don't have the policy for such pure and virtuous reason, or maybe they do, but it doesn't matter because it's actually perfectly valid anyway.
The fact you don't like it is purely a you problem.
> The rationalization is that since in your opinion it wouldn't cost them very much to give you something, that they really owe it to you and if they don't give it to you, they are actually withholding something and you are being denied something you have a right to.
The reason they should do it is because it helps their customers get what they paid for.
They have a solution to the problem, and sharing the solution costs nothing, but they refuse to share it.
There doesn't need to be an obligation to make that refusal asshole behavior.
At no point am I rationalizing anything here. I'm not even a customer.
> Except, maybe it is actually the most customer-first, because their support & security argument is not bullshit. If there are things wrong with the old version that they know about, then it is entirely valid to decide not to actively help facilitate the proliferation of old bad versions that still have their name on it out in the world.
Moving toward a world where users can't use that version but have no replacement is not customer-first.
> The fact you don't like it is purely a you problem.
Why do so many people act like it's invalid to complain about legal company actions? Complaints about bad service give warning to other potential customers, and might get the company to change things for the better.
Companies can have bad support, and that risks them getting bad reviews.
I'm not using the word "forever" literally. Please try to give some benefit of the doubt.
For one, the company can stop hosting the installers when it goes out of business (but they should do their best to not leave customers in the cold). And if they don't have 30 year old files around, I won't complain too hard (but I will make fun of them if they lost the ability to look back at their main product historically).
I bought FileZilla Pro under a perpetual license - a one-time payment, lifetime right to use the version I purchased. After reinstalling my operating system, I simply needed to reinstall the software I already paid for.
Here's what happened:
- Support admitted I still have the legal right to use the old version of FileZilla Pro that I originally purchased. - Then they told me they refuse to provide the installer for that version. - Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
The impact:
If a customer cannot download the installer, the "perpetual license" is dead. It doesn’t matter what rights they acknowledge on paper - they are blocking any practical way to use the software unless you pay again under their new subscription model.
There is no way to reinstall. There is no way to access the product you bought. Your "perpetual license" effectively becomes worthless the moment you reinstall your OS or lose the installer.
Full text on link.