In what way have they crippled it? Its had tons of new features since the acquisition - which is especially noticeable because it languished without updates for years prior. A lot of people are upset at the subscription model but so far I've been getting good value for my money.
Case in point they've drastically improved the horrible CAM export process in previous versions. And push and shove routing is a god send.
The license works offline for 14 days. It is synced every time you open Eagle. It's also very flexible, you can install it on several computers, if you use more than one.
Don't know about the paid version, but the free version is limited to 80cm², or a 10×8cm area. Utterly unusable for a wide range of designs, especially if you use through hole to facilitate soldering (bigger components).
And then it stops being free? I'm no longer a student anyway. Regardless, the damn thing is still proprietary. Authoring tools should not be proprietary. I want to access my data 50 years from now. Depending on a proprietary authoring tool virtually ensures I won't be able to.
Case in point they've drastically improved the horrible CAM export process in previous versions. And push and shove routing is a god send.