As IronCore evolved, it eventually got packed — `+[obj load]` executed prior to entry point — and provided a JavaScript to Objective-C bridge. JS payloads were remotely downloaded and AES encrypted...
While offers were the usual suspects back then (Advanced Mac Cleaner, MacKeeper, and a customized Chromium app), the technique could be abused in a couple of ways so to spy on specific targets.
Anyhow, I don't know what you do with FZ, I am very much into rsync (OSS) and Transmit app (Panic).
While I understand the author's frustration, I think they should take a moment and look in the mirror. A perpetual license doesn't mean that Filezilla should be a free hosting provider for installation media for eternity. Their reasons really aren't that relevant here. Likewise the rant about Mozilla is completely unfounded. There are many things to be upset at in the modern software world, this is not one of them.
I disagree. Hosting licensed copies of software is the norm. Steam does it, Google does it, Apple does it, EA and Ubisoft do it, and all of them host much larger software (including free updates) than FileZilla. Maybe hosting 5GiB image downloads on a dedicated web portal the same way Microsoft does is a bit much to ask, but this is nothing.
We're talking 50 megabytes of storage here, per version. They can save themselves a lot of hosting money by letting lifetime subscribers download the latest version, but that'll cut into their profit margins of course. Even if they don't want to host the setup on their website, providing a 50MiB installer file on request has to be the bare minimum customer support I'd expect.
My experience is that some people do confuse FileZilla with Mozilla. That said, everyone I know just uses the free version, despite the spyware that's bundled with the installer.
Based on this post, I wouldn't buy their professional subscription.
If you have an iphone on an old version of ios, you can install the latest version of some software you bought/downloaded for free compatible with that ios version.
>A perpetual license doesn't mean that Filezilla should be a free hosting provider for installation media for eternity.
It is however, quite reasonable to expect that downloads will be available as long as the vendor is still in business, especially if the cost of hosting is marginal. Apple could theoretically sell you songs/albums on itunes, and tell you to rebuy if for whatever reason you lost your phone and didn't back up the file, but most people would think that's a dick move.
Think about how little it costs to be a free hosting provider for a handful of 15MB downloads, maybe one per major version, and just for people that paid you in the past. It's next to nothing. In particular, cloudflare will give you 10GB of free object storage with unlimited bandwidth and 10 million downloads a month. So yes, they should host the installer forever.
To put it another way, the cost to provide downloads forever instead of just once is less than a penny. It should be built in to the purchase.
FileZilla explicitly and emphatically sells a license, not a download. In fact, technically not even the initial download is included in the purchase. They’re technically within their rights to never even give you the software, just say “all we ever sold you was a promise not to sue”, but we’d all agree that’s a scam, right? So, where’s the line?
Point of comparison, Steam, CodeCanyon, and Gumroad all let you re-download the version you licensed indefinitely.
Good faith ended at sale and support. Common sense isn’t at play because who is going to host installation media for eternity? No. There’s a nothing burger here.
> A perpetual license doesn't mean that Filezilla should be a free hosting provider for installation media for eternity.
Thank you.
This is like people who think $5 is too much for an app. We've become entitled to think software is free because giants pour lots of ad-riddled software in our laps.
You bought the car. You can use the car forever. If you lose it, that's on you.
> This is like people who think $5 is too much for an app. We've become entitled to think software is free because giants pour lots of ad-riddled software in our laps.
Your complaint is misplaced. Software takes work, and updates take work. Hosting <100MB installers doesn't take work.
It basically is zero cost to keep those files available somewhere.
> You bought the car. You can use the car forever. If you lose it, that's on you.
If the manufacturer had a button that could summon the car I lost, and refused to press it, that would reflect extremely badly on them.
> It basically is zero cost to keep those files available somewhere.
You don't know that.
Maybe it was put in a bucket or host that died when the company switched to a subscription model. Maybe they don't have copies on hand. Maybe it was a previous team that owned it. Maybe a different owner.
You're assuming a possibility space of zero chance of work on their behalf. There are lots of things that could have happened.
Some of those errors would be understandable (but still reflect pretty badly on the company), but given they said they refuse to allow downloads it doesn't sound like they lost the data.
If they don't have copies on hand, they could fix that with a one time effort that still comes out as negligible overall.
Also if they can prevent just a few support tickets, they'd save money from the effort.
Filezilla is horrible software compared to software like Transmit. What you have to understand is that someone with no artistic vision sat down and decided to build an FTP client for the masses. Fortunately, vibe coding will fix this. We will have much better software in the future. It will be free. It will be a commodity.
I have a folder in my server where I archive the last several versions (usually 3-5) of all software I install. It would have helped in this situation but the main reason I started doing it >25 years ago is in case companies disappeared.
Because what you paid for is the software on physical media. Why would any publisher just hand out things for free that they otherwise charge for because you claim you lost the item. Back in the days of physical software, it used to be common to buy and sell used software. The difference between "I lost it, send me a new one" and "I sold it, send me a new one" is a simple lie, that more people than you think would be happy to tell a faceless corpo. Would it be nice if they issued a new copy that worked with the old key? Yes, but there is no moral argument for requiring it.
If I lose a book, I wouldn't expect the publisher to send me a new one. If I buy a physical copy of a Nintendo game and lose the cartridge, there is no reason to expect Nintendo to send me a new one. Why would MS word be different?
>Yes, but there is no moral argument for requiring it.
Are you sure you didn't butcher a word here? Yes, Firezilla might be in the clear legally if they told the OP to pound sand, but that's not the same thing as having no "moral argument". In most common law jurisdictions, it's perfectly legal to walk past a drowning child and refuse to save him, even if you'll incur marginal cost (eg. 10 min of your time). However that's not you wouldn't say "there's no moral argument for requiring it"
Similar logic applies here, which is that it costs next to nothing for them to provide downloads to existing owners, because they presumably have the digital distribution infrastructure for new sales. It doesn't make sense for a book publisher to send you new copies after your dog ate your book because postage, ink and paper costs money, and if for whatever reason they have a e-book version, it'll be a pain to authenticate that they actually bought the physical book. None of those excuses work for digital downloads.
Comparing a company that refuses to support a purchase with an expired support term to refusing to save the life of a child? I would argue that refusing to stop the death of a child is not in any way comparable to refusing to go above and beyond on a $13 sale from years ago.
> Similar logic applies here, which is that it costs next to nothing for them to provide downloads to existing owners, because they presumably have the digital distribution infrastructure for new sales.
In any case, hosting archival versions is not free, it incurs a cost, just like printing, mailing, and postage does for a hard copy of a book. The cost is possibly less, but not 0.
If you think there is a threshold for when a company should cover the costs of negligent loss versus not covering those costs, what is it? Why is the cost of shipping a replacement cost of a physical media above that cost, and the cost of hosting a server in perpetuity below that cost?
New sales are for different versions than what he purchased. Filezilla sells a perpetual license with updates for a year. They just keep the most up to date version on the download server and cut off your access after a year.
In order to implement what you are suggesting they would have to build an entire application that knows when your support ended and serve the specific build that you are licensed for, or provide that ability to their CS team. The reality is that the cost of developing and maintaining that minimal functionality are far from free, probably not too dissimilar from the cost of replacing physical copies of books at a unit level, tbh.
While, yes, it would be generous for Filezilla to provide perpetual support and downloads, that is not what was offered or purchased. They provided software, they supported it for a year, they even allow him to use their customer support resources outside of that time.
Under what moral system is there an imperative to do something that is beyond what you originally agreed to in an anonymous purchase?
At the end of the day, all this spilled ink is about a ~$13 license. Sorry, but a years old $13 purchase carries precisely no implied moral imperative for perpetual availability.
>If you think there is a threshold for when a company should cover the costs of negligent loss versus not covering those costs, what is it? Why is the cost of shipping a replacement cost of a physical media above that cost, and the cost of hosting a server in perpetuity below that cost?
To paraphrase your words, "I would argue that refusing to offer 0.09 cents[1] (that's right, less than 1 cent) worth of bandwidth for legacy downloads not in any way comparable to spending $5 (at least) of postage to mail a book"
[1] 9 cents/GB charged by AWS for egress. Actual cost is likely far lower.
The author didn't explain what the actual impact was on them. They stopped at "security implications" because the only reasonable outcome that would obviate this "Warning to All Users" would be to provide the latest version for free. No, it doesn't make sense to provide an insecure version. No, it doesn't make sense to patch such an old version. The other reasonable outcome is the actual outcome - that FileZilla doesn't let them download it, but if for some reason they backed it up (which is cool) and want to use it (which is odd), they can still use it.
Maintaining a perpetual archive for the convenience of those that don't do backups is not part of a typical licensing agreement. It is a nice thing to do, but unless a perpetually accessible hosted file service is what you bought, it is reasonable for the company to stop hosting copies of software that they no longer sell.
Some people might believe differently, and some companies might do it out of the goodness of their hearts (or because they signed up for a permanent liability for hosting)
I absolutely conceded that it is not legally required.
I just don't want to do business with people who think that's an ethical way to do things. The hosting excuse is pathetic. Learn to do your job and it isn't something you need to think about more than once every half decade.
I had to maintain a full build artifact history of my old app. It "just worked" for years and years without thinking twice, and cost a handful of dollars a month for a few TB of build artifacts.
For most apps that aren't continual delivery, it's way fewer artifacts to handle so way less data...a couple dollars a month at most.
Really, what excuse do you have for that other than screwing people who previously trusted you enough to do business with you?
> Really, what excuse do you have for that other than screwing people who previously trusted you enough to do business with you?
The license itself is ~$13 for a perpetual license and a year of support and updates. What expectation should I have that because I spent $13 years ago that the company will support me after my one year support window expires? Presumably, everyone on here knows supporting software isn't free. As you pointed out yourself, the hosting costs aren't free. At a certain point, paying a few dollars per month to host a decade old version of a $13 product that gets downloaded once a year actually is a problem.
Just out of curiosity, what is your plan to host the old versions of your app until 2060, say? Will you setup all that infrastructure again if your current provider goes down? Or is there a time limit that is reasonable to no longer offer downloads for, maybe...
Who exactly is getting screwed by being charged $13 to replace an old version of software with a new version because the client failed to do a backup before nuking an HD for an OS install.
No one is being screwed. This is just one party thinking that they are entitled to perpetual support for a perpetual license, and the other party saying that the license is perpetual and the support ends at 1 year.
> At a certain point, paying a few dollars per month to host a decade old version of a $13 product that gets downloaded once a year actually is a problem.
The few dollars was talking about total cost, not per-version cost.
If we're talking about a single version of filezilla that rarely gets downloaded, the hosting cost is somewhere below a penny per month, possibly actual zero. And they might need to store 25 archival versions total? It's nothing.
Unreasonable and unrealistic expectation. You pay for a copy, you get a copy. Deal is over unless you have problem with the product in that it doesn't work as advertised or malfunctions.
> the expectation is that the link keeps working if the company is in business.
It is hard to keep things running when you're changing and experimenting. It's why Google shutters businesses it finds are not growing - they're a maintenance burden and suck up resources, dragging down other efforts. And that's for a company with near-infinite resources. Imagine sole proprietorships.
Someone has to care and devote time and attention to keep it there. At the expense of other opportunities.
Just because Tim Berners-Lee said "cool URIs don't change" doesn't mean it's practical. Almost everything is temporary and dies. It's okay. Not much in life has permanence.
Funny project, funny people, funny ideas. There is some really black and white thinking around feature requests on their forums - for example, segmented ftp downloading for their ftp client.[1]
They are not, nor have ever been interested in solving customer problems. That's ok; that's their privlidge.
FileZilla refused to give me a copy of the version I purchased for 'security reasons,' even though they were already updating the version installed on my system, so it makes little sense to deny me access to the app. It is also worth noting that in the first email I received from them, they had already offered me a discount coupon to buy a new version. I strongly believe the decision to withhold a copy of the software is driven by financial motives rather than security concerns.
I don't often try to get previous versions from the developer. While there are strongly ethical and consumer-centric software houses, I have been long conditioned to expect predatory behavior, usually with some degree of incompetence.
So my first inclination wouldn't be to try filezilla but archive.org. After that I'd search for other options and see what was most trustworthy.
The license policy sounds annoying, but the bigger question (to me) is: why are we still talking about FTP in 2025? If you need file transfer, use SFTP/SSH, rsync, rclone, etc. And if you want a GUI, WinSCP has been doing this for free for ages.
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.
Now go complain to Adobe, where they just shut down their activation servers and leave you with 1k$ of "perpetual" unactivable & unusable software, no matter how much care you took keeping the installer media.
I remember downloading the offline installers for CS2 they released after turning off its activation servers. I take it that wasn't repeated for the later versions
I began installing perpetually licensed software in VMs about 15 years ago. When I upgrade my (hypervisor) hardware, the VM still runs just fine. Obviously, a VM wouldn't be a suitable environment for FileZilla.
The only time it's worthwhile is when you pay thousands of dollars for a license, and don't want to spend on an annual maintenance contract. For example, I've got a ~10 year old IDA Pro license server in an Ubuntu 16.04 VM.
> If you’re considering FileZilla Pro, understand exactly what you are walking into: You can pay for a perpetual license, and later be denied any way to reinstall the product you legally own.
No. You are not denied any way to reinstall the product you legally own. It's on you to maintain backups of your installers. If you have that backup, you may install it and run it legally.
> Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
I can understand that logic. If an out-of-date version is found to have a vulnerability, then if they provide that version but don't update it, they are exposing themselves to lawsuits. Whether or not the lawsuit makes sense is another matter, but I can imagine the company's lawyers putting the kibosh on providing an archive of outdated installers.
This is a blunt warning to anyone who ever purchased, or is thinking about purchasing, FileZilla Pro.
I bought FileZilla Pro under a perpetual license - a one-time payment, lifetime right to use the version I purchased. After reinstalling my operating system, I simply needed to reinstall the software I already paid for.
Here's what happened:
- Support admitted I still have the legal right to use the old version of FileZilla Pro that I originally purchased.
- Then they told me they refuse to provide the installer for that version.
- Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
The impact:
If a customer cannot download the installer, the "perpetual license" is dead. It doesn’t matter what rights they acknowledge on paper - they are blocking any practical way to use the software unless you pay again under their new subscription model.
There is no way to reinstall. There is no way to access the product you bought. Your "perpetual license" effectively becomes worthless the moment you reinstall your OS or lose the installer.
Why do you think there is any difference? Did servers and backups and data centers and electricity and cooling and ups batteries and generators and facility operators and banwidth all become free while I wasn't looking?
They're going to need "servers and backups and data centers and electricity and cooling and ups batteries and generators and facility operators and banwidth" regardless, because they're still selling licenses. The cost of providing downloads to existing owners is marginal.
And instead trust that subscription prices will stay constant and that the company will always stay in business and support the product you purchase?
The root issue is trust, not a lifetime license. In fact, a lifetime license is a good predictor of trust because users prefer it to subscriptions and it indicates that the company at least pretends to be interested in the customer's wants.
Trust can always be abused, as in this case. Trust is gone everywhere. That doesn't mean it can't be rebuilt. It won't be rebuilt on a subscription model that no one asked for.
This makes no sense. A lifetime license is convenient conceptually, but it completely detaches your goals (working software) from a company's incentives (provide absolutely zero after initial delivery - everything afterwards is cost without upside). Lifetime licenses are bad for users (cf this post, as just one example).
Subscriptions are incentives for companies to keep doing what you want, along with direct consequences (everybody will cancel) to penalise them for ignoring their core user base.
Don't let the awkwardness of the system (fully agree modern banking is shit at letting you manage recurring bills) distract from the underlying user-beneficial dynamics.
Edit: let me give you an example. How much do you pay Valve for a Steam subscription? Zero, because they don't offer one, because that isn't what their customers want. This is Valve, who offers perpetual licenses exclusively, offers steep discounts often, and is worth 10s of billions of dollars. The excuses for why it doesn't work are bullshit peddled by middlemen mouthpieces for suits who believe in nothing. They are redundant leeches. Ignore them and make it work.
I agree with you completely. For me, this is a matter of trust and principle, not the cost of the software. I see this as a questionable practice aimed at pushing long-time supporters to spend more money. After this experience, I would never consider purchasing anything from them again.
> All risk of loss for the Products shall pass to You upon delivery of the Products to the location specified in Your Order (even if no signature is required for delivery). For the avoidance of doubt, the delivery of downloaded Products occurs when the Products are downloaded.
What you are saying is that you ordered FileZilla (agreeing to the T&C as part of payment). The T&C said once you downloaded the product, you were required to keep the software yourself.
> In a one-off purchase you will have a right to receive services or other rights for the maximum period of time indicated in the package you have purchased or ‒ missing that indication ‒ for up to five years.
It also says:
> Unless registered, your copy will not receive updates and will not exploit the services of the Software.
So, I would assume that if you purchased the Lifetime license, and you registered the software within the 4 required weeks, then they are infact breaking their contract with you.
Sure, but that is an older Terms and Conditions. It was a perpetual license, not a lifetime license that is sold today. It's like saying you shouldn't purchase Windows 11 because Windows XP no longer gets updates. Well duh! It stopped being supported more than 10 years ago, and Windows 11 is a different license to that of Windows XP.
The lifetime license purchased today is not a perpetual license. FileZilla says that it will update it for life.
So, respectfully, no, it's not good to warn people about the clause, because people purchasing the product today do not run into this issue.
Buddy. "This is a blunt warning", the reasonable and unreasonable parties in this story are not what you seem to think.
No one owes you a perpetual backup. Not even the people who sold you the first copy.
You are not prevented from reinstalling your os or filezilla by anything but your own apparent dipshittery.
You bought something and then threw it away, and now you cry that you don't have it, and then as if that wasn't ridiculous enough already, you then try to blame this on the vendor.
The justification is that they sold you a copy of the software with a lifetime license to use that copy. Not a lifetime license to download the installer from them.
It's not customer friendly, but it doesn't seem like it's going back on a promise, unless the license especially called for it.
That's a reason they're not legally obligated. It doesn't make me understand their actions in the sympathetic sense, and the sympathetic sense is how I interpreted "but I can also understand".
It doesn't explain the choice they made. "Legally they could" applies equally to removing the download and keeping the download.
The only reason I can think of, to make me understand in a much more derogatory sense, is they want to give a deliberately bad experience to customers that didn't give them money recently enough, trying to make them buy again to keep using the software.
My job isn't based around copies of this software, so hypothetical me forgot.
Forgetting is a pretty good excuse I think.
The company didn't forget anything. They're refusing the download on purpose, presumably because they don't want the user to walk away happy without paying more.
What an incredible load of excuses and rationaizations.
The fact is they don't owe anyone any backups or any reasons.
I guess you will just have to go on feeling abused and robbed. Go ahead and try to sue them for theft and fraud if you think your argument actually holds water.
The rationalization is that since in your opinion it wouldn't cost them very much to give you something, that they really owe it to you and if they don't give it to you, they are actually withholding something and you are being denied something you have a right to.
We all agree, even me, that it's not the most cutomer-first policy. Except, maybe it is actually the most customer-first, because their support & security argument is not bullshit. If there are things wrong with the old version that they know about, then it is entirely valid to decide not to actively help facilitate the proliferation of old bad versions that still have their name on it out in the world. Maybe they don't have the policy for such pure and virtuous reason, or maybe they do, but it doesn't matter because it's actually perfectly valid anyway.
The fact you don't like it is purely a you problem.
> The rationalization is that since in your opinion it wouldn't cost them very much to give you something, that they really owe it to you and if they don't give it to you, they are actually withholding something and you are being denied something you have a right to.
The reason they should do it is because it helps their customers get what they paid for.
They have a solution to the problem, and sharing the solution costs nothing, but they refuse to share it.
There doesn't need to be an obligation to make that refusal asshole behavior.
At no point am I rationalizing anything here. I'm not even a customer.
> Except, maybe it is actually the most customer-first, because their support & security argument is not bullshit. If there are things wrong with the old version that they know about, then it is entirely valid to decide not to actively help facilitate the proliferation of old bad versions that still have their name on it out in the world.
Moving toward a world where users can't use that version but have no replacement is not customer-first.
> The fact you don't like it is purely a you problem.
Why do so many people act like it's invalid to complain about legal company actions? Complaints about bad service give warning to other potential customers, and might get the company to change things for the better.
Companies can have bad support, and that risks them getting bad reviews.
I'm not using the word "forever" literally. Please try to give some benefit of the doubt.
For one, the company can stop hosting the installers when it goes out of business (but they should do their best to not leave customers in the cold). And if they don't have 30 year old files around, I won't complain too hard (but I will make fun of them if they lost the ability to look back at their main product historically).
Why did they not mention what the operating system is? I don't think it unreasonable for a company to no longer support operating systems that are also unsupported.
I guess we’ve reached a point where instead of taking personal responsibility for our backups, we just try to turn the internet into our personal army against products.
It’s not, but it ranks better on Google than any blogging platform. If you search “Filezilla Pro Download,” it appears on the first page. Since the goal is awareness, strong visibility on Google is essential.
Realistically, this is why buy-once software is a bad idea. Users have expectations that can only be met via subscription service. If you choose the buy-once you'll get complaints like this with online mobs and so on. If you do services, you'll get paid and you provide the service and everyone's happy. SaaS is the better model in every way - including for the user.
They are essentially the same as software purchased from the 70s to the 00s though - shrinkwrap software, a term cleverly coined by Joel Spolsky. I just thought of it as buying software in a store at the time.
Perpetual license is also a good descriptor. If you have the same OS you downloaded it on, hopefully you have it backed up.
The scenario "we won't provide it for security reasons" only shows up as a gotcha. The author of that GitHub repo would know better than to use it.
I see that as more than a gotcha. It speaks to what the company really stands for if they say "yeah, we got it, you bought rights to use it, but nah, screw you". They're in no way obligated to provide the installer of course, but if they have the ability, I'd still complain if they don't.
There is no difference. They are exatly the same, because they don't owe you a rationale that you approve of. Even if they offered no rationale at all it changes nothing because they don't owe you anything. You paid, you got, you're both done.
FileZilla author was caught red handed, shipping app with IronCore adware downloader, aka installCore from ironSource:
https://www.sentinelone.com/blog/osx-ironcore-a-or-what-we-k...
As IronCore evolved, it eventually got packed — `+[obj load]` executed prior to entry point — and provided a JavaScript to Objective-C bridge. JS payloads were remotely downloaded and AES encrypted...
While offers were the usual suspects back then (Advanced Mac Cleaner, MacKeeper, and a customized Chromium app), the technique could be abused in a couple of ways so to spy on specific targets.
Anyhow, I don't know what you do with FZ, I am very much into rsync (OSS) and Transmit app (Panic).
Thanks for sharing. I wasn’t aware of this before, but it does confirm some concerns I already had about the developer’s questionable practices.
Is Linux clean?
While I understand the author's frustration, I think they should take a moment and look in the mirror. A perpetual license doesn't mean that Filezilla should be a free hosting provider for installation media for eternity. Their reasons really aren't that relevant here. Likewise the rant about Mozilla is completely unfounded. There are many things to be upset at in the modern software world, this is not one of them.
I disagree. Hosting licensed copies of software is the norm. Steam does it, Google does it, Apple does it, EA and Ubisoft do it, and all of them host much larger software (including free updates) than FileZilla. Maybe hosting 5GiB image downloads on a dedicated web portal the same way Microsoft does is a bit much to ask, but this is nothing.
We're talking 50 megabytes of storage here, per version. They can save themselves a lot of hosting money by letting lifetime subscribers download the latest version, but that'll cut into their profit margins of course. Even if they don't want to host the setup on their website, providing a 50MiB installer file on request has to be the bare minimum customer support I'd expect.
My experience is that some people do confuse FileZilla with Mozilla. That said, everyone I know just uses the free version, despite the spyware that's bundled with the installer.
Based on this post, I wouldn't buy their professional subscription.
> Hosting licensed copies of software is the norm. Steam does it, Google does it, Apple does it, EA and Ubisoft do it
Correct me if I'm wrong, but they do not store previous versions for you to choose, only the current version.
If you have an iphone on an old version of ios, you can install the latest version of some software you bought/downloaded for free compatible with that ios version.
Or you get an error and can't do that despite the popup prompting you to do so
Steam often provides every version of a product. (The ui has no option to download them, but you can fetch them via the builtin console)
>A perpetual license doesn't mean that Filezilla should be a free hosting provider for installation media for eternity.
It is however, quite reasonable to expect that downloads will be available as long as the vendor is still in business, especially if the cost of hosting is marginal. Apple could theoretically sell you songs/albums on itunes, and tell you to rebuy if for whatever reason you lost your phone and didn't back up the file, but most people would think that's a dick move.
Think about how little it costs to be a free hosting provider for a handful of 15MB downloads, maybe one per major version, and just for people that paid you in the past. It's next to nothing. In particular, cloudflare will give you 10GB of free object storage with unlimited bandwidth and 10 million downloads a month. So yes, they should host the installer forever.
To put it another way, the cost to provide downloads forever instead of just once is less than a penny. It should be built in to the purchase.
FileZilla explicitly and emphatically sells a license, not a download. In fact, technically not even the initial download is included in the purchase. They’re technically within their rights to never even give you the software, just say “all we ever sold you was a promise not to sue”, but we’d all agree that’s a scam, right? So, where’s the line?
Point of comparison, Steam, CodeCanyon, and Gumroad all let you re-download the version you licensed indefinitely.
Good faith and common sense is being violated. That’s a valid point here.
Good faith ended at sale and support. Common sense isn’t at play because who is going to host installation media for eternity? No. There’s a nothing burger here.
Who mentioned eternity?
> A perpetual license doesn't mean that Filezilla should be a free hosting provider for installation media for eternity.
Thank you.
This is like people who think $5 is too much for an app. We've become entitled to think software is free because giants pour lots of ad-riddled software in our laps.
You bought the car. You can use the car forever. If you lose it, that's on you.
> This is like people who think $5 is too much for an app. We've become entitled to think software is free because giants pour lots of ad-riddled software in our laps.
Your complaint is misplaced. Software takes work, and updates take work. Hosting <100MB installers doesn't take work.
It basically is zero cost to keep those files available somewhere.
> You bought the car. You can use the car forever. If you lose it, that's on you.
If the manufacturer had a button that could summon the car I lost, and refused to press it, that would reflect extremely badly on them.
> Hosting <100MB installers doesn't take work.
> It basically is zero cost to keep those files available somewhere.
You don't know that.
Maybe it was put in a bucket or host that died when the company switched to a subscription model. Maybe they don't have copies on hand. Maybe it was a previous team that owned it. Maybe a different owner.
You're assuming a possibility space of zero chance of work on their behalf. There are lots of things that could have happened.
Some of those errors would be understandable (but still reflect pretty badly on the company), but given they said they refuse to allow downloads it doesn't sound like they lost the data.
If they don't have copies on hand, they could fix that with a one time effort that still comes out as negligible overall.
Also if they can prevent just a few support tickets, they'd save money from the effort.
Filezilla is horrible software compared to software like Transmit. What you have to understand is that someone with no artistic vision sat down and decided to build an FTP client for the masses. Fortunately, vibe coding will fix this. We will have much better software in the future. It will be free. It will be a commodity.
I have a folder in my server where I archive the last several versions (usually 3-5) of all software I install. It would have helped in this situation but the main reason I started doing it >25 years ago is in case companies disappeared.
I have installation media for MS Office 2010 in my desk drawer. If I lose the disc, I wouldn't expect Microsoft to replace it for me.
I'm afraid I don't really understand what the author is angry about here.
Why... not? You paid for that software.
You paid for a copy, you got your copy. The business is not responsible forever furnishing you a new copy.
Why not? They sold you a license, they said so themselves. Why are you defending them here?
Because what you paid for is the software on physical media. Why would any publisher just hand out things for free that they otherwise charge for because you claim you lost the item. Back in the days of physical software, it used to be common to buy and sell used software. The difference between "I lost it, send me a new one" and "I sold it, send me a new one" is a simple lie, that more people than you think would be happy to tell a faceless corpo. Would it be nice if they issued a new copy that worked with the old key? Yes, but there is no moral argument for requiring it.
If I lose a book, I wouldn't expect the publisher to send me a new one. If I buy a physical copy of a Nintendo game and lose the cartridge, there is no reason to expect Nintendo to send me a new one. Why would MS word be different?
I'm pretty sure the business was very clear that I'm only buying the license though. So why are you talking about physical media?
>Yes, but there is no moral argument for requiring it.
Are you sure you didn't butcher a word here? Yes, Firezilla might be in the clear legally if they told the OP to pound sand, but that's not the same thing as having no "moral argument". In most common law jurisdictions, it's perfectly legal to walk past a drowning child and refuse to save him, even if you'll incur marginal cost (eg. 10 min of your time). However that's not you wouldn't say "there's no moral argument for requiring it"
Similar logic applies here, which is that it costs next to nothing for them to provide downloads to existing owners, because they presumably have the digital distribution infrastructure for new sales. It doesn't make sense for a book publisher to send you new copies after your dog ate your book because postage, ink and paper costs money, and if for whatever reason they have a e-book version, it'll be a pain to authenticate that they actually bought the physical book. None of those excuses work for digital downloads.
Comparing a company that refuses to support a purchase with an expired support term to refusing to save the life of a child? I would argue that refusing to stop the death of a child is not in any way comparable to refusing to go above and beyond on a $13 sale from years ago.
> Similar logic applies here, which is that it costs next to nothing for them to provide downloads to existing owners, because they presumably have the digital distribution infrastructure for new sales.
In any case, hosting archival versions is not free, it incurs a cost, just like printing, mailing, and postage does for a hard copy of a book. The cost is possibly less, but not 0.
If you think there is a threshold for when a company should cover the costs of negligent loss versus not covering those costs, what is it? Why is the cost of shipping a replacement cost of a physical media above that cost, and the cost of hosting a server in perpetuity below that cost?
New sales are for different versions than what he purchased. Filezilla sells a perpetual license with updates for a year. They just keep the most up to date version on the download server and cut off your access after a year.
In order to implement what you are suggesting they would have to build an entire application that knows when your support ended and serve the specific build that you are licensed for, or provide that ability to their CS team. The reality is that the cost of developing and maintaining that minimal functionality are far from free, probably not too dissimilar from the cost of replacing physical copies of books at a unit level, tbh.
While, yes, it would be generous for Filezilla to provide perpetual support and downloads, that is not what was offered or purchased. They provided software, they supported it for a year, they even allow him to use their customer support resources outside of that time.
Under what moral system is there an imperative to do something that is beyond what you originally agreed to in an anonymous purchase?
At the end of the day, all this spilled ink is about a ~$13 license. Sorry, but a years old $13 purchase carries precisely no implied moral imperative for perpetual availability.
>If you think there is a threshold for when a company should cover the costs of negligent loss versus not covering those costs, what is it? Why is the cost of shipping a replacement cost of a physical media above that cost, and the cost of hosting a server in perpetuity below that cost?
To paraphrase your words, "I would argue that refusing to offer 0.09 cents[1] (that's right, less than 1 cent) worth of bandwidth for legacy downloads not in any way comparable to spending $5 (at least) of postage to mail a book"
[1] 9 cents/GB charged by AWS for egress. Actual cost is likely far lower.
> Why... not? You paid for that software.
... and forgot to make a backup. Nothing lasts forever.
The author didn't explain what the actual impact was on them. They stopped at "security implications" because the only reasonable outcome that would obviate this "Warning to All Users" would be to provide the latest version for free. No, it doesn't make sense to provide an insecure version. No, it doesn't make sense to patch such an old version. The other reasonable outcome is the actual outcome - that FileZilla doesn't let them download it, but if for some reason they backed it up (which is cool) and want to use it (which is odd), they can still use it.
When the purchase medium is a download link the expectation is that the link keeps working if the company is in business.
Give a good reason it shouldn't.
Edit: also, list your startups. I like to avoid doing business with people who think this way.
Maintaining a perpetual archive for the convenience of those that don't do backups is not part of a typical licensing agreement. It is a nice thing to do, but unless a perpetually accessible hosted file service is what you bought, it is reasonable for the company to stop hosting copies of software that they no longer sell.
Some people might believe differently, and some companies might do it out of the goodness of their hearts (or because they signed up for a permanent liability for hosting)
I absolutely conceded that it is not legally required.
I just don't want to do business with people who think that's an ethical way to do things. The hosting excuse is pathetic. Learn to do your job and it isn't something you need to think about more than once every half decade.
I had to maintain a full build artifact history of my old app. It "just worked" for years and years without thinking twice, and cost a handful of dollars a month for a few TB of build artifacts.
For most apps that aren't continual delivery, it's way fewer artifacts to handle so way less data...a couple dollars a month at most.
Really, what excuse do you have for that other than screwing people who previously trusted you enough to do business with you?
> Really, what excuse do you have for that other than screwing people who previously trusted you enough to do business with you?
The license itself is ~$13 for a perpetual license and a year of support and updates. What expectation should I have that because I spent $13 years ago that the company will support me after my one year support window expires? Presumably, everyone on here knows supporting software isn't free. As you pointed out yourself, the hosting costs aren't free. At a certain point, paying a few dollars per month to host a decade old version of a $13 product that gets downloaded once a year actually is a problem.
Just out of curiosity, what is your plan to host the old versions of your app until 2060, say? Will you setup all that infrastructure again if your current provider goes down? Or is there a time limit that is reasonable to no longer offer downloads for, maybe...
Who exactly is getting screwed by being charged $13 to replace an old version of software with a new version because the client failed to do a backup before nuking an HD for an OS install.
No one is being screwed. This is just one party thinking that they are entitled to perpetual support for a perpetual license, and the other party saying that the license is perpetual and the support ends at 1 year.
> At a certain point, paying a few dollars per month to host a decade old version of a $13 product that gets downloaded once a year actually is a problem.
The few dollars was talking about total cost, not per-version cost.
If we're talking about a single version of filezilla that rarely gets downloaded, the hosting cost is somewhere below a penny per month, possibly actual zero. And they might need to store 25 archival versions total? It's nothing.
> When the purchase medium is a download link the expectation is that the link keeps working if the company is in business.
Famous last words.
There is a reason Internet Archive is so popular.
A lot of SW was hosted on ftp sites, which became "unsecure".
Unreasonable and unrealistic expectation. You pay for a copy, you get a copy. Deal is over unless you have problem with the product in that it doesn't work as advertised or malfunctions.
Posting the same drivel twice does not make it more compelling.
> the expectation is that the link keeps working if the company is in business.
It is hard to keep things running when you're changing and experimenting. It's why Google shutters businesses it finds are not growing - they're a maintenance burden and suck up resources, dragging down other efforts. And that's for a company with near-infinite resources. Imagine sole proprietorships.
Someone has to care and devote time and attention to keep it there. At the expense of other opportunities.
Just because Tim Berners-Lee said "cool URIs don't change" doesn't mean it's practical. Almost everything is temporary and dies. It's okay. Not much in life has permanence.
If you want to hold onto it, archive it.
Funny project, funny people, funny ideas. There is some really black and white thinking around feature requests on their forums - for example, segmented ftp downloading for their ftp client.[1]
They are not, nor have ever been interested in solving customer problems. That's ok; that's their privlidge.
1 https://trac.filezilla-project.org/ticket/2309
Weird to connect FileZilla and Mozilla, but leave out that both are presumably named after Godzilla.
It's like going, "weird that they named it hemoglobin when it bears no physical resemblance to hematite!"
FileZilla refused to give me a copy of the version I purchased for 'security reasons,' even though they were already updating the version installed on my system, so it makes little sense to deny me access to the app. It is also worth noting that in the first email I received from them, they had already offered me a discount coupon to buy a new version. I strongly believe the decision to withhold a copy of the software is driven by financial motives rather than security concerns.
I don't often try to get previous versions from the developer. While there are strongly ethical and consumer-centric software houses, I have been long conditioned to expect predatory behavior, usually with some degree of incompetence.
So my first inclination wouldn't be to try filezilla but archive.org. After that I'd search for other options and see what was most trustworthy.
I've done well with oldversions.com in the past. Last I heard they were still reputable. http://www.oldversion.com/windows/filezilla/
Even without knowing which version the author is looking for, I'm betting I could locate a suitable copy.
The license policy sounds annoying, but the bigger question (to me) is: why are we still talking about FTP in 2025? If you need file transfer, use SFTP/SSH, rsync, rclone, etc. And if you want a GUI, WinSCP has been doing this for free for ages.
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?
they don't?
https://filezillapro.com/docs/v3/licensing/do-i-need-to-acti...
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.
Now go complain to Adobe, where they just shut down their activation servers and leave you with 1k$ of "perpetual" unactivable & unusable software, no matter how much care you took keeping the installer media.
I remember downloading the offline installers for CS2 they released after turning off its activation servers. I take it that wasn't repeated for the later versions
https://www.cnet.com/tech/computing/adobe-releases-creative-...
Nope: https://community.adobe.com/t5/download-install-discussions/...
That’s horrible too.
I began installing perpetually licensed software in VMs about 15 years ago. When I upgrade my (hypervisor) hardware, the VM still runs just fine. Obviously, a VM wouldn't be a suitable environment for FileZilla.
> Obviously, a VM wouldn't be a suitable environment for FileZilla.
Why not? VMs can be given access to the host file systems.
Do you sell vms or something? It's absurd to even consider running an entire os in a vm just to use the calculator or the notepad.
The only time it's worthwhile is when you pay thousands of dollars for a license, and don't want to spend on an annual maintenance contract. For example, I've got a ~10 year old IDA Pro license server in an Ubuntu 16.04 VM.
FileZilla runs fine in a VM
This is why I like Debian, they keep all source and binaries online at snapshot.debian.org, for like two decades now.
Doesn't JetBrains offer perpetual licenses for specific software versions? How do they host all the old versions?
Adobe did the same. I admire the repo name for SEO trolling.
I guess this is akin to Microsoft not allowing you to download Windows XP any more.
Really weird comments. Would you feel the same about your rented Steam games no longer receiving updates?
> If you’re considering FileZilla Pro, understand exactly what you are walking into: You can pay for a perpetual license, and later be denied any way to reinstall the product you legally own.
No. You are not denied any way to reinstall the product you legally own. It's on you to maintain backups of your installers. If you have that backup, you may install it and run it legally.
> Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
I can understand that logic. If an out-of-date version is found to have a vulnerability, then if they provide that version but don't update it, they are exposing themselves to lawsuits. Whether or not the lawsuit makes sense is another matter, but I can imagine the company's lawyers putting the kibosh on providing an archive of outdated installers.
This is a blunt warning to anyone who ever purchased, or is thinking about purchasing, FileZilla Pro.
I bought FileZilla Pro under a perpetual license - a one-time payment, lifetime right to use the version I purchased. After reinstalling my operating system, I simply needed to reinstall the software I already paid for.
Here's what happened:
- Support admitted I still have the legal right to use the old version of FileZilla Pro that I originally purchased. - Then they told me they refuse to provide the installer for that version. - Their excuse: “For security reasons we do not provide older versions.”
The impact:
If a customer cannot download the installer, the "perpetual license" is dead. It doesn’t matter what rights they acknowledge on paper - they are blocking any practical way to use the software unless you pay again under their new subscription model.
There is no way to reinstall. There is no way to access the product you bought. Your "perpetual license" effectively becomes worthless the moment you reinstall your OS or lose the installer.
Full text on link.
If you bought something from a physical store and lose it doesn't entitle you to go get another one for free...
But we're not discussing an item from a physical store? We're discussing software sold online.
Why do you think there is any difference? Did servers and backups and data centers and electricity and cooling and ups batteries and generators and facility operators and banwidth all become free while I wasn't looking?
They're going to need "servers and backups and data centers and electricity and cooling and ups batteries and generators and facility operators and banwidth" regardless, because they're still selling licenses. The cost of providing downloads to existing owners is marginal.
So... they are free or they are not free?
That's the difference between a license and a product my friend
Exactly. OP bought a lifetime license but expects a lifetime product.
If you bought a license from a physical store - depending on the language of that license - yes, it would entitle you.
I bought a Windows license from a university book store. I can download copies of Windows all day if I want.
So what? So MS happens to feel like providing distribution servers. That has no bearing on anyone else.
Lifetime licenses are basically a scam these days. Don't trust any of them.
And instead trust that subscription prices will stay constant and that the company will always stay in business and support the product you purchase?
The root issue is trust, not a lifetime license. In fact, a lifetime license is a good predictor of trust because users prefer it to subscriptions and it indicates that the company at least pretends to be interested in the customer's wants.
Trust can always be abused, as in this case. Trust is gone everywhere. That doesn't mean it can't be rebuilt. It won't be rebuilt on a subscription model that no one asked for.
This makes no sense. A lifetime license is convenient conceptually, but it completely detaches your goals (working software) from a company's incentives (provide absolutely zero after initial delivery - everything afterwards is cost without upside). Lifetime licenses are bad for users (cf this post, as just one example).
Subscriptions are incentives for companies to keep doing what you want, along with direct consequences (everybody will cancel) to penalise them for ignoring their core user base.
Don't let the awkwardness of the system (fully agree modern banking is shit at letting you manage recurring bills) distract from the underlying user-beneficial dynamics.
These are all problems for companies, not users.
Edit: let me give you an example. How much do you pay Valve for a Steam subscription? Zero, because they don't offer one, because that isn't what their customers want. This is Valve, who offers perpetual licenses exclusively, offers steep discounts often, and is worth 10s of billions of dollars. The excuses for why it doesn't work are bullshit peddled by middlemen mouthpieces for suits who believe in nothing. They are redundant leeches. Ignore them and make it work.
I agree with you completely. For me, this is a matter of trust and principle, not the cost of the software. I see this as a questionable practice aimed at pushing long-time supporters to spend more money. After this experience, I would never consider purchasing anything from them again.
So, going to https://filezilla-project.org/prodownload.php?beta=0 and entering your email address and order number doesn't work?
No, it says expired.
So then you didn't buy a lifetime subscription? Why would you get access to the software for lifetime, if you ordered only a 1, 3 or 5 year license?
Your right to receive updates is limited to the time that you selected when you ordered FileZilla Pro.
If you have, infact, ordered a "Perpetual License", then you would have agreed to the Terms and Conditions when ordering FileZilla (here's a random old copy: https://web.archive.org/web/20211128083132/https://store.fil...)
It clearly says in the T&C that you agreed to:
What you are saying is that you ordered FileZilla (agreeing to the T&C as part of payment). The T&C said once you downloaded the product, you were required to keep the software yourself.FileZilla's Terms and Conditions are a mess. https://filezillapro.com/terms-and-conditions/
It does say:
> In a one-off purchase you will have a right to receive services or other rights for the maximum period of time indicated in the package you have purchased or ‒ missing that indication ‒ for up to five years.
It also says:
> Unless registered, your copy will not receive updates and will not exploit the services of the Software.
So, I would assume that if you purchased the Lifetime license, and you registered the software within the 4 required weeks, then they are infact breaking their contract with you.
> The T&C said once you downloaded the product, you were required to keep the software yourself.
Which is a bad thing, and it's good to warn people about that clause loudly.
Sure, but that is an older Terms and Conditions. It was a perpetual license, not a lifetime license that is sold today. It's like saying you shouldn't purchase Windows 11 because Windows XP no longer gets updates. Well duh! It stopped being supported more than 10 years ago, and Windows 11 is a different license to that of Windows XP.
The lifetime license purchased today is not a perpetual license. FileZilla says that it will update it for life.
So, respectfully, no, it's not good to warn people about the clause, because people purchasing the product today do not run into this issue.
It's still the same company behaving badly.
If Microsoft blocked me from installing an obsolete version of windows via the activation servers, it would be reasonable to hold that against them.
It's not about updates, it's about being able to use the original purchase.
Your assumption is correct.
Buddy. "This is a blunt warning", the reasonable and unreasonable parties in this story are not what you seem to think.
No one owes you a perpetual backup. Not even the people who sold you the first copy.
You are not prevented from reinstalling your os or filezilla by anything but your own apparent dipshittery.
You bought something and then threw it away, and now you cry that you don't have it, and then as if that wasn't ridiculous enough already, you then try to blame this on the vendor.
I admit it's a bit shitty, but I can also understand.
You could have saved the installer, put it on disk, you could find a copy of it elsewhere, etc.
I don't think it makes the idea of the license void, but it's for sure not the nicest customer move.
You can understand what? You're listing workarounds, not justifications.
Since it would cost them roughly nothing to keep old installers around forever for paid users, it's really hard to imagine a justification.
The justification is that they sold you a copy of the software with a lifetime license to use that copy. Not a lifetime license to download the installer from them.
It's not customer friendly, but it doesn't seem like it's going back on a promise, unless the license especially called for it.
That's a reason they're not legally obligated. It doesn't make me understand their actions in the sympathetic sense, and the sympathetic sense is how I interpreted "but I can also understand".
It doesn't explain the choice they made. "Legally they could" applies equally to removing the download and keeping the download.
The only reason I can think of, to make me understand in a much more derogatory sense, is they want to give a deliberately bad experience to customers that didn't give them money recently enough, trying to make them buy again to keep using the software.
Just like it would cost you roughly nothing to keep exactly the same copy in your own backups. So why didn't you if it was so effortless and free?
My job isn't based around copies of this software, so hypothetical me forgot.
Forgetting is a pretty good excuse I think.
The company didn't forget anything. They're refusing the download on purpose, presumably because they don't want the user to walk away happy without paying more.
What an incredible load of excuses and rationaizations.
The fact is they don't owe anyone any backups or any reasons.
I guess you will just have to go on feeling abused and robbed. Go ahead and try to sue them for theft and fraud if you think your argument actually holds water.
Is forgetting to back up an installer really that bad of an excuse?
I don't even know what you're calling a "rationalization".
And this isn't about what they legally owe, this is about them having very bad customer support.
The rationalization is that since in your opinion it wouldn't cost them very much to give you something, that they really owe it to you and if they don't give it to you, they are actually withholding something and you are being denied something you have a right to.
We all agree, even me, that it's not the most cutomer-first policy. Except, maybe it is actually the most customer-first, because their support & security argument is not bullshit. If there are things wrong with the old version that they know about, then it is entirely valid to decide not to actively help facilitate the proliferation of old bad versions that still have their name on it out in the world. Maybe they don't have the policy for such pure and virtuous reason, or maybe they do, but it doesn't matter because it's actually perfectly valid anyway.
The fact you don't like it is purely a you problem.
> The rationalization is that since in your opinion it wouldn't cost them very much to give you something, that they really owe it to you and if they don't give it to you, they are actually withholding something and you are being denied something you have a right to.
The reason they should do it is because it helps their customers get what they paid for.
They have a solution to the problem, and sharing the solution costs nothing, but they refuse to share it.
There doesn't need to be an obligation to make that refusal asshole behavior.
At no point am I rationalizing anything here. I'm not even a customer.
> Except, maybe it is actually the most customer-first, because their support & security argument is not bullshit. If there are things wrong with the old version that they know about, then it is entirely valid to decide not to actively help facilitate the proliferation of old bad versions that still have their name on it out in the world.
Moving toward a world where users can't use that version but have no replacement is not customer-first.
> The fact you don't like it is purely a you problem.
Why do so many people act like it's invalid to complain about legal company actions? Complaints about bad service give warning to other potential customers, and might get the company to change things for the better.
Companies can have bad support, and that risks them getting bad reviews.
Your criteria for "perpetual license" requires immortality. I don't see a justification for that, or a possibility.
I'm not using the word "forever" literally. Please try to give some benefit of the doubt.
For one, the company can stop hosting the installers when it goes out of business (but they should do their best to not leave customers in the cold). And if they don't have 30 year old files around, I won't complain too hard (but I will make fun of them if they lost the ability to look back at their main product historically).
Sounds like piracy may solve such problems (of course just for the binaries)
Why did they not mention what the operating system is? I don't think it unreasonable for a company to no longer support operating systems that are also unsupported.
I guess we’ve reached a point where instead of taking personal responsibility for our backups, we just try to turn the internet into our personal army against products.
Yeah, we subscription price of an FTP client which didn't actually modernize in decades is justified, totally justified.
I guess It depends on what the EULA said you bought back then.
Since when GitHub is a blogging platform?
It’s not, but it ranks better on Google than any blogging platform. If you search “Filezilla Pro Download,” it appears on the first page. Since the goal is awareness, strong visibility on Google is essential.
github pages?
It's more of a Yelp review platform in this case.
Realistically, this is why buy-once software is a bad idea. Users have expectations that can only be met via subscription service. If you choose the buy-once you'll get complaints like this with online mobs and so on. If you do services, you'll get paid and you provide the service and everyone's happy. SaaS is the better model in every way - including for the user.
Sounds like all software from the 70s through 00's.
Did they ever claim they would hold a backup of the installer?
There's a difference between "we don't have it anymore" and "we won't provide it for security reasons". They're not the same.
They are essentially the same as software purchased from the 70s to the 00s though - shrinkwrap software, a term cleverly coined by Joel Spolsky. I just thought of it as buying software in a store at the time.
Perpetual license is also a good descriptor. If you have the same OS you downloaded it on, hopefully you have it backed up.
The scenario "we won't provide it for security reasons" only shows up as a gotcha. The author of that GitHub repo would know better than to use it.
I see that as more than a gotcha. It speaks to what the company really stands for if they say "yeah, we got it, you bought rights to use it, but nah, screw you". They're in no way obligated to provide the installer of course, but if they have the ability, I'd still complain if they don't.
There is no difference. They are exatly the same, because they don't owe you a rationale that you approve of. Even if they offered no rationale at all it changes nothing because they don't owe you anything. You paid, you got, you're both done.