wasn't every traditional license where you bought some software that you could use indefinitely a perpetual license? and how many places allowed you to redownload a paid software product multiple times? is filezilla here really out of place. is it not just following the norm? don't most applications work this way? especially the ones who don't implement some kind of license key check? i mean, without a license key system, you can't sell a product and offer it as a free download as well. how would you verify that only those who paid for it can download it? so it doesn't make any sense for this to be an issue.
>and how many places allowed you to redownload a paid software product multiple times?
Better question is which places don't allow unlimited downloads. If you buy office 365, you can download it unlimited amount of times from microsoft. Hell, you can download it unlimited times even if you don't own it, because activation happens after it's installed. Same goes for something like Steam. The only exception is something that comes on physical media, or the company went bankrupt, none of that happened here.
>especially the ones who don't implement some kind of license key check?
ok, i didn't bother to check. so yeah, with a license key system it would cost them nothing to allow unlimited downloads for old versions. i don't buy their security argument either. my point was more about the general expectation that there should be unlimited downloads. i mean, it's nice to have, and kudos to those who offer it, but i don't see it as a generally expected practice.
Office 365 is a subscription, not a perpetual license, but the only time I can recall Microsoft ever deliberately removing access to downloadable software I was entitled to was in the late 90's, when they removed Windows 98 and Windows NT 4.0 from MSDN as part of a settlement with Sun where they agreed to stop distributing their Java runtime.
Oh, and just for the record, one time in the early 90s, I was getting read errors trying to reinstall Excel from the original floppies, had no backups, and Microsoft support sent a complete replacement disk set, at no charge, no questions asked (seriously; for all they knew, I could have been lying to get a free unlicensed copy of Excel).
