> Unfortunately that is far from universal. We have several software products with permanent licences that had 4+ figure costs, and none of them gave any specific indication of support at all. Often you only get these things set out in writing with an expensive support contract on top of your original purchase. However, if you're spending literally thousands on a piece of software and that software proves to be fundamentally defective within a reasonable period, I think you should be (and in many cases, you probably legally are) entitled to fair compensation if the defect isn't fixed and any significant resulting damage made good.

I can't imagine spending 4 figures on critical software and not getting a clear answer on how long the support life is. That sounds like a screwup on both sides of that transaction.

But yes, if you buy a thousand-dollar piece of software, you are undoubtedly entitled to some reasonable support. A permanent license doesn't imply permanent support, but some support is reasonable.

> Perhaps, but I'd argue that artificially nerfing the product so despite its permanent licence it can't actually be used after a certain period of time does constitute "malicious damage or major negligence".

What "artifical nerfing" are you talking about? What perpetually-licensed software are you buying that is "nerfed" after a certain time period?

> You've chosen an unfortunate example there. Safety recalls are pretty much an indefinite obligation in the auto industry, at least in my country. I have recent first-hand experience of this, and someone who apparently didn't ensure the appropriate remedial work was carried out on some vehicles and so left a potentially fatal design problem unfixed is about to get formally investigated by the relevant government department.

No, I picked that example very intentionally. A safety recall in a vehicle is not done for minor bugs. It's not done for unexpected wear-and-tear. It's done for major safety issues only. A recall instituted, say, 10 years after the sale would be done only for something egregious, likely for something that would constitute gross negligence.

> However, for issues that are clearly fundamental defects in the product, such as serious security vulnerabilities, privacy leaks, data corruption bugs...

You want perpetual bug support. I can't agree here. Software is not sold under the pretense of being bug free. There will never be a time when a manufacturer can declare support for a product complete in this model. Is Microsoft obliged to keep around a stash of Altairs so it can fix bugs in BASIC? If not, then you must agree that there is some time frame after which support cannot reasonably be expected. It's just a question of how long that time frame is.

> or complete inability to use the product because something like an activation server is no longer available, it seems reasonable to me that we should treat these closer to the way we handle safety recalls on cars. Want to turn off your activation server after a couple of years? No problem, but you're on the hook for either patching out the activation mechanism for all your customers or compensating them for the functionality they're about to lose after they already paid for it.

This is a terrible decision on the part of the purchaser to buy a license to software that requires an external license server and no guaranteed support timeframe. Yes, this is crappy on the part of the software manufacturer, but it also shows a lack of foresight on the part of whoever agreed to this. You should have gotten a guaranteed service time or else the rights to run an internal activation server.