Re: Cloudy Skies
My thoughts:
Cloud Storage:
I'm not really thrilled, but not really terrified either. However, a shop that relies on keeping it's designs safe from competitors rightly needs to be extremely concerned over it. A breach or leak from those that control the cloud could easily lead to others pirating the design. Also there is the fact that governments have FAR easier access to plans and designs stored in cloud servers. Tinfoil aside. When they decide to come take a close look at you the bar to entry where your data is stored outside the confines of your home or business is far easier to hurdle. There are some ways to address this. Un-brokered encryption would be one. Designs can be encrypted such that only the customer has the keys to the data.
I did have concerns when a vendor locks me into using the cloud only. I was nervous that they can hike the price of the software and leave me with little choice but to pay once a significant portion of my designs are housed in the cloud. However, realistically most software vendors can already implement systems where if maintenance is not renewed the product will no longer work. This is not unique to the cloud and can render locally stored data just as useless. I would STRONGLY prefer a model where cloud storage is used to sync designs between systems and is supplemental to local storage. Exclusively cloud based storage I see as a negative right now.
Subscription Pricing:
More and more software will be wanting to move to subscription pricing. I'm not too happy about that. Right now a few people doing it isn't so bad. When you think of nearly every software house doing that as well the issue becomes more of a problem as you are nickel and dimed to death. Some benefits though I like. Right now the expectation is that since I pay monthly/yearly then I am always entitled to the latest version. Current models on even moderately priced CAD software is very high yearly maintenance costs to keep up-to-date. I far prefer the modest subscription for program and updates vs modest purchase and heavy maintenance. Most vendors are not even willing to provide bug fixes outside maintenance so you can easily be held ransom to maintenance to fix a show-stopper bug. And often the pricing is punitive if you've let it lapse.
Here again, I see up sides and down sides to the model, not just all bad. I think it will take time for companies to understand where the lines will need to be drawn to avoid turning off customers. I hope that some companies will retain the buy-it-once model to provide alternatives to the cloud/subscription model. I also DO NOT appreciate the forced upgrade nature of some vendors doing this. Access to upgrades is fine, forcing me to bleeding edge is not. I'd agree with others that want to be able to choose either a 'stable release' or 'current release" track. If I'm on stable then I only get versions that have been extensively tested prior to release. More like what a company would release for version 2.0 to 2.1. Current release keeps you on the leading edge of new features, but includes a higher risk of new bugs being introduced like 2.1.45-build11 to 2.1.45-build13.
CNC: Making incorrect parts and breaking stuff, faster and with greater precision.