A license holder is a license holder, yes. And we're being fair across the board. If you hold a license to run IPB, you can run IPB. If your license entitles you to download updates or obtain technical support, we still honor that, and will continue to honor that.
However, for perpetual and lifetime license holders, that is all that your license entitles you to. I am really not sure why this seems so upsetting to everyone. :unsure: You purchased a product that included a license. That license said "you can continue to obtain updates and technical support". That is all that your license granted you. And we are honoring that.
The standard license, on the other hand, has a different structure. The fees associated with the standard license cover updates, support, and future services and products IPS may make available.
Basically what I'm hearing in this thread is that IPS as a company should not be allowed to offer anything special to standard license holders ever, so long as they don't also give that to (basically) all license holders. I'm just not understanding how, as a customer, you could make that assertion? :unsure:
Let's say Microsoft decided today that they're going to bundle a new service with Windows 7. That service will do something neat that users have requested (maybe a built in anti-virus for instance, and it runs as a service, pulling definitions from Microsoft's servers daily). They are going to let users on Windows 7 use this service for free, but only for Windows 7 users - not for Vista or XP users. You must be using Windows 7 to make use of this new service. Is there honestly a problem with that? Why should Microsoft not be allowed to offer new services to those users without also giving that service away for free to other customers as well? And if there isn't a problem with that, how is it any different than what we are doing?