One of the main reasons I recently bought DPL was a lifetime license (of course “lifetime” unofficially, so no hope for lawyers suite). It turns out it’s no longer true with 7.7.1, if you are offline. What guarantee I have, the activation server will have a lifetime uptime? None. What about two-months off-line travels?
This is simply not fair for a small company, especially the way they kept quiet about it.
@mwsilvers I am not suggesting that DxO are about to stop paying their server bills but I used a product called SageLight and the rather “mercurial” developer went “walk-about”!
Eventually he stopped paying the server bills and any new attempts to licence the software failed until a dedicated user posted a kludge after a number of years!
Such issues become even more acute if already installed copies start hitting the buffers after 30 - 37 days.
So this requires the catastrophe of DxO pulling the plug on DxPL development coupled with the lack of active licence servers that continue to do the following
It also needs the following to be added
In any case Bryan, this does not bode well for us long-term loyal users. Something is going on that we are not aware of. Perhaps a move to a subscription approach, or perhaps a potential sale of the company to another entity. Perhaps something else. I can’t see the logic of them doing this If nothing else is going to change.
Mark
I’ve stayed on DPL 7.7.0.220/Win, which seems to be the last truly perpetual version (is it?). No plans to upgrade for now. How to remove the upgrade popup?
In future DxO will probably kindly let you choose between “perpetual” and subscription licenses, with most features in the latter (?). Personally, I prefer to learn two software solutions well (in my case, NX Studio being the other one), rather than to switch between at least five other software available today. I’ve stayed on LightRoom 5.7 for 10+ years before switching to DPL7 - it was far from perfect, but I knew how to deal with it… Today’s DPL strong points for me (noise reduction, smart lighting, clear vision, volume correction, film emulation, good enough ergonomy,…) can be found in some other software. Arghh, “the times, they are changing…”.
As my yearly adobe license comes to an end in the next few weeks I was looking on a future setup and decided to upgrade my DPL 5 to version 7 and buy Filmpack as well.
With these new developments on the table I will stick with my current setup for a while longer.
I understand the frustration of the long time user base but this impacts the occasional user - like myself - or any potential new customer as well.
Looks like there are no longer any good and affordable alternatives for hobby photoists to adobe. Affinity Photo is going into an uncertain future with the takeover by Canva and something is going on with DxO as well. Serif tried to stop the upset user base with some “pledges” which didn’t help much. I think DxO needs to do something more than just explain this as a mistake.
To gain trust again they would have to lay out:
Manfred
I have raised a support ticket relating to this matter. I would encourage other forum members, if they haven’t done so already, to do likewise.
The implication is that without an internet connection, that on day 38, your bought and paid for perpetual licence software will simply stop working. This doesn’t strike me as very satisfactory, and feel we need a prompt and detailed reply from DxO.
Patrick
Backing up your raws (you already do right ?) and freezing your edits into an exported TIFF or JPG is the way to go anyway. Everything else is in permanent movement 
I think this has been the case for a long time. I was in Namibia last year for 2 months and offline all the time until I was asked to confirm my licence so I went online temporarily to verify and then I was ok again. It was no big deal but would be if you had no internet when you needed to use PL.
But still you need the DxO server to accept the online activation. If for whatever reason the server is not available anymore you have no chance to continue to use the software which you have paid for.
I remember Sagelight. It was my main RAW developer during the time its author Rob Nelson was settled enough to stay in one place and keep the program in development. Rob created (or adapted) all the algorithms by himself and coded all of Sagelight’s internals in 48 bit assembly language because he considered all the fancy high-level languages like Pascal and C++ to be inefficient sluggards. As a result, Sagelight was a scorcher, just plain FAST at everything it did… within milliseconds of hitting “enter” or clicking on the mouse, the function was executed!
It’s a tragedy that his personal life apparently was so conflicted that he withdrew from the world. If he had been able to team up with Aurelien Pierre (of darktable/Ansel fame) their combined efforts – if Aurelien could have managed to effectively work with a someone arguably as brilliant as he is – possibly could have rivalled or surpassed Adobe.
@sloweddie Indeed there are still things in SageLight that are way better than anything DxO have managed!
Sad about the fact that Rob Nelson seemed to become disillusioned with his own “baby”. His return was welcome and at least returned SageLight 4 to service (without the kludge) but the promised SageLight 5 has never materialised!
Regards
Bryan
Hmm I am about to go on an 8 week trip - if I can’t use PL7 I will give up on DxO when I come back. Seems ridiculous that they can’t store the key in the laptops TPM - that’s what it’s for - no need then to check every 37 days and no way for the user to copy that to another computer.
For those who simply charge and pack their laptop for travel, without booting up, logging in and launching PL, might end up with far less than 37 days of offline use.
I really hope that DxO reconsider their decision about the license restriction.
I used to just leave my old laptop on our caravan in Wales all Summer. No phone reception at all and move images etc by usb hdd back home.
I still use Sagelight occasionally. I was truly sorry that Rob disappeared again after announcing version 5. I hope he hasn’t done a McAfee.
I just fired Sagelight up, working on a TIFF file created recently, its still a joy to use, but the complexity and nomenclature will certainly scare off any novices… Really remarkable that a program last compiled (or assembled 
around 2014 under Windows 7 still runs well.
Oh wow, this is awful. This definitely looks like laying the foundation for a subscription service. And it was introduced and buried in a random .x release, not on 8.0 for example.
I don’t know, maybe not. Over at Sonos, the home music speaker system, there has been an upheaval with an app release that was full of bugs and removed a lot of features, but definitely had the feel of laying the foundation for a subscription service. The release was completely botched with no communication from corporate. I’m getting the same vibes here.
I submit DxO already have a de facto subscription service through the annual updates. I’ve taken to skipping every other one (e.g. V6), but buying a license for V5 and now V7 has pretty much the same pricing and expense as an annual sub. I’d be curious how many users are still holding on to V5 and before.
If a sub model arrives, I’m resolutely staying on V7.6 (have not “upgraded” to V7.7 yet). Please don’t freeze me out.
If DxO switches to subscription, I will definitely switch to Adobe. Even if the subscription includes PL, Nik, FP and VP.
I’ll switch to something else but it won’t be to Adobe. Adobe cares less about photographers than DXO does.
Thank goodness it’s all just speculation about the possibility of DxO using the subscription model. So I’m not going to give it any more thought.
I’m trying to stay positive. There is still a chance they may continue to offer the perpetual purchase as it is today, but give the option for annual subscription for those who prefer it (make it cheaper, but this way they assure to have fixed income which in the longer run is better that users skipping annual upgrades).
Of course… this can also mean that they can leave the perpetual license as it is without any upgrade discounts to make the subscription more attractive this way (instead of making cheaper the subscription)
Either way, i’m the type of user that “votes” with his money, if whatever the new model is making things more expensive for me, i’ll just re-evaluate and switch to another software (even if it’s Adobe).