[HN Gopher] Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscript...
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Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?
Not newspapers or media services (though those can be annoying
too), but products in general? It feels like it's getting harder
and harder to just buy something in the tech world, especially when
it comes to running programs on my home computer. Want a password
manager? It's a SaaS now. Note taking app? SaaS. Image editor or
office suite? SaaS (thanks Adobe...) This is especially annoying
given I generally refuse to rent anything in life, and will go out
of my way to buy something upfront simply so there's no risk of
losing it if finances get worse in future (or the wrong billionaire
buys the company). Yet it seems like it's getting harder to do so,
especially when open source products don't exist for that domain.
So yeah, why is that? And is anyone else tired of the constant
barrage of subscriptions for things that should be one off
purchases?
Author : CM30
Score : 340 points
Date : 2022-12-18 19:38 UTC (3 hours ago)
| neilv wrote:
| Asking about "everything being a subscription" in tech, on a tech
| industry forum where, presumably, a lot of people/employers are
| the ones doing it... doesn't seem like it's going to get a
| response distribution representative of users.
| rglullis wrote:
| Only open source and free/libre software are forever yours. Do
| you want to stop paying for things, stick to Open source.
| valdiorn wrote:
| I just flat out refuse to use it if I feel the subscription is
| rent-seeking. So far I don't feel like I've missed out on any
| must-haves because of this policy.
|
| One thing I'd like to pay for but won't because of rent-seeking
| subscription is Roland's VST audio plugins. I'd happily pay
| hundreds of dollars for them if I could BUY them, but that's not
| an option. Instead, I'm holding on to my Roland XV5080 hardware
| synthesizer module, instead of replacing it with the software
| alternative, which I'd very much want.
| babuloseo wrote:
| https://xkcd.com/927/
| brightball wrote:
| I think it's the business response to piracy of desktop software
| that we saw a decade ago.
|
| When I was in college, everybody seemed to have free music,
| windows, office, photoshop, etc. Subscriptions are probably the
| easiest way for companies to avoid it.
| mjaques wrote:
| Yes. At Deckmill (https://deckmill com) we hated subscriptions
| for language products, so we built a language product that you
| buy once and get the content forever (much like a book).
| jedberg wrote:
| I would say this is Wall Street's fault. Wall Street values
| recurring revenue much more than one time revenue. It's causing
| companies to shift to recurring revenue when they have no reason
| to, like how BMW is charging a subscription to have seat heaters.
| rc_mob wrote:
| yep. is the problem with capitalism. if you are not growing in
| profits then you are dying. the happiness of the people be
| damned.
| quaintdev wrote:
| This exact behavior drives planned obsolescence. This has led
| to so much waste over past century that it's going to be very
| hard to go back. I was baffled that we invented a bulb that
| could last 100 years over a century ago and I still have to
| change bulbs every year or two. There are nice documentaries
| about this
|
| [0] The end of ownership https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOO-
| pYUl9-w
|
| [1] This is why we can't have nice things
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j5v8D-alAKE
| themadturk wrote:
| I'll bet a lot of incandescent bulbs would stay on for
| years and years if they weren't turn off and on all the
| time. But it costs money to leave them on, even if they're
| very low wattage; is it better for your bank account (not
| considering environmental costs) to leave an incandescent
| bulb on all the time, or to replace bulbs every year or
| two?
| rocket_surgeron wrote:
| >I was baffled that we invented a bulb that could last 100
| years over a century ago and I still have to change bulbs
| every year or two.
|
| You need to buy better bulbs.
|
| In 2015 my local utility subsidized the purchase of LED
| light bulbs and I replaced 59 light bulbs all at once from
| a variety of vendors including Cree, GE, and Philips.
|
| I've had one, an overhead PAR (led equivalent) bulb in my
| shower, fail since then and that's almost certainly due to
| the repeated bouts of 100% humidity and frequent
| temperature changes.
|
| Of course, I purchased higher-end bulbs knowing that the
| bargain basement ones are built to cost.
|
| edit: it is actually really weird that you have to replace
| your bulbs so often because every manufacturer who isn't a
| ABOLENSKLONG (or something nonsensical like that) Shenzhen-
| special amazon drop shipper has a 5-10 year warranty and
| they'd drown in RMA requests if their products failed after
| a year.
| amelius wrote:
| Wait, the subscription economy puts planned obsolescence to
| an end, because keeping the product in working condition is
| now the service-provider's problem.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| If only.
|
| Companies are more than happy to charge you for a
| subscription for years then the second they decide to
| make a new model force you to buy that and pay the new
| subscription
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Quite the opposite. I no longer have buyer's remorse - worst that
| happens is that I lose a monthly fee. (I never pay for an annual
| or multi month discount until I have used something at least 6
| months.)
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| A heuristic for somewhat ethical subscriptions it's probably to
| decouple subscriptions from the calendar.
|
| Instead of $X/month, which must be paid even if using
| intensively, barely, or not at all the service, to have $X for Y
| amount of "no expiration date" minutes of service. Just want to
| try the service, pay $0.X for 10 minutes. Really like the
| service, pay $X++ for 1,000 minutes and not worry about it. Of
| course, the minute counter would stop when going away from
| keyboard. Maybe even more ethical, instead of paying for minutes
| to pay for actions per minute, $X for 10K APMs, use them how you
| deem fit.
| barefeg wrote:
| My mobile provider charges a ridiculous amount per mb while the
| price in a subscription is much cheaper, if you don't use more
| nor less of the allocated amount. So even though they provide
| both options you mentioned, neither feels ethical to me.
|
| Edit: 1 eur per 10mb in the prepaid version vs 13.50 eur per
| month for 2gb plus other stuff like calls and sms. So I either
| have to waste money on stuff I don't use every month or pay 15
| times more for the same service
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Yes, mobile provider and ethics is generally a contradiction
| in terms. I suppose the issue in your case is with the
| pricing, not the subscription model: $10 for never expiring
| 100 GB is objectively better than $10/month for 100 GB/month,
| even if in some months you would pay a total of $20, some
| others months you would pay $0. I was thinking more of
| compute-intensive software services as photo/video
| manipulation with a server-side (AI models running remote,
| etc.)
|
| "1 eur per 10mb in the prepaid version vs 13.50 eur per month
| for 2gb" is simply speechless pricing, mafiosos have a
| gentler racket.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| I don't understand paying for APMs.
|
| Paying for actions makes sense, do X, get charged Y.
|
| But is paying for APMs only charging you if you do actions
| faster? Or paying for minutes and you get a certain cap of
| actions? None of these are intuitive or reasonable.
| ly3xqhl8g9 wrote:
| Was thinking while typing. Yes, probably you don't need the
| unit of time at all, simply buy for $10 1,000 click actions,
| Clicks as a Service (somehow sounds more menacing); the unit
| economics needs to be worked out on a service basis.
| mgarfias wrote:
| Yes, but also no.
|
| I'm more tired of all the damned Ads, and the tracking that they
| stuff into things.
|
| I'd happily pay for a service that lets me keep up with all my
| family if it wasn't trying to know everything about me. To be
| clear: i'd prefer an open protocol that i just connect up to the
| network, and get my own feed, but at least a subscription model
| could mean an ad-free experience.
| cratermoon wrote:
| Rent-seeking is the end stage of late neoliberal capitalism.
| mhuffman wrote:
| Very sadly many of these businesses are structured as
| subscriptions, even when unnecessary, because investors
| currently LOOOOVE MRR. It is a sad situation when people
| shoehorn unnecessary "features" into a product or intentionally
| cripple it to get that subscription money. It often is not even
| going to new development, just there for the investors.
| blowski wrote:
| Of course a lot of us are. It's probably one of the top 10 topics
| that gets moaned about on HN.
| opan wrote:
| Absolutely. I hate subscriptions and tend to avoid them. No
| Netflix or Spotify or any of that popular stuff. I've only done
| them for things like toothpaste and shampoo where I really do
| need more periodically anyway, and if I cancel they just won't
| send the next batch of physical goods, so not really the same as
| SaaS stuff.
| he11ow wrote:
| Because of all the free, open source software, I don't see it as
| a big deal. I don't mean to say that you can just get the free
| version of everything in OSS. Rather, that the entire software
| landscape has shifted, in a meaningful way. On the one hand, you
| get A TON more software for free, and on the other, for something
| that has a real moat - yeah, you pay. I think it's fair, software
| moats are hard, and therefore expensive.
|
| I too prefer to buy, not rent, wherever possible. But the way I
| think of subscriptions is, first of all, as one-off annual
| expenses, which I can decide if I still want or don't.
|
| Something like the office suite, I think you get the basic for
| free. And you can have a workable email client like thunderbird
| for free. But outlook is a million times better. So when I did
| this one piece of work, in my mind I said: okay, this one pays
| for Office till I retire. Mentally, I allocated the money, and
| stopped thinking about it.
| ghaff wrote:
| The thing with subscriptions is that you need to be intentional
| about them and review them semi-regularly. In fact, writing
| that, I think I'm going to put them all down in a spreadsheet
| when I have a chance.
| wslh wrote:
| Yes, I also feel in many cases is not abuse but scam. For
| example, I bought a Muse Brain device just to discover that plain
| retrieving of EEG (not meditation or sleep options in the mobile
| app) metrics was a subscriber only option. So what are you
| selling Muse? Refrigerators?
| robbyking wrote:
| I had that happen with a sleep tracker for Apple Watch. It was
| a few dollars for the app, but to actually view the data it
| tracked _while you were asleep_ , you had to upgrade to the
| premium subscription. Fortunately it was easy enough to get a
| refund[1].
|
| 1. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204084
| Mikeb85 wrote:
| Nah I kind of like it. It's a low upfront cost to demo something
| for awhile plus it encourages developer updates if you do stick
| with it. Too much software gets abandoned when it's just a one-
| time purchase.
| denkmoon wrote:
| Yes and no. I'd rather pay ongoing costs for something that has
| ongoing costs (even if that's just paying some dude to create
| features I don't want) rather than have it be ad supported.
|
| Having thought on it a small amount, I know as a software creator
| I'd rather fleece a sheep many times over than skin him once.
| ericpauley wrote:
| Most software is fundamentally a service. You want to be able to
| sync your passwords and notes, and receive security and bug fix
| updates. Companies need to fund that infrastructure and ongoing
| development.
| einherjae wrote:
| They do, by buying the next version. On the other side of that
| coin is making the next version better enough that people will
| upgrade.
|
| For security/bug fixes, yes, there's a better incentive for
| fixes in SaaS, but then again, if you're known to actually fix
| bugs, the likelihood of people buying the upgrades are higher,
| so there is incentives for non SaaS too.
| xigoi wrote:
| A lot of software doesn't need to be a service.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| I already fund it by paying for iCloud. App makers need to stop
| reinventing the wheel and then using that to justify
| subscription pricing.
|
| Edit: 1Password is a perfect example. It worked fine for years
| with any kind of third party sync I wanted - from Dropbox to
| Syncthings - but now I need to pay for a subscription because
| 1Password wants me to use their infrastructure.
| einherjae wrote:
| This! Why does everyone and their mother need to host their
| own backend for basic sync? The likelihood that the end user
| has some kind of cloud account already is extremely high
| today, you don't add much value by adding yet another
| "someone else's computer" to the mix?
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| That's only true because it has been engineered to only be that
| way.
|
| For example many pieces of software that used to be syncable
| through bring your own options have dropped those in favor of
| charging for their sync capabilities.
| khedoros1 wrote:
| I don't pay for any subscriptions, outside of video streaming
| services. I guess I'm fortunate that I've never wanted to do
| anything that didn't have a one-off purchase option.
| MattGaiser wrote:
| > So yeah, why is that?
|
| Because like media or newspapers, the product continues to
| require work and has no defined expiration date. I assume you
| want updates for your password manager?
|
| Companies also love the idea of subscriptions for cash and
| approval management reasons. In government, subscriptions can
| even prevent you needing to go through a formal procurement
| phase, which might lead to some important infrastructure losing
| and needing to be ripped out.
| guiambros wrote:
| +1. Also companies take advantage of the taxation benefits of
| SaaS as an operational expense, instead of having to depreciate
| the capital expenditure when buying software over x years.
| einherjae wrote:
| Sure, Ill happily pay for the next version of my password
| manager as well...as long as I buy a license instead of renting
| it.
|
| But I truly won't rent a note taking app.
|
| Overall JetBrains' model of "subscription with fallback
| license" seems the best compromise here, you do get to keep a
| license permanently if you quit your subscription, it just
| happens to be the one from 12 months ago.
| AlexandrB wrote:
| > Overall JetBrains' model of "subscription with fallback
| license" seems the best compromise here, you do get to keep a
| license permanently if you quit your subscription, it just
| happens to be the one from 12 months ago.
|
| Yeah, this model is pretty good and should be the default if
| you're offering subscriptions. Subscriptions where your data
| is basically hostage to a monthly payment are awful.
| hyperhopper wrote:
| Ask HN: anybody dislike [bad thing]?
| jsemrau wrote:
| My thoughts on this are two-fold. Firstly, people need to earn
| money for their work. The age of ad-based revenue sharing never
| really worked and created un-usable experiences in various app-
| stores of the world.
|
| With the decline in digital advertising, revenues for BigTech
| will go down therefore, the revenue for companies depending on
| such services will decline accordingly.
|
| We operate stakepools that have introduced a really smart and
| effective way to introduce a monetary layer into content and
| services online. They sit on top of treasuries that pay out every
| 5 days and this concept is really nice and works well.
| szundi wrote:
| At least you can cancel after a month if you don't like it.
|
| Otherwise I feel the pain, too many little easy peasy stuff is
| looking for big bucks.
|
| Maybe there is going to be something like humblebundle for these
| subscriptions tok.
| alsetmusic wrote:
| Yes, but it's not going to change now that it's been proven
| viable.
| jsemrau wrote:
| We operate stakepools that have introduced a really smart and
| effective way to introduce a monetary layer into content and
| services online. They sit on top of treasuries that pay out every
| 5 days and this concept is really nice and works well.
| 1ncorrect wrote:
| I'm sick of every product now requiring I establish, and
| maintain, a personal relationship with the manufacturer.
|
| Notable examples for myself are Wahoo Fitness[1], Water Rower[2]
| and Roche's Accu-Chek[3], which all now require logins and
| agreements to leak health data to be hosted on external services
| in order to continue using the products I purchased from them.
|
| In Roche's case, they gave barely 5 weeks notice that their apps
| will cease to function at the end of the year, locking all data
| and functionality on January 1, and punting all responsibility to
| their subsidiary, mySugr[4].
|
| [1] wahoofitness.com [2] waterrower.com [3] accu-chek.com [4]
| mysugr.com
| zxexz wrote:
| I really like the Jetbrains model. Buy a yearly subscription for
| the software, but you get a perpetual license for the major
| version of the software when your subscription is renewed.
| ghaff wrote:
| It really depends for me.
|
| For something I might use once a year or something I play around
| with for a few weeks and then forget about? Just let me pay for
| it. (And I'll mostly just pass if you only offer a subscription
| as most subscriptions add up.)
|
| But for something reasonably priced that I use a lot and would
| generally keep up to date with anyway? I'm fine with a
| subscription. That's the case with me and Adobe.
|
| Subscriptions also do better align your interests with the
| interests of the company. If your password manager isn't the best
| any longer? Drop the subscription and get a different one. With a
| one-time purchase, there's also a lot of incentive to either
| charge for major upgrades or even just come out with a "new"
| product under a different name.
| ergonaught wrote:
| Pretty much hate it.
|
| It's a consequence of companies believing their purpose for
| existing is to make money, rather than to serve customers,
| however, so that's what they're optimizing. "The invisible hand
| of the market" may eventually smack it down, but consumers seem
| largely happy to participate in user-hostile decisions so far.
| singpolyma3 wrote:
| Not enough yet. Too much is still free or free-with-ads.
|
| Stuff costs money to maintain
| ImPleadThe5th wrote:
| I understand the need for recurring revenue especially for things
| that offer cloud services. But I also would like to get off the
| cloud where possible.
|
| I like hybrid subscription models. Where I pay monthly for
| support and updates and once I've paid off the price of a version
| I could stop paying and just not get any additional features,
| support, ect. I'd even be okay if this strips back a few
| features. I think Jetbrains offers something like this?
|
| The thing I don't like about subscription models is that it makes
| it restrictive for who can use certain tools. I love messing
| around with the Adobe Suite for fun, I use it in a professional
| setting maybe once every couple of months. I can't justify the
| almost $1000 a year price tag.
|
| I would love to be able to give adobe money. I would love to use
| their product. I just can't justify it as a non-pro user.
| swader999 wrote:
| I own nothing and am happy.
| voidfunc wrote:
| Depends on the software really. I dont hate it tho. I'm not sure
| why I really care if I own the software if it's a commercial
| product.
| [deleted]
| 37 wrote:
| >So yeah, why is that? And is anyone else tired of the constant
| barrage of subscriptions for things that should be one off
| purchases?
|
| It's extremely tiresome. And surely the only motives are profit
| and control.
|
| It's gotten so bad that now auto manufacturers are charging
| monthly subscriptions to use features that are built into the car
| that you have already purchased.[0] It's a disturbing trend that
| will eventually have to fall short somewhere down the line.
|
| [0] https://www.motor1.com/news/597376/bmw-heated-seats-
| subscrip...
| rincebrain wrote:
| Charging a sub for things like heated seats is obviously
| broken, but I also don't know if people have an appetite for
| what the upfront costs would be for many pieces of software
| that are currently subscription based, in order to provide
| support for any length of time. Look at the pricing for IDA,
| which tries to balance having an astonishingly good product,
| but very limited market, for how this can end up distorted
| without being because the company is trying to make money hand
| over fist.
|
| It seems similar, to my eye, to a problem with video game
| development - the total cost of development continues to grow
| as expectations for many games do, faster than we make
| production costs cheaper, but consumers are very sensitive to
| prices upfront, so we end up with many alternate revenue
| streams to try and make up the gap, to say nothing of the
| continuous revenue needs for anything ongoing.
|
| And people lament companies being greedy, which is sometimes
| the case, but ultimately, if your game costs over 45 million
| euros to produce, retail price is $50, and you get perhaps 50%
| of that (to be generous), you need to sell 1.9 million copies
| to break even, let alone earn anything back. [1] But revenue
| streams like in-game cosmetic stores may get you a very
| different profit cut, even if they're only a few dollars each.
| [2]
|
| The same logic holds for things like recurring subscriptions or
| ad-supported content - much smaller amounts, but many more
| sources, adding up to mitigate this problem.
|
| I don't like it any more than anyone else does, but it's not
| just naked profit seeking, it's often that development and
| maintenance are expensive, and more people would pay $20/mo for
| Photoshop when they need it than would pay $500 or more
| upfront, and I don't see a good alternate model that works in
| the majority of cases.
|
| [1] - yes I'm eliding the complications of other companies
| putting up the upfront costs in exchange for all the money
| until their costs plus are made back.
|
| [2] - Also not touching the economics of gambling in-game and
| the long tail and whale economies.
| outcoldman wrote:
| I just wish subscription model would be more friendly for the
| individual entrepreneurs. Have an hourly/daily renting model.
|
| For example, I pay for IntelliJ, which is my primary tool, and I
| see the value of what I am paying for. Right now, the price is
| ~200/year, and will be ok actually paying 10x of that as well. On
| other hand, I also used to pay for Sketch, Adobe Suite,
| Parallels, which I used only 1-2 months a year (used it for a
| week, and maybe another week about 6 months later). So I switched
| to Affinity products (which also great, just require some
| learning) for design.
|
| I also really like the SetApp model, marketplace with 250+ apps,
| for which you pay a monthly/yearly subscription. If you use a few
| apps, it kind of already can qualify the subscription. If you are
| using 10+ apps, might be even abusing it.
| imhoguy wrote:
| It is still better than it was before, imagine you had to buy
| Adobe PS as a beginner, or you could just pir.... now you know
| why subscriptions.
| matwood wrote:
| Unfortunately for Adobe products the subscription is for a
| year, but your point stands. Office used to be hundreds of
| dollars, now you can start using it for $10/month and it
| includes cloud storage/syncing.
| frzen wrote:
| I pay monthly for adobe. Well I see the invoices that are
| paid for my subscription. Around EUR90 per month including
| VAT.
| droobles wrote:
| I think at first thought it's annoying, but it's worked for me
| since Everquest since I know the company I'm subscribed to will
| deliver updates forever, and if they don't I just cancel. I think
| it is annoying that I have to keep track of all my subscriptions,
| but that's a very minor inconvenience.
|
| Subscription services have almost single-handedly ended the
| consumer need for pirating software as well.
| xwdv wrote:
| I'd be willing to build and sell software on a pay once own
| forever model if there's two caveats: No free customer support,
| no free updates.
|
| If people don't care about either of those, good. I don't care
| about providing support unless I'm paid to and I don't care about
| forcing myself to continue updating something just because I have
| subscribers.
| friend_and_foe wrote:
| So here's the thing, the entire software development industry is
| topped around the concept of constant maintenance. Android keeps
| updating so all android applications must constantly be updated
| to keep compatibility. It's gone beyond security patches to
| "business cases keep changing so the software is never done." And
| when that's the case, it is not economical for a company to
| charge ou once and keep providing you a service indefinitely.
|
| I refuse to rent anything too. So the only option is FOSS. That
| means I do a lot of my own maintenance (my password manager
| database isn't backed up on some server I don't have to think
| about for example).
| graymatters wrote:
| Yes. This is the result of vast olygopolization. Market shares
| cannot grow and natural growth of revenues are not enough for
| boards of directors. Thus, they want you to pay many times over
| your lifetime what you'd have paid once for a product.
| tartoran wrote:
| Tired and relieved at the same time as I've started to 'consume'
| a whole lot less.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I am annoyed at it too, and I avoid such things since I can just
| use my own local FOSS programs. Devices I use are old enough that
| they do not have these problems, and it might be more difficult
| to find one in future unless we can make a better one. If FOSS
| programs do not exist for the specific domain, then hopefully we
| can write them.
| dheera wrote:
| > I generally refuse to rent anything in life
|
| It depends. I like that my rented apartment is housing-as-a-
| service because if any plumbing breaks it's not my problem. If it
| collapses in an earthquake it's also not my problem, I can run
| away and rent another one.
|
| Sofware-as-a-service, on the other hand, I'm largely against. I
| much prefer one license for life with free updates for a set
| period of time.
| geocrasher wrote:
| When something is web based, I get it. That requires
| infrastructure to run. When it's a downloadable program that
| requires nothing but yearly or monthly licensing, then I am in
| full agreement with you. I would argue however that for most SaaS
| or subscription based services though, there are alternatives to
| them that follow a different business model or are FOSS. I do
| know, though, that in some cases this is not true.
| zzo38computer wrote:
| I agree with you, it makes sense that they may want to charge
| money for a service, but if you download a program then you
| should be able to use it on your own computer without
| subscriptions (unless you want to subscribe to automatic
| updates, I suppose). However, local programs should be made
| possible too. In the cases where it is not currently available,
| we should make them, I hope. (I often find what I am looking
| for is not available, although "web based" is not the only
| problem that may exist with what is found)
| rpep wrote:
| There are a few things I subscribe to, but they're pretty few and
| far between now as I deliberately try and keep it to a minimum.
| For e.g. I use Google Photos and Gmail so I pay to upgrade my
| storage to 100gb, and I have a Spotify family subscription, but I
| think that's it for ones I plan to keep.
|
| I have a LastPass subscription but I'm planning to migrate off of
| that when the next renewal comes around as I don't think the cost
| is justified compared to OSS options and I'm concerned at the
| recent issues they've had.
|
| I used to subscribe to Evernote, but when I left academia I lost
| the need for that, and I was getting fed up with it getting
| slower and slower too.
| quaintdev wrote:
| And this is exactly the reason I self host[0]. I am pretty sure
| it's not just me. I have seen r/selfhosted[1] skyrocket in it
| popularity over past year or two. The number of applications that
| you can self host are increasing daily. The only problem at the
| moment with self hosting seems to be the maintenance and setup
| but that also will be solved once many people start doing it.
| History repeats itself. Self hosting too will become mainstream
| once again
|
| [0]: Why start self hosting https://rohanrd.xyz/posts/why-start-
| self-hosting/
|
| [1]: https://reddit.com/r/selfhosted
| sanjayio wrote:
| You self-host things that are easily self-hostable. You
| wouldn't self-host something like emails or error reporting.
| haroldp wrote:
| I've self-hosted email and error reporting for decades.
| feanaro wrote:
| I self-host my email, thankyouverymuch.
| wbsun wrote:
| Great, let's make a subscription based service to help people
| easily self-host...
| duckmysick wrote:
| Isn't that what Tailscale is?
| [deleted]
| trynewideas wrote:
| so KubeSail, Cloudron
| baxtr wrote:
| The key word here is maintenance.
|
| Most things you _own_ you also maintain yourself. It doesn't hold
| true for software. People expect software to work for some time..
| On their new device, after the OS update. Bugs need to be
| removed, new features built.
|
| You can and will fix your car. You will maintain it too. And you
| will happily pay for it. Same with the house you own. You might
| even renovate it, add a new level.
|
| It is not possible to own and maintain software that way.
| [deleted]
| lapcat wrote:
| > People expect software to work for some time.. On their new
| device, after the OS update. Bugs need to be removed, new
| features built.
|
| The software will be maintained, because the software developer
| needs to continue to sell the software to new customers. Hence
| OS compatibility will be maintained, bugs will be fixed. It's
| not like the developer stops working on the software
| immediately after you, one customer, purchases it.
| baxtr wrote:
| The same is true for a car manufacturer. It's not like they
| stop producing new cars after they've sold you one. You still
| don't expect the updated breaking system once the line is
| out.
| lapcat wrote:
| Physical products have warranties. They get fixed if there
| are defects.
| SoftTalker wrote:
| Maintenance doesn't require a subscription. When my car needs
| repair, I pay for it. I don't "subscribe" to a maintenance plan
| (though such plans exist, they are on average more expensive).
|
| It used to be commonplace for softare updates, new versions,
| etc. to be sold as they became available. If you wanted the new
| features or needed the bug fixes, you bought the update. If you
| didn't need them, you kept using the old version.
| baxtr wrote:
| I agree. We both think that updates require money.
|
| I never said that maintenance requires a subscription. But
| that it's naive to think that you can buy software and then
| to be entitled to maintenance forever.
| goldbattle wrote:
| I think this isn't the case for many open source projects I
| use. The reason I'm drawn to OSS is for the ability to be able
| to fix it down the line by myself. This also allows me to
| possibly contribute back those improvements so others can
| leverage them.
| fxtentacle wrote:
| As a software developer, I experienced the need for subscription
| revenue first hand. Regular users want support for their software
| and there's only so much you can do for a fixed one-time payment.
| As an example, Windows might update on their computer without
| their knowledge but that Windows update breaks something so the
| user is like "I didn't change anything but your app stopped
| working" and in that situation you're supposed to sell them a
| paid upgrade to the next version?
|
| As a user, I share your concern. To me, SaaS means I might end up
| with files that I can't open anymore because the app needed to
| open them was forcibly upgraded.
|
| In my opinion, the solution is what JetBrains does. Regular
| subscription payments but you get perpetual licenses so you can
| keep using old versions as long as you want.
| nottorp wrote:
| Yes.
| karaterobot wrote:
| I try to think about subscription costs in multiples of 12, so if
| I see a $6.99/mo subscription service, I just think "would I pay
| $84 for this?" and the answer is often no. That's a fairly simple
| strategy. Obviously, every pricing team wants to lock you into
| the yearly cost for a long time, so you should really think of it
| as more like $840.
| openlowcode wrote:
| One big negative aspect is that everything tends to cost around
| $10/month, from a verified Twitter account to an app to teach
| English to my children.
|
| Now, it may be small change for single people with Silicon Valley
| salaries, but I have a family to feed on my French experienced
| engineer salary, and I basically have around $150-$200/month left
| for entertainment for the whole family.
|
| I cannot buy 10 internet services, whereas I could perfectly
| afford buying, say, a dozen or so $50 software a year.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| Hmm, I'm debating a lot of this now for my work. What if they
| said $10/month or $50/year? Or would you prefer a software you
| could buy for $50 until it falls apart? (I built an app and
| didn't update it as Android and iOS changed and it doesn't work
| anymore)
|
| Edit: ok not falls apart but maybe doesn't stay updated and
| becomes obsolete, or has bugs that don't get fixed, etc.
| blumomo wrote:
| Quiz: ,,You own nothing and you'll be happy" (imagine this with a
| strong German accent)
|
| Who is quoted here?
| codetrotter wrote:
| You didn't own anything with a perpetual license either. I paid
| for a Windows license for Adobe CS4 Master Collection several
| years ago. I don't even use Windows anymore. And even if I did
| I doubt CS4 runs well on Win 11.
|
| And besides, even perpetual licenses require activation in
| order to work.
| pfoof wrote:
| Opa Klaus
| blumomo wrote:
| Jawohl Opa! Zu Befehl!
| pjmlp wrote:
| No, because as software developer I want that the authors of the
| products I use for my work also get their well deserved payments.
|
| Unfortunately subscriptions seem to be the only way to force
| people to pay for their tooling, contrary to other professionals.
| a-dub wrote:
| i've often thought that building a business that specializes in
| making it easy for SaaS companies to implement e2ee for complete
| customer data confidentiality and portability could be
| interesting...
| georgeplusplus wrote:
| Look at what hackers and makers have been able to do by owning
| the software. You can also resell software you own.
|
| Subscriptions empower the big businesses and owning it outright
| empowers the everyday average little guy.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| Bonus points for those cunts at 1Password who have updated the
| non-subscription version so it is nagware and pops up an upgrade
| window every time I add a new password.
| noveltyaccount wrote:
| The garage door opener feature is behind a subscription for
| Chamberlain on Tesla. Lol. A monthly fee to be able to open a
| garage door. Nah thanks I'll clip the opener to the sun visor. I
| hope they throw enough money away on this to learn a lesson and
| give up forever.
|
| https://support.chamberlaingroup.com/s/article/myQ-Tesla-Fre...
| Gordonjcp wrote:
| Let me present a great counterexample - Adobe want a monthly
| subscription for Premiere that's about 40 quid a month.
|
| DaVinci Resolve has a free-as-in-beer and a paid-for version. It
| works equally well (modulo some codec licensing) on Windows,
| Linux, and Mac OSX. If you go with the Free version, you get a
| maximum of 2160-height timelines (so 4k landscape video or if you
| want your Tiktoks in high def, 2k portrait) and you don't get the
| neural network filtering, denoising, and certain fancy effects
| (film simulation and so on).
|
| If you want to pay for it, it's (currently) about 300 quid,
| forever. If you bought a key way back in the early days it'll
| still work in current (18.1.1 at the time of posting this).
|
| This is serious high-end editing, colour grading, and compositing
| software, at that, it's not iMovie. Things like Midsommar were
| cut on it. It appears to be the weapon of choice within Netflix.
|
| You can download it for free, stick it on a potato PC with 16GB
| of RAM and a GT1030, and expect it to at least work, if slowly.
|
| No subscriptions, ever.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out of
| business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the next
| major version -- the ownership model of software can be awfully
| feast-or-famine for developers' income, it's a very tough/risky
| business model.
|
| Generally speaking, I'm happy to pay a subscription because this
| way I get a steady stream of all the updates, and it's much more
| likely the company has a sustainable business model. And I don't
| have to agonize over whether paying for a major upgrade is worth
| it.
|
| Not to mention that a yearly subscription is cheaper than buying
| outright, and I find that in some cases I no longer need the
| software, or now prefer to switch to a competitor. So I feel like
| in the end, a greater proportion of my money goes to the software
| companies who have actually continued to earn it.
|
| By this point, the idea of "owning" software feels positively
| archaic to me, as strange as "owning" a music album.
| phrom wrote:
| You don't have to agonize over paying for major upgrades
| because you're being made to always pay, whether you get an
| upgrade or not.
|
| It's a nice bonus when you get an upgrade for your payments.
| But other times you're an Adobe subscriber and lose access to
| your colors, because turns out you should also be subscribing
| to Pantone for those. And who knows what you'll have to pay for
| next.
| Kuinox wrote:
| Except as a user, the next version had to be better, or I
| wouldn't pay for it. Now they can just downgrade my product,
| and I have to continue paying for it.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I saw too many software companies go out of business because
| not enough people wound up upgrading to the next major version
|
| Do you have examples?
|
| Most new businesses fail regardless of their business model, so
| you'd have to argue that this phenomenon was somehow worse for
| non-subs.
|
| > Not to mention that a yearly subscription is cheaper than
| buying outright
|
| Not in the long term.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Not going out of business, but on the iPad there is a drawing
| app called Procreate which is a one time purchase. It's
| decent, but in the two years I've had it, nothing has really
| improved and there is a whole lot missing or to be desired.
| Meanwhile some subscription apps have come to the iPad and
| they are absolutely packed with every feature you could
| possibly want.
|
| For any well run company, the more the users are paying, the
| better the product is likely to be. With a once off purchase,
| any future improvements are based on a Ponzi scheme requiring
| constant new users which is unsustainable.
| lapcat wrote:
| By this principle, every physical product in the world
| would be "a Ponzi scheme".
| duckmysick wrote:
| I thought about it and a lot of physical products we use
| everyday are either perishables themselves or require
| perishables for a regular maintenance.
|
| Yes, we aren't forced to buy from the exact same brands
| like in a subscription model. Practically, we end up
| buying the same products in a predictable schedule, to
| keep the wheel spinning.
| lapcat wrote:
| A lot? Furniture? Clothing? Cars? Electronics?
| Appliances? Physical books? [takes off glasses to think]
| Glasses?
|
| Physical products wear out eventually, but they can last
| for many years. They're not necessarily perishable.
| skelpmargyar wrote:
| In my opinion you shouldn't expect future updates of any
| kind from software that you own. I wouldn't expect them to
| keep updating it because it obviously makes them no money.
| I would expect them to release a new product to keep making
| money.
| lapcat wrote:
| > I wouldn't expect them to keep updating it because it
| obviously makes them no money.
|
| What do you mean by this exactly? There are always new
| customers to sell to, so of course you can make money by
| updating your product.
|
| Will the buyer continue to receive _free_ software
| updates forever? No, probably not. Eventually they may
| have to pay an upgrade fee. But the great part about
| upgrade fees compared to subscription is that the choice
| and timing of whether or not to upgrade is in the buyer
| 's hands. Whereas with a subscription, it's a forced
| update, with the timing determined by the software
| developer, not the buyer. You pay yearly, or the software
| stops working now.
| Gigachad wrote:
| No I don't expect it because it's obviously impossible to
| be sustainable. Which is why I choose subscription stuff
| because then I can expect a constant stream of new value
| for my payment or I cancel the subscription.
| ghaff wrote:
| The problem is that OS upgrades are frequently needed for
| security and bug fixes and those upgrades are often
| required by other applications--but a new OS version may
| break your older application. I suppose you can play
| around with VMs to keep an old OS and application
| together--that was one of the original virtualization use
| cases--but that gets awkward after a while.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Not going out of business, but on the iPad there is a
| drawing app called Procreate which is a one time purchase.
| It's decent, but in the two years I've had it, nothing has
| really improved and there is a whole lot missing or to be
| desired.
|
| This is the trade-off, as far as I'm concerned. By paying
| one time, I get the product ... once. It might be a bad
| purchase that I regret; that happens. But, if it's great, I
| want that product; I don't want the developer's new and
| greatest idea of how they think I want to use their
| product. Too many products that were once great 'evolved'
| away from being useful for me. For the software that I own
| (and that runs on a supported platform), I can just keep
| using it. For subscription software ... well, too many
| developers don't care that they're leaving a dedicated base
| behind if they open up a new (and fickle) base.
| bombolo wrote:
| I use debian and i get a steady stream of updates!
|
| And I also don't get microsoft bugging me every day to install
| windows 11.
| PetahNZ wrote:
| I am on Ubuntu and it constantly bugs me to upgrade:
|
| > New release '20.04.5 LTS' available. > Run 'do-release-
| upgrade' to upgrade to it.
| bombolo wrote:
| At least it doesn't say you must buy a new computer to
| update :)
| PetahNZ wrote:
| Well on my older 4770 PC, Windows doesn't bug me to
| upgrade to 11, since it knows it can't.
| bombolo wrote:
| It bugs me anyway where it can't (I have a couple of
| games that refuse running on linux)
| ahepp wrote:
| Despite being pretty similar under the hood, Ubuntu and
| Debian seem very different in their approach to this kind
| of thing.
|
| The Debian package manager telemetry is _opt in_ , for
| example. Whereas iirc Ubuntu used to bundle an Amazon store
| in their default release? And who could forget that guy who
| got a cold call "hey, we saw you spun up a Ubuntu VM in
| Azure. Want to buy support?"
| AlexandrB wrote:
| It's so much worse when a subscription business fails. You can
| lose access to your data with very little notice to migrate. At
| least standalone software keeps working for a while after the
| company maintaining it is gone.
| [deleted]
| soulofmischief wrote:
| I get that modern software is a living breathing thing, but
| it's absurd to compare that to music albums, which should not
| be constantly modified and reissued post-release.
| OkGoDoIt wrote:
| Standalone software keeps working more or less forever
| regardless of the company. I still use Jasc Paint Shop Pro X
| from something like 15 years ago as my image editing software.
| It might not be as good as more modern software, but I know how
| to use it and I don't need to retrain on something new, which
| means I can be very fast with whatever I need to do.
| Subscription-based software including updates is a downside as
| far as I'm concerned. Especially when they phone home and
| realize you're not on the latest version and refused to work
| until you update. I don't generally want to update. Stability
| and muscle memory is way too underrated in the tech world.
| hermitcrab wrote:
| >Standalone software keeps working more or less forever
| regardless of the company.
|
| That may be true for Windows, but it isn't true for Mac
| (unless you never upgrade your computer).
|
| I have been writing and supporting the same piece of
| commercial software since 2005 on Windws and Mac. v1 of my
| software probably still works on Windows 11. Not a chance on
| Mac (it has gone PowerPc -> Intel -> Arm in that time!).
| oytis wrote:
| > the idea of "owning" software feels positively archaic to me,
| as strange as "owning" a music album.
|
| Is it still alright to own a book?
| vinyl7 wrote:
| Don't give them any ideas. Could you imagine having to have
| separate subscriptions for O'Reilly, Shuster, and Penguin,
| etc.
| allarm wrote:
| > And I don't have to agonize over whether paying for a major
| upgrade is worth it.
|
| What's so agonizing about it? You check the release notes to
| see what's been added, what's been removed. Then check the
| reviews and make a simple decision.
|
| > as strange as "owning" a music album.
|
| Physical copies of music albums exist. It's much stranger to me
| to rely on the streaming provider to listen to my favorite
| albums when everything in the streaming world can be removed
| tomorrow over some copyright issues.
| aussiesnack wrote:
| I don't have many subscriptions (most of my software is FOSS,
| and I don't do media streaming), but the few I have I'm quite
| happy about. None of them are corporate behemoths, they create
| quality products that I like to use, as far as I can see from
| the outside they're decent companies that treat their employees
| well. I quite enjoy the fact that I can make a small
| contribution to these products/companies continuing to be
| sustainable.
|
| And I'm at the extreme end of anti-capitalism. I'd prefer to
| see everything employee/citizen-owned. But in the world we
| actually live in today, I see no inherent problem with
| subscriptions.
|
| There can be contingent problems. I won't, for example,
| subscribe to any music streaming services because they give
| musicians an unfair deal. But that's little to do with
| subscriptions per se.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > I'm happy to pay a subscription because this way I get a
| steady stream of all the updates
|
| Who needs that? I use office 97 with Microsoft's office
| converters package for modern formats. Super fast and does all
| I need
|
| I use photoshop cs2. Local. Fast. Offline
|
| Software can easily reach "good enough".
|
| What is it with people today that makes them think that no
| updates or no recent changes is bad?
|
| I WANT my tools to be stable and not change from under me.
| joe_the_user wrote:
| _Not really, because I saw too many software companies go out
| of business because not enough people wound up upgrading to the
| next major version_
|
| Aside from the other point, the idea that someone continuing to
| pay money for software is going to keep the company from going
| out of business seems misguided.
|
| I still subscribe, pay fucking money, to Meetup.com but over
| the years, despite a large subscriber base, the site become a
| buggy moribund piece of junk (but still the only thing in it's
| area). Such drift into worthless is typical for just about all
| subscriber software because software needs maintenance and
| because once a subscriber model reaches saturation point, the
| primary approach of management is simply _milk_ it for all the
| money possible by reducing labor costs to the minimum (look
| what Musk 's doing to Twitter, it's not weird it's typical).
| lamontcg wrote:
| Yeah the problem with software these days is the constant
| upgrade cycle.
|
| Own-it-for-life means "I expect free updates for the next 20
| years" which as we've seen with the mIRC author isn't the best
| business model. Turns the software developer into indentured
| servitude to all the people who bought it in the past.
|
| The JetBrains model where you own it up need to rent it to get
| upgrades seems to work reasonably well, but given how languages
| like C# and Rust are moving forwards all the time you want get
| those upgrades. Since I want to see the developers doing that
| work for me, it seems rational that I should be paying them.
| acaloiar wrote:
| I'm curious what you know about the mIRC author's story. As a
| former mIRC user, I imagine it's interesting lore from the
| shareware era. Writing mIRC scripts was some of the first
| "programming" I ever did. Good times.
| Izkata wrote:
| This was posted on here two weeks ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33864660
| lamontcg wrote:
| I think this is a link to the mIRC issue:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33864660
|
| (Whatever perf issue HN is happening makes it hard to
| figure out right now)
| thot_experiment wrote:
| What the heck subscription models are you using? In my
| experience the software gets broken over time and you can't do
| anything about it, including RUN THE OLD VERSION WHICH WORKED.
| There's no longer as much incentive for companies to improve
| because they'll get paid anyway instead of payment being
| contingent on actually delivering something useful. Yes
| subscription models are good for developers, no this doesn't
| make the software better, it makes it worse. (or at the very
| least to improve much slower)
|
| I basically pirate everything that requires a subscription now
| or us a FOSS alternative, even though there was a period of
| time where I would pay for software between when I was poor and
| had to pirate everything and now when I can afford to pay for
| subscriptions but the situation with lack of control over SaaS
| is so fucking untenable that I just can't. I don't believe SaaS
| is moral, it basically removes all the power from the consumer
| and allows the software providers to rake you over the coals
| over and over. I'm not interested in funding such things. I
| feel more comfortable with piracy than I do with SaaS on a
| philosophical level.
|
| SaaS companies don't innovate, they buy competitors because
| they're using an abusive business model with bad incentives.
|
| P.S. SaaS _can_ probably be implemented in a decent way, and
| some SaaS does actually provide an ongoing service, but in
| general I believe my point stands.
| solardev wrote:
| Not the OP, but I have to disagree too. Creative Cloud,
| IntelliJ, Figma, Google Workspace, Postman, Spotify, Vercel,
| Adguard, Google storage space, Alltrails, 1password.. They're
| all subscriptions and getting better all the time. Meanwhile
| it's the old purchased software like Windows and Office that
| get worse with every version.
| jonwest wrote:
| Do you feel as though Windows as a SaaS would be better? At
| least as a consumer I have a choice to say "I'd rather not
| upgrade to Windows 11 and get the worse experience" and not
| just login and see that those changes that I wouldn't have
| upgraded for have just been pushed down as it happens with
| a SaaS.
|
| Windows, as an example, is an interesting one in that
| you're paying once for a license and it's good more or less
| indefinitely (or until things stop working and are no
| longer supported), but Microsoft does still have an
| obligation to be pushing out updates, whether security or
| QoL, so I'm not sure that it being worse over time has any
| reflection on the license model.
| TingPing wrote:
| You don't have a choice not to upgrade Windows, not
| practically, it will go out of support and you can't do
| anything about it other than hope Windows Next will be
| more to your liking.
| krater23 wrote:
| Hello from the past. I'm typing this on a Windows 7,
| without the most of the updates. Most works fine, just
| can't install the newest Office or Games. But who wants
| that?
|
| p.s.: Nope, no viruses or things like that. Windows 7 is
| so old that it's not supported by botnets anymore.
| SteveNuts wrote:
| This is like bragging about not wearing a seatbelt
| because "I haven't flown through the windshield yet"
| everyone wrote:
| Windows 10 LTSB will be supported for about 10 years from
| now. (with 0 feature changes)
| themacguffinman wrote:
| It may not be advisable, but tell that to the XP-for-life
| or 7-for-life people. It won't actually stop working, it
| just means you're much more vulnerable to malware.
| phrom wrote:
| True, because of how necessary OS updates / security
| fixes are, sooner or later you're forced to upgrade, even
| on a "buy once" model. But in that model, at least there
| was still a chance of an effective user boycott.
|
| When Windows Vista and Windows 8 released, people got
| mad, and enough of them stuck to Windows XP and Windows 7
| that Microsoft had to address it, for example by going
| back on the Windows 8 start menu. Now that they're
| switching to this permanent license, free upgrade, model,
| that is going away. Thankfully Windows 11 is very boring,
| but if they pulled off another 8 start menu, there'll be
| no real way for people to avoid it or have their voice
| heard now.
| JadeNB wrote:
| > Creative Cloud ... all subscriptions and getting better
| all the time.
|
| I may be an atypical user--I'm definitely sub-power user in
| this domain--but everything Adobe has got worse for me
| since moving to "Creative Cloud".
| arcturus17 wrote:
| Opposite. I'm an infra-power user that uses AI once every
| two months, and I like the experience. Can't tell how it
| is for power users though. Maybe they hate it.
| Diapason wrote:
| Spotify? What the heck is it doing in this list. When you
| pay Spotify - you are paying - supposedly for a large part
| - for Artists's right, not for a Software service.
| lozenge wrote:
| I haven't seen any improvement in Spotify in years.
|
| Still can't organise songs in any meaningful way, can't
| rate songs, playlists suck, shuffle is broken, and they
| keep pushing podcast content when I never listen to
| podcasts.
|
| 1Password also used to sync to Dropbox for free and even
| had an HTML version that could serve from Dropbox.
| least wrote:
| Spotify still hasn't reached feature parity with Spotify
| when it first came out. Only recently did something as
| basic as lyrics return. It's still not extensible like it
| once was.
| tttttt5ts wrote:
| And your work pays for a lot of that? Must be nice.
| solardev wrote:
| No, they pay for a couple, but I pay for most of it.
| IntelliJ in particular I pay for one because it's
| affordable enough and two because the corporate price is
| much much higher than than the individual price and I'm
| tired of begging companies to buy it, especially when
| other web devs are happy enough with VSCode.
| phrom wrote:
| Funny you mention Windows and Office. Office is getting
| worse while moving to a subscription model, while Windows
| is getting worse by moving towards ads.
| dontknowwhyihn wrote:
| We'll see how well Figma holds up under Adobe, but at this
| point, I am not optimistic.
| Enginerrrd wrote:
| Yeah, I'd appreciate updates if they just fixed bugs,
| security, and the stuff that was broke.
|
| Instead, it's often endless addition of features no one asked
| for and UI redesigns/reorgnization. No thanks. I'd probably
| be willing to pay a subscription to withhold that part.
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I am fine with the subscription model of IntelliJ and their
| IDEs.
|
| The progress is real and if you stop paying, you lose the
| ability to upgrade your IDE, but the older versions still
| work.
| ngoilapites wrote:
| Agonise? Seriously, capitalism is based on your decision power,
| and you give it away and call it Agonise? I might need to write
| a new book, about consumer disempowerment phenomena.
| LaserDiscMan wrote:
| I once worked in a small company developing niche but expensive
| Windows software. The company enjoyed (probably still enjoys)
| relatively limited competition in it's space. During start up,
| the program checks for the version of Windows which it's being
| run on and refuses to boot if it's different to the one
| specified for that version.
|
| This software was mainly sold to mid-large size companies, so
| although it could be trivially defeated with minimal reverse
| engineering, I doubt this was ever a real issue.
|
| Every new version of Windows that Microsoft released would
| coincide with many customers purchasing the latest version of
| our software.
| powersnail wrote:
| People are usually focused on how the payment model changed, but
| in fact, the products themselves have changed as well. Cloud
| storage and synchronizing data across multiple devices are now
| the norm, which incur continuous costs. And I think this is not
| something that's shoved into the customers' throat.
| Synchronization is indeed a valuable feature for many users.
|
| Some of the subscriptions are certainly silly, like subscription
| for car features.
|
| At least in the world of computers, I don't find too many
| products which are unjustifiably subscription-based.
| Subscriptions are usually paired with some form of
| synchronization/storage. And if you don't want cloud storage (or
| if you have your own cloud external to the application, or if you
| want to self host), there are usually non-subscription or even
| free options. Bitwarden, libreoffice, gimp, inkscape, etc.
|
| So, I'd say as someone who's not currently into car purchase, I'm
| relatively content with the subscription models in the tech
| world. The services I subscribe to really do need continuous
| maintenance, and I've never been forced to subscribe to something
| that I think should not have been a subscription.
|
| Adobe, though, has never been affordable to hobbyists in my
| opinion. Now, at least you can use it for a month and turn off
| the subscription.
| ravenstine wrote:
| Yes, and the only practical answer is to consider how many of
| these subscriptions you actually need.
|
| For instance, I see no reason why a password manager should be a
| SaaS. I don't care how long these companies have been around
| thusfar; in my opinion, using a password manager as-a-service is
| asking for trouble and is a waste of money. The closer you
| approach "perfect" security, the more of your personal security
| you end up handing off to someone else for their profit. Having a
| handful of sufficiently complex yet memorable passwords and
| something like Authenticator or Yubikey might be an appropriate
| compromise.
|
| Image editor? There's Kirta, GIMP, and Inkscape. No, they're not
| as good as Adobe software, but maybe that's less important to you
| than not paying Adobe.
|
| Maybe just using Apple Notes can be good enough for you, if you
| can get used to it. No subscription necessary. Back it up on
| occasion. There are of course other note taking apps that aren't
| SaaS.
|
| Too many streaming services? Consider watching less in general.
| The less you live vicariously through fictional characters, the
| less those fictional worlds will matter to you. Spend that extra
| time learning a skill or spending non-screen time with others.
| Not watching television only seems abnormal in the context of the
| last half century.
|
| Tired of "live service" games? There's a million older games that
| you buy once, probably for way cheaper, and don't have a ton of
| bugs. Nothing is wrong with older games.
|
| Subscriptions are mostly a problem for those with FOMO. Don't
| care so much about living in the now. Create some distance
| between you and the technological machine while still being able
| to interact with it when you think it's sensible. The only way
| that companies will back off from everything being a subscription
| is if enough people who don't appreciate it actually take action
| in their own lives.
| itake wrote:
| > why a password manager should be a SaaS
|
| While I fully agree with you, how do you sync passwords across
| my 3 laptops and 3 phones without a SaaS offering?
|
| While I don't use this feature, but it is common for ppl to
| share an account. How can I securely share credentials with
| family members?
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| Don't. Sharing a Netflix account with your family is easy.
| Send it in the whatsapp group if you need to change the
| password or something -- how often are you going to do that
| in your life? Not enough to justify handing over all of your
| password to a 3rd party and paying them money for it.
|
| Anything more important than a Netflix account you don't
| share at all. If they need access, just call them.
| itake wrote:
| > how often are you going to do that in your life?
|
| Small startups use password sharing tools to share
| passwords with new employees (think db passwords or other
| saas accounts). This happens at least a once per month in a
| 10 person organization.
| dj_mc_merlin wrote:
| That's the intended use case IMO and it absolutely makes
| sense. I used to share passwords in Slack before and that
| made me uneasy, the company investing in a password
| sharing SaaS absolutely made sense. However, I do not
| manage 100+ people at home and thus have no need of one.
| thewebcount wrote:
| > how do you sync passwords across my 3 laptops and 3 phones
| without a SaaS offering?
|
| With 1Password 7 I did this with their built-in local syncing
| feature. I don't want my passwords in the cloud. I'm happy to
| manually sync them once a month (or probably less these
| days). But they removed it in version 8 and forced users into
| a subscription so I'm not upgrading. Eventually I'll move to
| something else, but it's still working for now.
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Syncing? Just load it onto some cloud storage provider you
| already have. That's what 1Password used for years before
| they decided to go the subscription route. It worked great.
| droobles wrote:
| I use Firefox's built in password manager and it syncs across
| all my devices pretty well. The UX is not great because on
| mobile I have to navigate to Firefox, go to Logins, type in
| my phone's passcode, then search for and copy the right
| password, but it's secure and works well enough.
| f1refly wrote:
| > _how do you sync passwords across my 3 laptops and 3 phones
| without a SaaS offering?_
|
| Syncthing. Set up once, runs reliably forever.
|
| > _How can I securely share credentials with family members?_
|
| I don't do this either (and don't know anyone who does) but I
| imagine it'd be easy to just create a different shared
| database for the family for that? With password store, it's
| also possible to set multiple different gpg keys for a
| specific directory. I don't think the last option is doable
| for most people though.
| itake wrote:
| Syncthing doesn't work for iOS
| https://forum.syncthing.net/t/syncthing-for-ios/16045
|
| > it's also possible to set multiple different gpg keys for
| a specific directory. I don't think the last option is
| doable for most people though.
|
| this seems really complex...
| nszceta wrote:
| I used syncthing for years and never heard of those
| features
|
| keepassxc + syncthing this is the way
|
| android: keepassdx off f-droid + syncthing
| f1refly wrote:
| Of course it doesn't work on ios. The issue you linked
| explains that a syncthing ios implementation would be
| useless because the background process can't run and the
| way filesystem access is managed makes the whole thing
| more or less pointless. It's available on all better
| operating systems though: Windows, macos, gnu/linux,
| android/linux, I think even chromebooks can run it?
|
| > _this seems really complex..._
|
| Like I said, it's probably not a solution for many. A
| second database with shared secret is very
| straightforward and transparent way that anyone can grasp
| I think. It would definitely pass the family test for me.
| janef0421 wrote:
| You can use a keepass file synchronised with syncthing or a
| similar peer-to-peer sync system. To securely share
| credentials, you can share a separate password file with a
| unique password. There might be issue with file conflicts,
| but I find these can usually be managed manually; You might
| also be able to use a crontab.
| jrm4 wrote:
| But what you're really asking is how can you share them
| _conveniently and quickly._
|
| Maybe the answer is, you can't. Write them down, text each
| other, call each other and read it over the phone.
|
| Making a spare key for my parents to get in my house isn't
| "click a button easy," I have to go to the hardware store --
| and maybe THAT'S the appropriate level of difficulty.
| solardev wrote:
| I'd rather just pay for the subscription, honestly.
| Especially in a bigger family or team / company context. To
| each their own.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I'd advise against it.
|
| Again, what many of us are saying is _third party
| password managers are always a bad idea_ for fundamental
| reasons. Before, it was just the account owners and the
| site. Now there 's a third party that has some kind of
| access, and that third party is a juicy target.
|
| Under what guarantee then? Why believe they are safe,
| especially since time has shown that many are not.
|
| It's dumb, and I will continue to maintain that it's dumb
| right up until one of these companies offers
| indemnifcation or some other serious grown-up guarantee.
|
| I will pay for your service if and only if you pay me
| if/when you mess up.
| jrm4 wrote:
| This is _exactly_ correct.
|
| The only things worth paying for as a subscription are things
| that require continued human working, or at least a human on-
| call, period.
|
| In my experience, everything else that's worth it ought to be
| able to survive on donations (either of labor or money).
| failuser wrote:
| Yes, but that's how the market works. Turning everything into
| subscriptions gets you more money and makes migration even harder
| for customers.
| spaceman_2020 wrote:
| The era of cheap/free things is over.
|
| Here in India, a market that has NEVER seen delivery fees for any
| online services, there are now fat delivery fees tacked onto
| every ecommerce transaction.
|
| And boy do the customers NOT like it
| themadturk wrote:
| I can live with subscriptions, though part of me rebels at it.
| But I really dislike software that makes me pay ahead of time to
| even try it. This isn't exactly common, but it is seen at least
| on the Apple app store. In a world where subscription models are
| so common, what makes it hard to give me a 7 or 30 day trial
| before I have to put out money? I've had to ask Apple for money
| back three or four times, and that is both a drain on my time and
| attention as well as (possibly) some poor schmuck at Apple.
| zmmmmm wrote:
| I agree with your sentiment but something I can't get past is the
| need for security updates.
|
| Perhaps it says something awful about the way software has become
| structured, but there are very few applications that are safe to
| keep using if they are never updated. As soon as you concede that
| the application has to continue being updated you also have to
| concede there has to be an ongoing cost model to support that.
| Not doing this has led us to routers that are the gateway to most
| people's homes running totally unpatched 8 year old versions of
| linux.
|
| What I do wish is that the bare minimum viable updates were
| separated out from the major application feature updates. I would
| be happy to pay $5 a year for many of the applications I own and
| perhaps that would be enough to just ensure that security fixes
| are delivered. But instead I have to buy the major new version
| which not only costs 20x as much but also totally rearranges the
| application UI etc. and sometimes even loses features I care
| about.
| walrus01 wrote:
| Please drink a verification can
| Qtips87 wrote:
| I am like you. I would prefer to buy once and own it instead of
| subscribing.
| pfoof wrote:
| There's nothing wrong with subscription based model.
|
| The problem arises when you pay for the software and you have it
| disabled remotely for "violating terms of service".
| User23 wrote:
| > The problem arises when you pay for the software and you have
| it disabled remotely for "violating terms of service".
|
| This is a defining characteristic of a subscription based
| model, ergo there is something wrong with it.
| s-xyz wrote:
| What are alternatives to subscription models?
| juliushuijnk wrote:
| If you can offer a service for a single purchase, where other
| require a subscription, then that might be your way into the
| market.
|
| It's what I do for my (quite simple) ux app that doesn't require
| online features at the moment.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I dunno.
|
| I felt like it was a mistake to get a Plex Pass that I paid for
| once because Plex had my money and didn't have to listen to me
| with product direction and Plex got worse and worse at serving
| media from my local server while it became increasingly focused
| on showing me ads for off-brand streaming services.
|
| I think the subscription model actually works for Adobe in that
| the upfront price of creative cloud was astronomical and breaking
| that up to a monthly payment puts the product in reach of people
| at basically the same pricing.
|
| Subscriptions for video games like the Xbox GAME PASS irk me.
| It's hard to make a case that they aren't a good value, but I
| think it's a movie that we saw with cable television and it
| doesn't end well. If I can't reward game companies by buying
| their games, I feel like I don't have any input into what games
| get made.
| Hamuko wrote:
| Eh, lifetime Plex Pass pays itself for three years even at
| normal pricing. I got mine during a discount so mine pays
| itself off in about 2 years and 3 months, which would have been
| in November 2022. I don't also remember seeing any streaming
| services in my Plex instance.
|
| I'm definitely happier having my lifetime Plex Pass over a
| monthly subscription.
| sgtnoodle wrote:
| Is there a killer feature that's unique to Plex? Or is it
| just pleasantly integrated?
| Hamuko wrote:
| I'm not sure if there's any one killer feature for Plex,
| but as far as I see, it has plenty of advantages over other
| solutions. Good and plentiful client apps, webhook support,
| Plexamp, intro skipping, etc.
| Zircom wrote:
| The killer feature is the Plex app is already available on
| pretty much any device you can think of and at least from
| the user side, setting it up is as easy as just signing in
| and it's all ready to go.
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| The plex support forums are pretty disappointing, the top
| issues go pretty much unaddressed, and past technical choices
| are really holding back the quality of the experience for me
| with regard to 4k content.
|
| Jellyfin is coming closer in terms of functionality, but the
| client apps are missing tablestakes features still, and it's a
| bit of a pain to have to setup https and dynamic dns and such
| if I want to access jellyfin outside of my house.
| [deleted]
| Daunk wrote:
| I got PLEX Lifetime just last year, cause I realized that I've
| basically paid for it multiple times across the years I've been
| a subscriber. So Lifetime's been worth it for me, especially
| when it's on discount.
| nathias wrote:
| Property is one of the basis of autonomy so this shift that makes
| economic sense and scales for large corporations will probably
| many very undesired societal effects. It's the missing link
| between the optimism of early web with the dystopias of
| cyberpunk, if everything is a subscription not a product you have
| no control over it, and can be easily banned from it.
| Infrastructure as a subscription is the royal road to tyranny.
| phrom wrote:
| A subscription model takes away the user's option to install the
| software they bought inside of a VM disconnected from the
| internet, where that software would likely remain runnable to the
| end of time, regardless of the software company's opinion about
| it.
|
| Sure, such use might not be allowed by the Terms of Service, even
| for a one off purchase. But my point is simply that it is
| possible.
|
| I personally think this makes subscription-based software a worse
| option than a one off purchase, off the bat. But there's not
| really a single answer to this. There are good and bad companies,
| there are good and bad SaaS, and reasonable people will disagree
| in which is which. If a SaaS looks like the best option for
| something, and the company looks nice, sure, I'll subscribe.
| honkler wrote:
| welcome to rentier economy.
| wenbin wrote:
| As a customer, I do hate subscription for everything...
|
| But as an entrepreneur, I think subscription revenue is a good
| business model to support the ongoing development of a business.
|
| To find a balance, I don't think it's necessary to make monthly
| subscription a default option. Daily or even hourly subscription
| could also work - https://www.listennotes.com/blog/instead-of-
| monthly-billing-...
| 888666 wrote:
| I use software for most of the things you mentioned and I don't
| pay for any subscriptions. I have always found tools I enjoy that
| give me what I want for free.
| [deleted]
| PicassoCTs wrote:
| The actual horror is the DRM and the forced updates that come
| along with it. Nothing is stable anymore, all things are fragile,
| forcing you to develop against a rolling release by default and
| good luck expecting something working. The only provider of
| stable releases for some software by now are pirates. So you buy
| the license, to be safe legally, and then you use warez, cause
| the DRM is shit by default, trying you to buy more licenses, and
| they know they can wiggle out of all responsibility, even the
| ones stated in the license agreement if they can get you to
| switch to pirated software.
|
| Open source, looks prettier every day.
| gernb wrote:
| It really depends on what it is and how much value it adds to my
| life
|
| Photoshop I pay. I tried switching to Affinity Photo but Affinity
| Photo had a poor workflow for my needs that would have ended up
| taking 10x longer. I value my time such that paying $120 for a
| year subscription to photoshop was well worth it rather than
| spending more time with a much slower solution.
|
| On the other hand, I go on the Apple App store to look for an app
| that does perspective corrections for photos (more than the built
| in one). I found them but they want $6-$10 a month. This was
| something I just wanted to play with, not something I'm going to
| use a bunch so no, I didn't sign up.
|
| Where it really bugs me is IoT devices that don't need to be IoT
| devices. I just don't buy them.
| hk__2 wrote:
| I'm happy with the way JetBrain's pricing work: pay a
| subscription to get the updates, but you're free to cancel at
| anytime and you can continue using the product as-is as long as
| you want.
| WheelsAtLarge wrote:
| Subscriptions are the best way to support a company without it
| having to produce constant hits or a never ending line of
| products that end up in the dump.
|
| I'm 100% in favor of it.
| jen_h wrote:
| Yes, oh my goodness. And it's not just software--I've been
| feeling this pretty acutely while holiday shopping. Have lost way
| too much time funneled and sidetracked onto subscription-only
| "box" sites.
|
| And I _just_ got dark-pattern-suckered into a nakedwines.com
| subscription...
| ohCh6zos wrote:
| I am incredibly tired of it. I cancelled every subscription
| except what I need for my job, and I'm working on moving to one
| time payment and free software there too.
|
| I've discovered the joy of hosting my own services at my own
| home, and it has been life changing.
| UIUC_06 wrote:
| Yes. I won't subscribe to anything (well, hardly anything),
| certainly not Adobe's bloatware.
|
| TV series: I kinda liked the free sample of Tulsa King, but I'm
| for sure not subscribing to Paramount+ to see the rest. Not with
| a 7-day free sample, not with anything.
| [deleted]
| SkaBunkel wrote:
| > why is that?
|
| It is essentially for licensing and DRM reasons. It's been around
| for years in B2B stuff. But as it turns out it works for B2C
| stuff too, and you can actually charge more by charging less.
|
| Let's look at it by using an example. Many people see a 9$ fee as
| something they can afford right now, and the company sees it as a
| 108$ per year, per person, payment for the service. Even if they
| loose 30% of that in operating costs, it is still 75.6$. If 1000
| people pay, you have 75 600$ in annual reoccurring income. If you
| have to sell hardware for people to use your service, you can now
| sell that at a loss and recoup the loses via the subscription.
| bee_rider wrote:
| Subscription is definitely better than ad-driven.
|
| Unfortunately connected devices require continuing development to
| close security holes.
|
| At this point, though, the ability to run something locally and
| just not have the internet touch it is a huge perk.
| FpUser wrote:
| I simply do not subscribe and except things like Netflix only use
| products that offer perpetual license
| AlexandrB wrote:
| Agree 100%. There's also a fundamental contradiction in
| subscriptions. I don't want to pay subscription pricing for
| crucial apps because I don't want to be beholden to recurring
| payments (that can change at any time) to maintain workflows
| critical to my life. But these are also the only cases where
| subscriptions offer enough value to be justifiable. Even a few
| dollars a month seems too much for something like a notes app,
| for example.
| disambiguation wrote:
| I only wish my subscriptions would auto pause or cancel when i
| stop using them actively.
|
| Of course that's the whole point of the subscription model, they
| want you to set and forget.
| jen_h wrote:
| That's one thing I really like about subscribing for services
| and news through Amazon or Apple, it's so much easier to cancel
| or pause the subscription when I want and I've never had a
| gigantic price hike without warning (looking at you,
| McClatchy...).
| choward wrote:
| "Welcome to 2030. I own nothing, have no privacy, and life has
| never been better"
|
| https://twitter.com/wef/status/808328302213689344
| choward wrote:
| https://web.archive.org/web/20161125135500/https://www.wefor...
| yashg wrote:
| I am and it's only going to get worse with even car companies
| demanding subscription to enable features in cars. SAAS was a
| revolutionary idea once, hopefully one day someone will decide to
| sell a product or service for a one time upfront cost again and
| it will be welcomed like a breath of fresh air.
| codetrotter wrote:
| Nope. I pay a subscription for JetBrains CLion and I love it.
| Recently paid for the next 3 years in advance. Their software is
| wonderful and I want to see it continue to exist for as long as I
| am alive. So why would I not want to pay for it.
| xtracto wrote:
| I hear you... between music subscription, film subscription, tv
| subscription and software subscription the monthly spending gets
| crazy.
|
| Not long ago I was subscribed to a nice app called Saffron (dev
| is here in HN). But after a couple of years, I just couldn't
| justify paying to use that kind of app. Same with feedly, I was a
| paying customer for about 4 years.
|
| Now I pay $5 for a Digital ocean instance and have several self-
| hosted open source alternatives. They do what I need, at an
| unbeatable price.
| godelski wrote:
| Yes, but also no.
|
| I think we have to look at why everything became a subscription
| based model before we even talk about how the model is being
| abused now. When I was a kid, everyone was a pirate. Napster and
| Limewire were king because. Buying movies and music was absurdly
| expensive and extremely inconvenient. Amazon didn't exist and if
| your local record store didn't have something good luck. If you
| were in a smaller town, good luck getting a movie if Wallmart or
| your local mom and pop didn't have it (if you even had a
| Wallmart). But then Hollywood Video and Blockbuster ended up
| eating into the video pirating because let's be real, we only are
| going to watch that movie once and then it sits in storage. Now
| you have racks and cabinets full of tapes and disks. (My brother
| even had his car window smashed in where someone stole his entire
| CD collection) It was bulky and inconvenient, so renting made
| things easier. Music was the same way. But services like Napster
| weren't just free, they were FAR more convenient. That's why
| Spotify has taken over and to this day won. Convenience. I think
| Benn Jordan (The Flashbulb) did a good video talking about the
| music side of this argument (including software), so I'll let his
| video say more[0].
|
| There's a second problem that has led to our hardware crisis.
| Where hardware is cheaper than ever but if you don't attach a
| subscription model some manufacturer in China will sell the same
| thing 10x cheaper than you. See Boston Dynamic's robotic dogs.
| Reverse engineering hardware is pretty easy, see K-13 missile[1].
|
| The problem today, is that now EVERYTHING has become a
| subscription based model and we're basically back to where we
| were before (notice the resurgence in piracy lately?). So I think
| the problem is that we learned a lesson but we didn't learn THE
| lesson, of what people are actually after. I don't think our
| modern video streaming services are much different than buying
| cable in the past.
|
| So I think the trillion dollar question is: what is the new model
| that learns THE lesson? But that has a lot of sub-questions,
| including what it is actually that people want. Surely
| convenience and accessibility is one, but that's clearly not all.
| Though the solution to this may be impossible, because no one
| wants to centralize everything into a single player (and I'm not
| convinced that's a great idea either, despite the success of
| services like Pirate Bay, Napster, and PopcornTime).
|
| [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7EHRpnJICQ
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K-13_(missile)
| c-linkage wrote:
| Corporations are looking at a consistent and reliable revenue
| stream. Basically, they want a Universal Basic Income (UBI) from
| their customers.
|
| UBI is only good for business where profits are made, so don't go
| talking about UBI for people!
| breck wrote:
| Yes! The solution is to go 100% public domain.
|
| Programming language information: pldb.com (100% public domain --
| you can download the CSV and even entire git history)
|
| Music: try https://musicofapeople.com/ (actually, far better than
| ours is NoCopyrightSounds: https://ncs.io/)
|
| Newspapers: check out https://longbeach.pub/
|
| Much, much more coming
| layer8 wrote:
| The main problem is the SaaS model. Subscriptions for updates to
| local software are fine. At least (1) you can still continue to
| use the older version when paying the subscription isn't worth it
| for you, and (2) you can control when to upgrade to a newer
| version, reducing the rate of churn and adapting to what fits
| your schedule, and also in the case where the new version is
| actually worse for how you're using the software.
| sanjayio wrote:
| I don't because software requires maintenance and R&D which
| improves it over time. At the end of the day, I choose if I want
| to pay monthly and if I do it's saving me time and energy.
| kkfx wrote:
| Personally I'm tired of walled gardens. I have nothing against
| paying a newspaper to read it, but I want to read it via RSS,
| with full articles in the feed, so I can choose some newspapers,
| save their logins as needed, and get all the news in a single UI
| on my desktop instead of having various different crappy modern
| web sites who do allow much profiling on me, but very little
| usability on my side.
|
| Similarly I'm tired of baking porcals to be even worse coupled
| with mobile second factory auth instead of a classic physical
| OFFLINE time-based tocken, who do not allow OFX or similar feeds,
| some even do not offer decent exporting options and of course NO
| ONE IS THE SAME being different banks even if MY damn USAGE is
| the same.
|
| And so on. Long story short: I accept to pay someone else works,
| because we use money as a tool to interact in society to get what
| we all want in more or less fair compensations BUT I do not
| accept and very tired of crappy IT choices not to ask for money
| but to trap users, munge more then formally paid money and offer
| far less with a coat of colorful nice crappy UI.
| [deleted]
| solardev wrote:
| I actually prefer the subscription model for my software, if the
| monthly price is reasonable.
|
| It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their business
| and pay their employees to maintain and improve the service over
| time.
|
| I hate the other model, where with Windows and Office you end up
| getting useless forced upgrades and terrible makeovers because
| they need that upgrade revenue every few years. Or the ad driven
| model. I wish I could pay a personal Google subscription for
| better results and no search ads, for example.
|
| Subscriptions allow companies to better develop organic roadmaps
| that's not tied to an upgrade cycle, and deemphasizes the
| needless shiny that's often there for no reason. They don't need
| to refresh the UI unless there's just an underlying good reason
| to (like with IntelliJ), but can still keep adding new features.
|
| As a user it means I don't have these huge spikes in my budget
| every few years and can just plan for a predictable monthly cost.
| Or sub for something for a month or two and cancel when I don't
| need it, which I do often.
|
| Owning software is worthless to me because their effective
| lifespans are so short anyway, usually just a couple years,
| before the ecosystem has moved on and left them behind anyway.
| It's not like code is collectible or appreciates over time.
| Owning it just means you prepay years in advance and lose access
| to the present value of that money in the meantime, and can't
| easily switch to a competitor if and when one appears. The
| subscription forces companies to keep delivering value unless
| they want you to cancel.
| lapcat wrote:
| > It gives me faith that they can actually sustain their
| business and pay their employees to maintain and improve the
| service over time.
|
| > Owning software is worthless to me because their effective
| lifespans are so short anyway, usually just a couple years,
| before the ecosystem has moved on and left them behind anyway.
|
| I find it strange that these two sentences are in the same
| comment.
| solardev wrote:
| How so? Tech is moving so fast across multiple fronts that
| software obsolescence happens much quicker than before, not
| due to the developer themselves, but I mean things like
| Windows changing driver models, Apple changing silicon,
| Android APIs constantly evolving, web technologies mutating
| like a cancer... old versions quickly become useless without
| active maintenance.
|
| Meanwhile the subscription services largely keep pace with
| one another and stay compatible because most users are on the
| latest version.
| lapcat wrote:
| > old versions quickly become useless without active
| maintenance.
|
| I think this is somewhat exaggerated. Not to mention that
| if you're using older versions of 3rd party software, you
| can use older versions of the OS too. In fact, many people
| don't like to update their OS version. If it ain't broke...
|
| > Meanwhile the subscription services largely keep pace
| with one another and stay compatible because most users are
| on the latest version.
|
| How is this different from upfront paid software? The
| latest versions of that stay compatible too. You may have
| to pay an upgrade fee, but that generally doesn't happen
| every year, unlike subscriptions.
| solardev wrote:
| Is it? A lot of my favorite games no longer work on the
| latest operating systems because they were on a buy once
| model. Others had their multiplayer shut down.
|
| As for upfront paid software, sometimes it's also just
| not worth it to the developer to make a whole new version
| anymore or they shut down. The shareware industry is
| pretty much dead today, for example, although free trials
| for cloud subs are still very common. I think the sub
| model smooths out the feast and famine cycles,
| ultimately, and make for more intentional and less
| panicked releases.
| phrom wrote:
| Those old games still run on the old operating systems,
| and you can still get those systems because they were
| also on a buy once model.
|
| If those old games were subscriptions instead, they would
| probably be unplayable today. Their authentication
| servers would be shutdown after so few players remained
| that it wouldn't be worth it for the company to keep it
| going. Just like a lot of multiplayer games are closed
| nowadays.
| lapcat wrote:
| > A lot of my favorite games no longer work on the latest
| operating systems because they were on a buy once model.
|
| How long ago did you buy them?
|
| > As for upfront paid software, sometimes it's also just
| not worth it to the developer to make a whole new version
| anymore or they shut down.
|
| Lots of businesses shut down, regardless of business
| model.
|
| > more intentional and less panicked releases
|
| As a software developer, I'm not sure what this is
| supposed to mean.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| Yes, it's a very modern take on a recent problem.
|
| I used VLC, Firefox (Phoenix), LibreOffice (OOo), MSOffice,
| paint, photofiltre, and notepad++ when I was a teen. They
| still work today.
|
| The trending app ecosystem, the social network du jour and
| the JS framework fever seem to have given the impression to
| the new generation that there is not other way to do this.
| solardev wrote:
| It's not necessarily a generational thing. I grew up on DOS
| before Windows was common, remember v1 of OpenOffice and
| Phoenix and the birth of CSS and JS, and have been making
| webpages since before the div tag was invented. I bought
| and used many tools like Notepad++ and Ultraedit and
| Sublime, and used the heck out of Paint Shop Pro and some
| GIMP and the rest.
|
| But many of those tools are quite a bit less powerful than
| the commercial subscription ones. Creative Cloud CC is very
| powerful when you use it professionally, as is IntelliJ.
| Worth it to me because I know the difference, having used
| both kinds of tools and payment models for more than 20
| years. These days I make a little more money than I did
| back in the 90s, so I don't pirate or demand freeware and
| would rather pay for something sustainable and have it work
| well because my time is worth it.
|
| Take IntelliJ for example. There was a big uproar when they
| moved to a subscription model, but their products have
| continued to get better since. The company would've gone
| bankrupt otherwise. Instead, their pricing is now both very
| fair and includes a perpetual fallback license, while their
| software still keeps improving. I am happy to pay for it
| because it adds tremendous value over VSCode or Notepad++
| in my workflows.
|
| Of course some FOSS software is still amazing. VLC is still
| the best player I know of. Audacity is still useful and I
| find myself using that more than Audition.
|
| But other times the subscriptions just deliver better
| software that I'm happy to pay for.
| bananasmarties wrote:
| Many of those would be broken in various ways if they were
| not updated. For starters: VLC due to missing codecs,
| firefox not supporting newer standards. All the software
| you mentioned was most likely heavily updated since your
| teens.
| correct-me-plz wrote:
| You could consider https://kagi.com/ for a subscription-based,
| ad-free search. I've been using it for a few months and haven't
| had a case where the Google results were superior.
| gernb wrote:
| It can go both ways.
|
| Upgrades:
|
| Plus: Must be compelling so they must come up with new features
|
| Minus: Sometimes those new features are bad.
|
| Subscriptions:
|
| Plus: Keep it working on new OS versions
|
| Minus: No compelling reason to add anything.
| solardev wrote:
| I've never really seen a subscription program stagnate in
| practice. In fact I find that subscriptions allow companies
| to detach revenue from feature planning and deliver useful
| features rather than shiny new UIs.
| phrom wrote:
| If revenue is not attached to feature planning, how are
| users going to influence what features get developed?
| hermitcrab wrote:
| I have kept my desktop software as a one-time payment for a
| version N license (pay 40% to upgrade to version N+1) since I
| started in 2005, when this was the most common model. But I do
| look a bit enviously at products that charge a subscription - it
| would be nice to get that steady income. But I don't really want
| to completely change model at this point. So I may offer a choice
| of perpetual license or 1 year sub at the next major upgrade. It
| does add a bit more friction to the purchasing process though.
| kervantas wrote:
| VSCode extension? SaaS Gym app? SaaS
| rc_mob wrote:
| Jetbrains products have paid plugins now. I hate it.
| pavdex wrote:
| I think about this a lot as well, but I always come back to the
| idea that many companies raise venture capital and they need
| consistent revenue to be able to raise future rounds. They get
| that predictability with the subscription model and in exchange
| they provide a product that gets consistent updates and new
| features. I agree with your sentiment though -- as a consumer, I
| don't love how I don't have much control over the products I use.
| I might subscribe for a certain set of features, but those might
| be removed or changed down the road as the company's needs
| change. But ultimately people have come to expect that their
| products just work indefinitely and it takes a ton of resources
| to make that happen, hence the subscription. Do you have any
| other ideas for models that enable a company to continue making
| money after the initial purchase? I don't think I'd be opposed to
| a model where we pay for each time the product delivers value.
| Some examples that come to mind are paying per news article or
| paying a small fee each time I save a design in Figma, etc. But I
| think that gets super complicated to explain to customers and it
| makes it hard to justify charging enough to not only support that
| specific feature while also earning enough to invest in future
| product features and improvements.
| poisonborz wrote:
| SaaS is a menace. There are lots of valid use cases - streaming
| service, cloud storage, online games come to mind - but otherwise
| it means users basically lose yet another part of their
| ownership. I view software as a tool, like a hammer. You don't
| want your tools to break unexpectedly, phone home, or change
| their functionality without your explicit approval.
|
| For a price I expect the developer to release bugfixes and
| security patches, nothing more. Feature updates and compatibility
| fixes can be billed. They should be worth the update price.
| Honestly, most software can be "finished": when it does its main
| function well, and has compatibility, why bother? Who even looks
| at changelogs of Jira, Photoshop or Office nowadays? Users are
| more afraid of what will be removed rather than what they gain.
|
| It's each maker's choice to set up a scheme, but I see the
| industry sliding to exploitation by default.
| 88913527 wrote:
| The end state of all of this is fewer customers, but each
| customer is more passionate about what they're buying (and paying
| far more). Customers who were only marginally interested in the
| service are de-prioritized, and the business focuses on people
| who, for whatever reason, literally cannot go without the service
| and accept 10x prices (captive markets).
|
| Why is it happening? Slowing macroeconomic growth means dividing
| the existing pie rather than going for maximizing volume in a
| world where there is more pie. You need to take someone else's
| lunch.
| [deleted]
| paulcole wrote:
| No! I can try out a wide variety of products and services for a
| month or two and then cancel the ones I don't like.
| bytehowl wrote:
| Ignoring all the issues around ownership, corporations being
| untrustworthy, etc., I think one of the biggest problems is that
| subscription costs aren't flexible enough and require too much
| micromanagement.
|
| You use a program 24/7 for a month straight? That'll be $10.
|
| You need to use a program just for a single 5-minute task in a
| whole month? That'll be $10.
|
| You literally don't touch a program for a month? That'll be $10.
| Or you can unsubscribe, and then resubscribe, over and over
| again.
| jimkleiber wrote:
| I've been exploring a pay what you want model for a
| subscription. Would you prefer something like this? Or more
| about just putting in more options for selecting based on one's
| usage? something else?
| smcleod wrote:
| Yes, in part -
|
| If it's a _service_ I'm happy to pay a subscription (e.g.
| streaming TV series, an ad-free version of a podcast, Kagi search
| etc...).
|
| If it's software - I will try to avoid the product if it requires
| a subscription, and instead either purchase software outright
| (with the expectation that I may need to in 3-4 years again for a
| major rewrite) or stick with Open Source alternatives.
| unity1001 wrote:
| Its much better than the ad driven model of the Internet where
| advertisers and investors called the shots instead of the users.
|
| Maybe subscription model would have been de facto model of the
| Internet from the start if the unlimited amounts of VC money that
| was made possible through low interest rates and the dominant
| foreign ex currency position of the dollar did not enter the
| landscape and turned everything into a growth race without
| heeding any healthy financials.
|
| So we ended up with gigantic social media companies that do not
| have actual revenue that could justify their stock price like
| Twitter, FB etc, companies that basically rode on attempting to
| corner a market with the assumption that it would end up being
| profitable at some point like WeWork, Uber etc.
|
| Companies that had healthy financials and unit economics were
| belittled and ignored, they were not ambitious enough and they
| were not growing fast enough.
|
| Now that the global economics is changing with competing
| currencies eating into dollar's foreign currency dominance and
| cash-awash economy through low interest rates not being possible,
| the startup game will likely change.
|
| The subscription model is one of the models that could make
| things work. But everything being a subscription does not feel
| like its sustainable consumer-side - $3-$5 apiece, dozens of
| subscriptions for different things, amounting to a hundred
| dollars or more - that doesnt look like manageable or affordable.
| So eventually bundled services may rise - subscribe for $x, and
| get all of these services across the Internet.
|
| Not the open Internet we want yet, but its better than the
| corporate dominated Internet - at least this format gives an
| opportunity to small players too.
| paulpauper wrote:
| Not only that, but it's so expensive too. Everything is
| $40/month. It adds up fast.
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