Broken love: letting my IDA maintenance period run out next year

With IDA 9.0 Hex-Rays says they are switching to a subscription only model. This was already threatened to existing customers before ¹ — roughly two or three years ago — and of course it is being sold with totally great benefits that this comes with.

Benefits like being able to access all supported platform versions instead of having to pick one.

Those who have been in the game a little longer will remember that this used to be the status quo for IDA. If you had a license, you could get all versions. I think they switched to single-OS license when they moved to Qt. So probably between IDA 5 and 6 or maybe even 4 and 5. Can’t be bothered to look it up in my archive.

Back when they announced the subscription model I asked when that would take effect and what about the perpetuity of access to the product under such a model. Quoting myself from 2022-01-06 (excerpt):

my maintenance renewal is due later this month. I already generated a
quote. However, now I found the blog entry from December and it worries
me: https://hex-rays.com/blog/hex-rays-is-moving-to-a-subscription-model/

In particular it makes me wonder about perpetual access to the software.
After all the existing maintenance model is already more or less a
subscription (annual), except if I slip up (intentionally or not) I can
keep using the latest version released at that time perpetually. Now,
given you are calling it a move to a subscription model, I suppose
there’s a catch there – or let’s say a difference to the existing
“annual subscription model” with perpetual access after expiry.

Unfortunately the blog post doesn’t mention details beyond the
superficial, let alone a price tag or length of the subscription period(s).

Could you please explain how this is planned as this will guide my
decision whether or not to renew once again.

The answer was as follows (relevant excerpt):

We decided to postpone the launch of the subscription model. We do not have the new date yet.

With the perpetual license, you will be able to use the software forever. You can decide to move to the subscription model or not, this will not have an impact on the access to the software, only on the next updates. Same as now if you decide no to renew your license.

We will inform you as soon as we have all the details and a new launch date.

All existing prices and conditions remain applicable.

Next year when my maintenance would be due, I will not renew. There won’t be IDA 9.0 for me under the outlined conditions. And yes, of course the statement from back in 2022 is still true: “You can decide to move to the subscription model or not, this will not have an impact on the access to the software, only on the next updates.” … just that they won’t even sell IDA 9.0 without the subscription model.

It’s a pity and it means I’ll have to re-learn a lot with other tools. On the other hand several candidate tools are open source and I can contribute to them directly instead of merely improving the ecosystem some vendor creates with my IDAPython scripts or plugins or by contributing to others who created such.

I’m sure there are a lot of people, especially companies who invested in people and getting people trained on IDA who will have a much harder time to switch. And obviously it’s a bitter pill to swallow for me as well. Muscle memory dies hard and at work I had access to the x64 decompiler which certainly is the best decompiler of all those I was able to try out. But, I don’t think I am too old to re-learn these things and look forward to it.

I wish them well and perhaps they change their minds about software that one can’t own; or I do — either way I wish them the very best. Their product has been a companion for many years and the largest part of my career up to now. There are no hard feelings from my side. I just don’t like software or other digital goods that I can’t own ².

Farewell, IDA!

// Oliver

1. I’ve been a customer of theirs of over twenty years; started out on a student’s license and then switched to the professional one [↩]
2. It’s not like Lumina isn’t already tying me to Hex-Rays or the terms of how you needed to refresh your maintenance period. But taking away perpetual access to the software is the red line I won’t cross. I told them that in 2022 and nothing has changed from my side. But a lot has changed from the competition. There are plenty of alternatives, even if not all of them “are there yet”. [↩]