OK heres a stab at a proposal to counter piracy, relieve suffering for small businesses and provide a pathway for less wealthy countries to better themselves as prosperity permits. It makes a 2 tiered approach to sales recognising different circumstances.
Basically after 2 releases the asking price is half with no support and subs is half too.
For instance SW05sp5 will be available for sale at availability of SW07sp5 SW05sp5 at that time would cost $1995 'new'(2495 outside US) and to get SW06sp5 9 months later will cost $650. Ongoing purchase of SW in lag mode will cost $650 p.a. You cannot lag by more than 2 releases.
For those at the cutting edge the purchase price for the current version and subs will continue as currently ie $ 3995(4995) + $1295 with full preferential support
To upgrade your SW05sp5 to Sw06sp5 before the 9 months would cost $1295 and to SW07 a further $1295.You could not buy SW06sp5 before SW07sp5 was out. So assuming you tried SW05 and liked it and wanted to or needed to upgrade to SW07 immediately it would cost the full $3995 as if you bought it straight off. Support is additional to that.
Partial support for SW06sp5 ie access to info would be available for $325. To lag by 1 release would cost $995 pa In other words you can sit in the lag of 2 releases but to trail by one will cost you nearly the same.
This system means that those who want to can pay the full whack for the latest features and leverage those to work with similar businesses presumably taking advantage of enhancements to the benefit of their products or productivity/effectiveness.
Smaller outfits who need quality CAD but at affordable cost and value stability/dependability most can have a solution too however at the penalty of lesser compatibility and capability
So does something like this look interesting to people? In a way it is an intermediate step between academic/student license and the full product.