[Fixed in 4.4] Weird bug: latest "Spectral Suite" update not included in upgrade plan

[Phil B]

Now THIS should be the sticky at the top of every page! Well put and covers the whole thing succinctly!

(On the legal point, i'm confident they breached the contract ... but almost as confident that it was due to a total screw up in drafting. So, had they gotten the drafting right, it wouldn't be a breach of contract, just the pure "disappointed customer expectation /spirit of the agreement" reputational issue)

If only your reading comprehension matched your confidence.

The funny thing is that the reason I keep referencing Section 2.5 in my posts is that you had a whole chain going where you just ignored several posters suggesting you look at 2.5. You just kept on repeating that a different section of the EULA didn't give you the right to free add-ons (psst ... keep reading ... it's in 2.5)

[Phil B]

As someone who has read countless contracts, I can assure you that that EULA is short and simple reading. No law degree required, just about 5 minutes of free time

[Teksonik]

At this point silence would only make things worse for them.

Depends on the announcement they make lol.

If they say something like "We're sorry for the confusion but this is how things are going to be from now on" I don't think it's going to go well.

Honestly, I think the best response would be to include the add-ons (and all future add-ons) in the subscription but increase the price of the subscription.

True, it does depend on what they say but when they say nothing it kinds of make it seem like they really don't care about the blow back they are receiving from paying customers.

For the record I don't care about the Spectral plugins, there's a very good chance I wouldn't use them even if they were included for free.

What troubles me is what this may mean for the industry in general when we allow a developer to break its own EULA.

Are plugins from other developers we plan to sell if we get in a financial bind suddenly going to be NFR when they weren't when we bought them?

Are developers who offer lifetime free updates suddenly going to change their minds even though we bought the software in part because of the promise of lifetime free updates? And so on.

I'm not saying any of those things will happen but it kind of opens a Pandora's box when developers are allowed to break the agreements they have with paying customers and not suffer any repercussions.

[SLiC]

Ahhh, good- I'm back after my supper and it hasn't hit 100 yet....

[] Peter:H []

and I have never read so much on bitwig, actually the only thread in a company forum I ever subscribed to.

You should have waited to page 100 to post as a guest appearance

I typically allow the companies mods to do their thing, the absolute zero presence of their company mods during the this entire thread should be at least noted.

It has been noted! Already before this thread, Bitwig reflected it's market leader position by "don't giving a shit about anything" community managenent ...

[Phil B]

What troubles me is what this may mean for the industry in general when we allow a developer to break its own EULA.

I think this is what it's all about and why I have more posts here in the last few days than the last 14 years combined!

Suing is annoying and expensive, which is why many countries have consumer complaint processes that are easy to submit into. I know there are links to an EU site around here, but I'm not in the EU so not sure it would do any good for me to submit. But, I do think people in the EU should submit complaints if they want to ... that's what the process is there for. If Bitwig has information or evidence as to why we're misreading the situation, they can provide it to the consumer protection agency. There's certainly enough there to justify a complaint, both legally and morally.

And ... of course Disclaimer to the crazies: I am not wishing for Bitwig's bankruptcy, calling people to boycott, saying people should sell their licenses, claiming you're a bad person if you want to keep using Bitwig, telling you to start a class action lawsuit, etc., etc., etc. But I do think you could use some thicker skin!

[spiritlev]

(On the legal point, i'm confident they breached the contract ... but almost as confident that it was due to a total screw up in drafting. So, had they gotten the drafting right, it wouldn't be a breach of contract, just the pure "disappointed customer expectation /spirit of the agreement" reputational issue)

I'm in agreement with everything you've said in this thread Phil apart from this. I believe any changes to the EULA made after I paid for my upgrade plan are irrelevant to active subscribers. At the time I paid for my plan the deal was I received all Upgrades for a year (2.5) and add-ons are upgrades (1.3).

So trying to charge me for this upgrade is a breach of contract regardless of any EULA changes made later.

[SLiC]

From the Discord channel....

[Phil B]

(On the legal point, i'm confident they breached the contract ... but almost as confident that it was due to a total screw up in drafting. So, had they gotten the drafting right, it wouldn't be a breach of contract, just the pure "disappointed customer expectation /spirit of the agreement" reputational issue)

I'm in agreement with everything you've said in this thread Phil apart from this. I believe any changes to the EULA made after I paid for my upgrade plan are irrelevant to active subscribers. At the time I paid for my plan the deal was I received all Upgrades for a year (2.5) and add-ons are upgrades (1.3).

So trying to charge me for this upgrade is a breach of contract regardless of any EULA changes made later.

Thanks - you are probably correct. I was giving them the "best light possible" interpretation and assuming the amendment occurs for each of us when we hit Accept on the install screen. But, that's really more relevant to Bitwig trying to assert that we agreed to give something up to THEM. I doubt a court would give the author of the EULA any benefit of the doubt about rights they gave to US, and you would get the most favorable read necessarily to give you the rights in their EULA amendment.

I also never went back to old EULA versions to see when they actually tried to sneak that change into Section 1.3. Regardless, I think you have a solid argument that you should benefit from that change to Section 1.3 to include add-ins (and failure to change 2.5 to exclude them) whether it's point of purchase, point of download or point of installation.

Also (and maybe you're implying this too), I'm only talking about the "slam dunk" version of the breach claim. Even if they never amended the EULA, there's still a good chance that they breached just based on historical practices and reasonable expectations.

[enCiphered]

Update Available - v4.3.10

A new release of Bitwig Studio is available.
(Your upgrade plan includes this version.)

I am getting this pop up everytime I start v4.3.8.
I have downloaded and installed v4.3.10 but went back again to v4.3.8 due to drop outs and latency issues. I´ve seen a reddit thread yesterday where people discussed the same problem with the latest version update.

Does anyone know how to get rid of this popup in v4.3.8?

[Phil B]

From the Discord channel....

Thanks for that

We're hitting 200 pages tomorrow

[spiritlev]

I also never went back to old EULA versions to see when they actually tried to sneak that change into Section 1.3. Regardless, I think you have a solid argument that you should benefit from that change to Section 1.3 to include add-ins (and failure to change 2.5 to exclude them) whether it's point of purchase, point of download or point of installation.

Also (and maybe you're implying this too), I'm only talking about the "slam dunk" version of the breach claim. Even if they never amended the EULA, there's still a good chance that they breached just based on historical practices and reasonable expectations.

I'm still on 4.3.4 - where would I find that EULA on my system? (I'm on Mac). I can check out what 1.3 says.

Yeah in the UK at least I reckon they would be totally screwed on the precedent and reasonable expectations side of things too. Consumer protection law is very strong here. It's even stronger when you are paying for stuff in advance to the extent that some companies avoid that altogether because it is almost too easy for someone to claim near the end of an annual subscription that their reasonable expectations were not met.

EDIT: I believe the issue with subscriptions/paying in advance in the UK comes down to delivery of goods. So if you pay in advance for an annual subscription, the delivery of goods is not completed until a year later. Then the consumer has an additional 90 days within which to raise a complaint. This makes a total of 15 months from payment during which the consumer can demand their money back. That's a long risk period for companies and not worth it for some.

[Phil B]

I also never went back to old EULA versions to see when they actually tried to sneak that change into Section 1.3. Regardless, I think you have a solid argument that you should benefit from that change to Section 1.3 to include add-ins (and failure to change 2.5 to exclude them) whether it's point of purchase, point of download or point of installation.

Also (and maybe you're implying this too), I'm only talking about the "slam dunk" version of the breach claim. Even if they never amended the EULA, there's still a good chance that they breached just based on historical practices and reasonable expectations.

I'm still on 4.3.4 - where would I find that EULA on my system? (I'm on Mac). I can check out what 1.3 says.

Yeah in the UK at least they would be totally screwed on the precedent and reasonable expectations side of things too. Consumer protection law is very strong here. It's even stronger when you are paying for stuff in advance to the extent that some companies avoid that altogether because it is almost too easy for someone to claim near the end of an annual subscription that their reasonable expectations were not met.

Wow, that's great (except for me wasting your time reading about contractual breaches when they already breached the law either way!!)

For the EULA, I found it by clicking on the installer file. It's an OSX pop up that you have to press Accept on in order to install (you don't have to click Accept to copy and paste the EULA into a document elsewhere). If you don't have the installer anymore, I think they post legacy installers on their site.

[dayjob]

From the Discord channel....

just curious.. what does plug in boutique have to do w/all this? what led up to that statement from plug in boutique?

[maschinelf]

Call me an optimist, but what if Bitwig comes out with a solid update and a statement. It may be that they didn't make a statement yet for this reason, and didn't want to repeat the mistake of doing something admittedly half-assed (though now it seems they will be making one tomorrow, possibly because of the blowback). Hell it could even have been 5.0 and for all you know could turn out to be a stellar update. So, assuming that something along these lines does happen will all the ppl "threatening" to change their criteria for when/if they buy updates or even abandon bitwig or switch daws still stick to their crusade? Or are they going to declare some sort of tenuous victory? Just curious how all the folks are going to react if there is some positive news, since they've been acting like hell froze over.