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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.
Quiz: „You own nothing and you’ll be happy“ (imagine this with a strong German accent) Who is quoted here?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
yep. is the problem with capitalism. if you are not growing in profits then you are dying. the happiness of the people be damned.
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…
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 drive…
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
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…
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.
The problem arises when you pay for the software and you have it disabled remotely for "violating terms of service".
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 compa…
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.
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".
This is a defining characteristic of a subscription based model, ergo there is something wrong with it.