But it can be possible to have a license that allows you to run it at your own risk forever right? I mean, open source licenses do that, so you can make those and sell those as well. The 'support' being whatever updates happen to appear. Or the support is separately sold (again, like open source), so you pay once and for all year and you get updates forever, however, no support after 1 year; you can buy more. I have used support for downloadable paid products (turbo pascal, delphi, visual studio etc) in the past exactly 0 times, so not sure if support isn't just a check box for larger companies and they can buy it then yearly.
Yeah, (and I realize this is all based on a half-remebered law) but the OP said the law only obligated the company to support the SW fully "during the licensing period". In my experience, most perpetual licenses come with some initial "support agreement" (2yr, 4yr, etc.). After that, the user can still use the SW, and the company wouldn't be obligated to provide support. So, this law sounds like it's really preventing some a-hole from selling perpetual licenses without any agreed upon garunteed support period (basically taking the money, calling the consumer a 'sucker' and running for the hills)
From the a-hole part, I can infer you think forcing subscriptions for everything is somehow protecting the consumer? I want to give you software I am going to support for the coming 5 year or what not for a one off price and after that you can still run it forever but no more support. Is that not a far better deal? But maybe I miss understand you.
By the way; the perpetual 'for life' stuff gets sold on SaaS sales sites like appsumo all the time. It’s just a grift and should be forbidden: hopefully some law will be made for that as well.
