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Originally Posted by gb2world
Don't know if you can do this for already purchased licenses, however, and stay within the original purchase contract.
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The loophole for xcart: make a new product.
If x-cart releases "x-cart plutonium", this is not x-cart v4 - even if it's similar. "plutonium" would be a paid upgrade from v4. There ya go.
Some software companies release "new" products every year to 18 months and customers can choose to "upgrade" or not.
But I keep using Adobe CS4 since it works just fine, very few bugs, and I don't have to pay Adobe for every new release until I want the new features.
This method ONLY works if a product is essentially bug-free.
X-Cart should NOT add new features to incremental releases. 4.5.5 should be ONLY bug fixes. To add new modules or major features, X-cart should release the "plutonium" version and charge $49 or some inconsequential fee for the version upgrade. Had they been charging $49 for major version upgrades (and never adding new major features except for major releases), there would be a LOT of money flowing toward x-cart, and stores would not do incremental upgrades un;ess features are wanted.
By only adding "new features" in a major release, x-cart can focus entirely on bug fixes for the minor releases, and then customers will happily pay for the features they want by upgrading (or not).
I can't believe I'm having to explain this to a software company.
See: Adobe, Microsoft, Symantec, CA, Intuit (now that's a business model -- upgrade every year or else you can't file your taxes), and in my world, Avid (I know people running 6-10 year old versions of Avid software that work just fine - and there are people like me who update when there are new features that are wanted).