Setting the record straight about Safelog licensing.

We've found that occasionally people have some understable confusion about the license under which the Safelog PC software is offered. Please allow us here a few moments to set the record straight and lay out or reasoning. If you take a few moments to read this, we think that you'll come to the same conclusion that thousands of pilots before you have - Safelog’s license is not just fundamentally fair, but also fundamentally better and results in us being able to offer you the best, most-up-to date logbook product with tremendous usage flexibility for – and here’s the key point – the LOWEST PRICE. While we’d like to think that Safelog has become the world’s number one pilot logbook system because of our legendary features and ease of use, that we also offer our product at the lowest price both initially and over the long term of any comparable product certainly helps too.

Let us prove this to you by looking at the situation in detail.

First, there’s the question of "licensing" versus "purchasing" software. While we all use terms such as "buying software" informally, the reality is that any and all the third-party commercial software you have on your computer and have ever heard of– from the operating system itself to every application program and game – is licensed, not purchased. Again, while it’s common in everyday usage to say "I went to the computer store and bought a game", that’s really not technically accurate. Rather, you have obtained a license to use the game under a specified set of conditions. In the case of a typical computer game, for example, you are allowed to install it on only one PC for private use. Furthermore, in the case of a game, obtaining version 1 of the game does not entitle you to versions 2, 3, 4 and so forth nor is there any sort of guarantee that the version you purchased will work on future computers and operating systems.

Now let’s think of things in terms of pilot logbook software. It used to be that some pilot logbook software was offered with a license structure just like our video game example. What happened to such pilot logbook software is that all such products so conceived have since been abandoned or severely marginalized because such a system simply does not work for more than a few years and discourages innovation and update by the producer. One major reason for this is that the lifespan of your pilot logbook is likely going to be far longer than that of your typical game.

Let’s think of some other reasons why licensing systems that work OK for games don’t really serve pilots well when it comes to logbooks.

First of all, over the course of your flying life, you are likely to use several PCs – including often, several a time such as your work PC, home PC, and laptop. There may be times that you want to access your logbook software in all of those places. Furthermore, consider that someday your PC may crash or get stolen. How would you feel if that happened and you were told that you needed to purchase another copy of the pilot logbook to access your data again? As of this writing, some of our competitors do exactly this – their license limits the number of computers that you can install the software on. While this may be fine for a game, this is in our view not right for pilot logbook software. The Safelog license gives you unlimited flexibility to install the software on as many PCs as you need, within reason, during your license period. Got a new laptop? Just download from our website and install it on your new PC—it’s that simple.

Second, consider technical improvements over time to the software itself. Pilot logbook software is not like a hammer which has a fixed, limited, and known number of usage modes. Rather, the number and quality features changes through innovation over time. Safelog has clearly led the pack in this as we’ve developed most of the major innovations in electronic pilot logbooks. Such changes tend to be evolutionary in nature, and, while some new features might be unnecessary or uninteresting to you, on the whole, progress benefits all. If you’re like most people, you probably decried against the "new features" introduced with every new word processor version – but by the same token, you probably wouldn’t dream now about going back to a 20 year old word processor for your daily work. Now let’s think about Safelog – Safelog gives you immediate access to the latest version of the software as its released. Our competitors, on the other hand, generally make you pay for each upgrade. Sure, they fix a few bugs or issues for free in any version, but right on queue every few years they’ll arbitrarily declare that their software has reached a "new version" and basically insist that you pay for the privilege of upgrading, since "the old version isn’t supported any more". Again, with Safelog, the upgrades are free and since all of our users, including new users, always have access to the latest and greatest, we continually have to work hard to attract new users and retain old ones by, for example, making sure that our software works with new updates to Windows, for example.

Third, consider changes to aviation itself. Regulations are constantly being updated, and you want your logbook software and its analysis tools to reflect this. Furthermore, aviation data that supports your logbook, such as its list of airports (Safelog has the largest airport database of any pilot logbook software out there) also changes. If your logbook was static, it would be basically out of date from the moment you started using it. Our system allows you to get access to the latest and greatest at all times – again, compare this to our competitors, who simply don’t.

In considering what would be the best license policy, we spent a lot of time discussing the matter with our pilot users. After the facts were laid bare, essentially to a person, everybody – from student pilots through professionals - agreed that the best way to keep Safelog viable, current, and accessible was the way that we currently do – by offering a time-limited license.

What do we mean by "time limited license?" This means that your license to Safelog has an expiration date. Before that expiration date, you are welcome to use the software on as many PCs as you’d like within reason and you are always welcome to upgrade to the latest version at no charge. We have to work hard to keep the product up-to-date with respect to technical, aviation, and feature concerns to continually win your business. If you do choose to extend your license, doing so is inexpensive (it works out to a few pennies per day, generally) and immediate. If you don’t, while within your license period, you’re welcome to use Safelog’s export feature that you can use to get your data out in a neutral format. We’re proud to note that Safelog was the first major pilot logbook system to offer both import and export – previous to us, such products generally held you hostage to their proprietary data formats.

At all times, as a Safelog user, you own your own data. Again, Microsoft Word, just like every other software on your PC, is licensed, but this doesn’t mean that Microsoft owns the contents of your word documents. We respect your privacy and the importance and integrity of your data.

If you’re still not convinced, we encourage you to do the math. Make a few reasonable assumptions about how often you change computer and how often our competitors come out with new versions that they change upgrades for and crunch the numbers. We’re convinced, as were the many pilots who consulted with us as we devised this policy, was that Safelog simply delivers more for less.

Thank you for your patience in reading this explanation. If you have further questions, please have a look at our Safelog license questions and answers page. If that doesn't answer your concerns, please try our helpdesk.

The Safelog Team
Dauntless Aviation