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Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

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Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#661

Post by sebazzz »

trinsic2 wrote: post #446
crazygringo wrote: post #40

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…

IMHO it feels like the subscription model in many cases (not all of them) protects a developer from having to innovate and deliver other products. In the real world you shouldn't expect to get unlimited income from one type of product regardless of Whether or not you are maintaining it. There is a saturation point.

Agreed - every time a license or a prepretual subscription (like JetBrains) needs to be repurchased is a natural moment to evaluate the usage and state of the software in question: Do we still like it, do we still use it as much, do new versions offer enough improvement to upgrade. If not, we don’t renew.

With subscription based software there is no set moment to do that, so there are naturally a lot of sleeping subscriptions and otherwise subscriptions which are rarely re-evaluated on its value. In my opinion this makes the vendor lazy.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#662

Post by ryandrake »

Ylpertnodi wrote: post #646
ratorx wrote: post #629

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having the ability to do seamless frequent updates means that bad software can cause excess churn. They are not intrinsically linked. The problem with not having solid infrastructure for updates is security issues. Of course, there is a class of software where this is not a problem, but determining whether software falls into that category is pretty difficult given the structure of modern OS and the propensity for th…

>that implementing robust, dependable and user configurable auto updates with easy rollbacks etc. is a complex problem So very true, but the complexities can be considerably reduced by not forcing updates - whether security, dependability, or UX. So many updates I see nowadays are the very 'churn' you mention.

I'd be 100% in favor of automatic software updates if there were some guarantee that it was just used for security fixes and nothing else. But if you leave it up to the software vendor to decide what gets automatically pushed, you inevitably backslide back to where we are today where everything gets jammed down the user's throat.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#663

Post by MichaelZuo »

jevgeni wrote: post #542
CGamesPlay wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1Password is objectively getting worse: 1Password 7 has 4.3 stars on the App Store and 1Password 8 has a measly 2.7 stars. 1Password 7 is no longer receiving updates (it's no longer for sale either). 1Password 8 requires iOS 15, so the updates that you're paying for as part of your subscription model require that you pay for a new phone to get them. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/1password-7-password-manager/i... and…

Counting pitchforks doesn't make the pitchforks objective.

Requiring iOS 15 or later is objectively worse though when the previous version supports older software.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#664

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

esskay wrote: post #635
Fire-Dragon-DoL wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lastpass didn't deliver a single improvement, but they did double the yearly price

Whilst also getting hacked twice. Why anyone uses, let alone pays for Lastpass is a mystery.

Their data export is really bad, that was my major concern. I'll pay them for another year, since password history is not going to be exported.

Apparently there is a PR to export password history on their lpass tool, but it was never merged.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#665

Post by eb0la »

mancerayder wrote: post #352
crazygringo wrote: post #40

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…

Software companies made no money before subscriptions? How did they last decades?

The sold licenses, and yearly maintenance. The subscription model killed the one-off purchase of licenses. Suddenly if you didn't have a subscription like Red hat did, you had to pay a lot in CAPEx plus maintenance. That meant that even with the same TCO you were out of business.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#666

Post by Fire-Dragon-DoL »

chillfox wrote: post #443
moonchrome wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Switch to 1password or something else ? That's the nice part about subscription - when it's about to expire it's easy to switch. Just make absolutely sure you remove payment info from that scammer site - they charged me for a year after I canceled and supposedly "refunded me" when I went to support forums- but never actually saw money refund. Couldn't be bothered to go further but just the fact that they will charge…

How do you figure moving hundreds of passwords + shared passwords (requires other people to also move) from one solution to another is easy.

I was mostly concerned about attachments. The export to CSV worked surprisingly well, even though the CSV doesn't seem to match the spec.

To be fair, I sampled some passwords, not all of them.

For attachments, it took me almost a day, I found an official command line tool called lpass and modified the existing script to do what I needed, then I had to manually re-attach every attachment to the right passwords. A giant pain overall.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#667

Post by qkls »

itake wrote: post #102
ravenstine wrote: post #96

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 e…

> 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?

With Bitwarden you can sync on the free plan.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#668

Post by everyone »

iggldiggl wrote: post #642
everyone wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 LTSB will be supported for about 10 years from now. (with 0 feature changes)

Although one possible problem could be if your hardware breaks down in five years and you want to take that as an opportunity to upgrade instead of doing a simple like-for-like replacement – drivers for then current hardware might not necessarily support old LTSB versions.

Well I think windows 11 has same kernal as 10? So probably drivers will be fine for a good few years also.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#669

Post by everyone »

thot_experiment wrote: post #382
everyone wrote: post #249

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10 LTSB will be supported for about 10 years from now. (with 0 feature changes)

A cracked version of W10LTSB with most of the cruft stripped out and updates/AV disabled is genuinely the best base computing experience. My WWAN card even works properly. Linux is happy inside a VM, and the host computer works properly without spending a billion hours recompiling drivers with every kind of weird lab hardware, GPUs, FPGAs, and it's own internals etc. If something is better supported on Linux I just p…

Why not update it though? They promise 0 feature changes. Only security updates and bugfixes.

Re: Ask HN: Anyone tired of everything being a subscription now?

#670

Post by coldtea »

jacobsimon wrote: post #457
coldtea wrote: post #391

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've mixed subscription based services (Google storage space) and content (Spotify) with subscription based software. For services, it might make sense. Even so, what exactly is "getting better all the time" about Spotify the software? It's been the same for like 5 years now. As for the rest: 1Password declined (turned to Electron shit), Creative Cloud keeps adding bloat while not adressing decades standing issues,…

Spotify doesn’t need to “get better” - you’re paying the fee for streaming rights to an ever-growing content library. Same with Netflix, etc. There’s also an unspoken but important accounting detail here - if you run an online software business and offer a one-time, lifetime purchase for your product, you are now contractually on the hook to provide that service to customers forever, even if your business stops growi…

>for streaming rights to an ever-growing content library

Ever-growing my ass. I've had lots of songs on my playlists removed because they were taken off the platform. And not some obscure acts, for example Westbam's Götterstrasse (which features anybody, from Brian Molko and Iggy Pop to Kanye and Lil' Wayne).

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