Does a purchased licence of PureBasic provide a permanent code?

[Oso]

I'm planning to make a purchase. Is the PureBasic licence provided with a permanent activation code, or does it require an online activation?

The reason I ask is that we have had our fingers burned in the past. We used to purchase a tool called ScanToPDF in UK which came with a "lifetime licence". When we eventually reinstalled the software, following a hard disc replacement, we installed with the same original O/S, but the activation code would no longer work, because the vendor's licence server no longer worked in the same way. ScanToPDF's reply was "we no longer support Windows 'x'".

[mk-soft]

The licence required for download. Via email address and password. See also licence models for multiple users or companies.

If you have a user licence, you can install the software on your different systems as a user. There will be no licence request over the internet. After installation, only for new versions, if you want. This means that the software runs without an internet connection.

[Little John]

Oh, it's so long ago when I purchased PureBasic ... There is no activation code or similar. You'll simply get access to a part of the PureBasic website where you can download the full versions for all supported operating systems.

[Oso]

The licence required for download. Via email address and password. See also licence models for multiple users or companies.

If you have a user licence, you can install the software on your different systems as a user. You will not be asked for a licence via the Internet. This means that the software runs without an internet connection.

Thanks for the information mk-soft. That all makes sense.

[Oso]

Oh, it's so long ago when I purchased PureBasic ... There is no activation code or similar. You'll simply get access to a part of the PureBasic website where you can download the full versions for all supported operating systems.

Thanks, so the licence grants you access to a download area and from there you can pick up the latest version and platform.

This is good to hear -- we seem to be living in an age in which vendors like to control the lifetime of the product we're using, vis-à-vis Microsoft's "stub" installation exe and their ability to override what we actually intended to install. It has caused me to become fixated on downloading everything I might ever need and keep it archived in full.

[BarryG]

It has caused me to become fixated on downloading everything I might ever need and keep it archived in full.

That's what I do, too. It's a good idea. Anyway, you'll be right with PureBasic. I've owned my license for many years and never had an issue with it. Buy once, use forever; even on PCs with no internet. Fred has the old-school software mentality that we all love and respect.

[Oso]

It has caused me to become fixated on downloading everything I might ever need and keep it archived in full.

That's what I do, too. It's a good idea. Anyway, you'll be right with PureBasic. I've owned my license for many years and never had an issue with it. Buy once, use forever; even on PCs with no internet. Fred has the old-school software mentality that we all love and respect.

It's good to know I'm not the only one who thinks this way. It seems that the industry is trying to move towards a recurring payment model and I sometimes wonder if I'm the only one who objects to it!

[jacdelad]

It's like everywhere: All about the money. So yeah, you definitely get a fine product here...for life.
Also, be aware that SpiderBasic (in case it interesting for you too) only offers updates for one year, starting with the day you paid. But PureBasic definitely stays one-time-paid.

BTW, I offered to buy a second licence when PureBasic runs on Raspi...time to claim it!

[Axolotl]

License and Price are two different things.
From my point of view it is totally fair, if you earn money with the help of this software, that you give a part to fred and his team on a voluntary basis.
Whether you buy new licenses or press the donate button is - I think - the same.

You should keep in mind that this is the only way for the development team to have motivation - and available time - for further development.
But these are just my spontaneous thoughts on the subject.

Happy coding and stay healthy.

[mk-soft]

I have been using Purebasic since 2005, first on Windows, then on Linux.
When I didn't want to use Windows anymore, I switched to macOS. And see. Here Purebasic also ran on the first try.
For the beta test of v6.0 I also got a Raspberry PI4. And it ran on Arm32. On advice from us Fred also provided a version for Arm64. We also got this to run.

The license model of Fred we find very good. One user license till the grave. So we should also donate regularly.
The donate button can be found under downloads, if you login it with your license.
(Important information for those who haven't found it yet)

[Oso]

I agree with the other comments here. I think it's healthy for a software product to gain some form of recurring revenue, in order to fund new development. However, what we see in the software industry generally, these days, with its normalisation of recurring payments, is not simply a means of funding development but a means of maximising profit as far as it can possibly go. A number of vendors aren't satisfied with reasonable maintenance and support income -- instead they want significant annual payments and to lock users into quite unfair agreements with unreasonable and restrictive terms.

We've been developing with PICK MultiValue databases for many years, including various flavours of PICK, such as jBASE, mvBASE, D3 etc. PICK used to have a really loyal customer base and we used to refer to it as the "Industry's best-kept secret", as it offered huge productivity and cost advantages. It used to be competitively priced and it was possible to buy a multi-user licence for just a few hundred USD and run a small enterprise on that. Eventually, several of the independent PICK-compatible vendors were snapped-up by Rocket Software Inc. who are not satisfied with that existing loyal customer base. Instead they want to charge massive annual fees and re-write contracts. Consequently PICK is now a dying system because it's cheaper to just use current mainstream technology like MySQL. They've effectively killed-off a loyal customer base by being greedy.

One of the worst aspects is that while annual maintenance and support of PICK is 20% of the 500 USD per user licence fee, if a customer allows this to lapse, Rocket Software don't even allow them to extend the number of user-seats, which has nothing to do with supporting it. It is effectively a form of robbery but nobody can do anything about it, because there's no competition. Furthermore, if a customer with lapsed maintenance wants to extend the number of licence seats, they are forced to pay 200% of the annual fees to re-join the maintenance contract. To be frank, if this was 25 years ago, people would laugh at this and say you were joking, but now it seems normal. This is just the other side of the argument really. That's how bad it can be.

[netmaestro]

In the world of software sales & updates Fred stands alone. He said more than 20 years ago that you only have to buy the product once and you are qualified for every new version and update as long as Purebasic lives. I bought it at version 3.93 and it was impressive then. Now it's just mind-blowing by comparison and all I've ever needed is my email address and password for purebasic.com to get the latest. There's a donate button you can use if you want to help support development but it's by no means required. Purebasic is the gift that just keeps on giving, long after the energizer bunny fell over and died.