Vendor forced us from perpetual licenses to a subscription
Vendors quietly swap perpetual SKUs for subscription models during renewals, then claim signing the contract forfeited existing rights. This leaves administrators trapped between paying extortionate fees or instantly ripping critical software out of production infrastructure under threat of a cease-and-desist.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1letting support contracts expire and planning migration to alternative platforms like AWS, Hyper-V, and ProxmoxDid this help you?
- 2involving in-house legal counsel to assess threats and respondDid this help you?
- 3blocking vendor domains and locking down network managementDid this help you?
- 4ignoring renewal demands and vendor noticesDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“Apparently in our last renewal VMware pulled the rug out from under us and swapped out the SKU to one that corresponded to a subscription. And by signing the renewal last year, VMware says we forfeited our perpetual license and therefore have only two options, pay now or remove VMware from our environment immediately.”source ↗
“Ya we were sent a blanket cease and desist for our perpetual licenses too.”source ↗
“They tried the same with our perpetual Horizon licenses recently.”source ↗
“I'm confused about the agent registration piece. Is anyone else reading that as if they're taking away individual user-level OAuth to their hosted MCP, and interactions need to happen via an "agent" service account?”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 5How to catch new software installs without false alarms
- 3Unauthorized third-party software integrations on client networks