[cflsystems]

Yes I agree - we cannot interfere with someone elses company business. Same applies to QT - they cannot and should not even tr to interfere with other businesses. So yes lets be fair. IF QT is heading to this changes:

Is XC cheap? YES it is. Even with the new product/price line it is still cheap.
Does QT offers life time license and free upgrades? YES it does.
Should QT offer lifetime license with free upgrades? NO it should not.
Should QT ask for a fee just because your business changed? No it should not - it is up to your business to decide what the business will be or how/when to use the business resources.

New versions are released with bugs, old bugs - reported - are not fixed in new releases or are fixed but break something else... QT sells the core software for very little hoping to make money out of support and new development - XC as rich as it is of features still cannot fit in the business model of everyone (as it is with all other software and that is normal).

My opinion - yes charge a fee for license transfer, charge a fee for an upgrade, charge a fee for license change - from Gold to Gold+ for example, but you cannot charge a fee because the licensed domain changed within the business - Business entity A bought that license and it belong to them so they should be allowed to change the licensed url as they please for no fee - the url will be registered and the old one un-registered so what's the difference? Simply saying - contact us and we will fix it for free - doesn't see like the right way to do it. I have many clients which do not know they are entitled to free upgrades - they think they should buy new XC copy if upgrading from 4.1.12 to 4.5.4 for example... The same will happen with that url change - many will not know they can do it for free and just need to ask you to do it for them...

The model of upgrades is a littbe bit broken as well -the way I see it:
Let's say latest release is 4.5.4 and new release is in the way - if the new release is bugs fixing and/or security fixes then it should be 4.5.5 but if you introduce new features it should be 4.6.0. What you do now is to call it 4.5.5 no matter what and it has bug fixes + new features. WRONG. If the new release is only bugs fixing it should be free - don't charge to fix bugs. If the new release introduces new featrues (of course bugs fixes will be included as well) - charge a fee for the upgrade. Plain and simply. Let the client to decide if they want to go to the next version and pay the fee or not but the least they will do is to apply the bug fixing upgrade which will be free. It is also normal for new releases that introduce new features to be 6-7 months apart even a year. The bug fining releases can be 2-3 months apart. Right now we have new release every 2-3 months with bugs and new features and it doesn't help anyone. By the time I upgrade a cart from say 4.3.x to 4.5.4 we already have 4.5.5. or even 4.5.6 out with features not included in 4.5.4...

Bottom line - you are right to want to charge a fee for licensing and upgrades but do it right. If I want to stay on older cart version I shoudl have the option to apply bugs fixes free of charge - and I am not talking about the bug tracker at all...